WEBVTT - Jimmy Buffett: Escape Artist, Incorporated. 0:00:00.440 --> 0:00:19.959 Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:26.639 story about escape, about drug trafficking, about God's own badass, 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:32.080 about dodging bullets with bono and dodging life's restrictions. This 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:34.920 is a story about an artist I used to despise 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:38.519 but now kind of love. And this is a story 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:43.280 about Jimmy Buffett. So yes, that means it's a story 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:47.519 about great music. Unlike that music I played for you 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:50.240 at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:54.480 That was a preset loop from my melotron called buford 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:59.560 Can't Fish MK Two. I played you that loop because 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:02.760 I can't afford the rights to Torn Between Two Lovers 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:06.200 by Mary McGregor. And why would I play you that 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:09.160 slice of you know, I've never actually heard the song 0:01:09.200 --> 0:01:13.920 before cheese. Could I afford it? Because that was the 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:18.480 number one song in America on February fourteenth, nineteen seventy seven, 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:21.040 And that was the day a son of a son 0:01:21.080 --> 0:01:25.360 of a sailor released a song called Margueriteville and changed 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:31.039 his life forever. On this episode, drug trafficking, a badass 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:35.360 so bad is still walking tall Bono, dodging bullets, music 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:37.839 History's Escape artist Jimmy Buffer. 0:01:38.920 --> 0:02:02.800 I'm Jake Brennan in this, this Disgraceland. 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:12.040 Jimmy Buffett was not at all what you think unless 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:16.320 you're ahead. I don't mean a Parrothead necessarily, but a 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:20.440 deep Buffet heead one who knows is pre Parrothead history. 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:25.720 Jimmy Buffett was an all American badass. Jimmy Buffett swam 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:29.320 the Key West Flats with sharks. Jimmy Buffett once fought 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:31.520 off a bear with nothing but a loss salt shaker 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:35.560 and his wit. Jimmy Buffett wrestled with Hemingway's ghosts and won. 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:39.480 Jimmy Buffett drank Tom mcguain under the table, saw more 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:42.919 lines of coke than Jim Harrison's one good eye. Jimmy 0:02:42.960 --> 0:02:46.080 Buffett's early Nashville records proved that he was Merle Haggard. 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:52.600 No Johnny paycheck. Jimmy Buffett knows where Bumfardo is buried. Okay, 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:57.919 I'm exaggerating, but not by much. Also, who's Bumfardo you ask? 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:02.519 We'll get to that. Jimmy Buffett, the Jimmy Buffett that 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:05.320 I thought I knew, the one pedaling not just songs, 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:09.280 but margarita's and cheeseburgers, and T shirts and beer and yes, 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:13.520 even lost shakers of salt. That dude's past is not 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:19.920 only fascinating, it directly explains how this super charming, legendarily mustachioed, 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:23.640 pretty ok seventy singer songwriter was able to create a 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:29.040 billion dollar empire out of escapism. Because before we made it, 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:42.520 Jimmy Buffett had to escape himself. Key West aka Bone Island, 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:46.760 where Florida runs out of road, where the ocean laps 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:51.040 pink and blue scaffolding for smugglers nowhere left to run. 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:54.600 If you've made it this far, to the absolute end 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:58.280 of American Earth, they're likely not going to catch you. 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:03.880 You've escaped, Except that Jimmy Buffett wasn't running away from anything. Instead, 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:07.440 he was running towards something. He just didn't know it 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:13.240 at the time, nineteen seventy two, the smugglers were brazen. 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:17.800 This was Key West in the early seventies. It was 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:21.520 a brazen kind of town. And Jimmy Buffett watched drug 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:24.359 traffickers unload the dope straight off the boats onto the 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:26.880 shrimp ducks right there in the middle of the day. 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:29.920 It was so hot it felt like the sun had 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:33.919 a twin. Jimmy was a shrimper, he'd grown used to 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:38.000 the heat, but this was something else. He stood there, 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:43.880 twenty four years old, recently divorced, sweating bullets, long hair, 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:49.159 bushy mustache, cut off jeans, nothing else, contemplating the dope 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:51.760 on the dock. There was a lot of money in 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:55.160 those packages, more money than he was earning from shrimping, 0:04:55.600 --> 0:04:57.960 and more than he was seeing pedaling songs over at 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:02.000 the chart room at night Z. Far more money than 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:07.800 he'd ever made in Nashville. The Giant's fist came through 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:11.279 the half open passenger side window, quick landing hard on 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:15.799 the side of Jimmy Buffet's publicis's face. Jimmy struggled drunkenly 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.760 to get the car started. The giant now had the 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:22.640 public's head cradled in his bear like paw and was pulling, 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:27.120 slamming the man's face into the window. Jimmy fumbled with 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:31.080 the ignition he was wasted. That was the problem. He 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:33.840 and the publicist from BBC Records, the label had signed 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:37.080 him on account of some natural recordings, were out celebrating. 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:40.360 They had just tied one on at Roger Miller's King 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:44.160 of the Road Motoring, and they stumbled out blotto. Then 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:47.120 Jimmy jumped up on top of a park Cadillac, this 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:52.839 giant of a man's Cadillac, apparently, But this wasn't any 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:58.839 ordinary giant. Jimmy would later learn that this was Beauford Pusser. 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:02.320 If Jimmy Buffett was, as he claimed in one of 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:06.799 his songs, God's own drunk, then Baufford Pusser was God's 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:11.440 own badass. As the former sheriff of McNairy County and Tennessee, 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:16.640 he'd survived two assassination attempts, He'd been shot stabbed too 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:19.760 many times to count. His wife got murdered in Old 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:22.560 Bufford here when at her killers were a determined vengeance 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:26.839 that was and still is the stuff of legend. Baufford 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:30.239 Pusser was so bad ass they made one movie, two 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:34.360 sequels in a TV show after him Walking Tall. Hell, 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:38.479 they're still making movies about him with the rock. But 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:42.080 at this moment, Baufford Pusser was training his vengeance on 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:46.039 Jimmy Buffett, and Jimmy Buffett thankfully got his car and 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:52.560 gear and escape. He escaped. Not just the violent clutches 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:58.480 of Beaufford Pusser, but the soul crush of Nashville. Jimmy 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:01.760 arrived in Music City after a short stint in New Orleans, 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:05.520 where he saw firsthand how to entertain people hell bent 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:08.839 on losing themselves in music. It was like that back 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:11.640 home in Mississippi too. It was like that all over, 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:18.120 he imagined. But Nashville, Nashville was tough. As a songwriter, 0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:21.040 Jimmy didn't learn much aside from the fact that Nashville 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:23.920 didn't think he'd fit in. He was forced to pick 0:07:24.000 --> 0:07:28.720 up work as a music journalist, penning notices for Billboard magazine, 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:31.680 and he did learn from his time at Billboard, not 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:36.320 necessarily how to write or report. Instead, he learned that 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:40.600 the music business is designed to steal from artists, and 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:43.760 that the music business is as craven as the smuggling 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:48.679 business off the coast of Key West. Different commodities, different deves, 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:54.000 but crimes. Nonetheless, in the music business, the artists are 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:57.480 the commodity, and like shrimp off the coast of the Keys, 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:02.560 there is always more to harvest. So if Jimmy Buffett 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:05.680 as an artist was going to be treated as a commodity, 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:08.280 then he was at least going to control the commodity. 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:12.600 It was a valuable lesson, except the reality was harsh, 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:17.160 because there's no value in controlling something nobody wants to buy. 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:20.720 So Jimmy split Nashville, but not without a record contract, 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:24.600 and landed in Key West, where he quickly learned that 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:30.960 he was the only product in town. Here, songwriters were scarce, 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:36.440 but writers were not. After locking down a steady ish 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:39.040 gig at the Charthhouse, where he played for tips and 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:41.800 goodwill and well, let's face it, the sheer fun of it, 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:46.200 Jimmy quickly fell in with Key West's literary crowd, guys 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:50.320 like the celebrated author Tom mcguain, Jim Harrison, the future 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:53.320 author of Legends of the Fall, the novelists and poet 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:57.160 Richard Brodigan who'd been sought out by the Beatles sometime earlier, 0:08:57.559 --> 0:08:59.880 and Carl Hyason, who would go on to write Stripped, 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:04.920 Bad Monkey and a host of other bestsellers. Aside from writing, 0:09:05.440 --> 0:09:08.400 these guys endeavored to drink all the alcohol and do 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:11.640 all the drugs Key West could hold. They formed an 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:16.880 unofficial social club called Club Mandible, their mandate to inebriate 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:23.280 in Fornice and Jimmy Buffett fit right in time skipped 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:27.560 along hazily in Key West. Nineteen seventy two turned into 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:31.440 nineteen seventy three, and Jimmy Buffett sang songs at night, 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:34.880 worked sometimes during the day, and he wrote when he 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:38.559 was inspired, making his way back and forth to Nashville 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:43.240 to record in her studios. His third album, seventy three 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:46.760 is A White Coat and a Pink Crustacean was more 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:50.800 island than country. It wasn't novelty, but it was novel 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:53.200 and as such hard for the record label to find 0:09:53.240 --> 0:09:58.319 an audience for money was tight. Jimmy wondered what it 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:01.400 would be like a guy he knew who told him 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:03.240 he could make twice as much as he got paid 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:07.440 for his last record on just one run. Buying that 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:11.000 Boston Whaler would be no problem and he could just 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:17.800 escape drift, Forget it all the grind and the unending 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:20.520 pressure of proving to the world that you have something 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:24.959 to say, something different, something worth hearing, and the mind 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:28.400 fuck of knowing that that same thing that makes you different, 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:31.920 so worthy of listening to, is the same thing that 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:35.320 makes it so hard for people to hear you. It 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:37.880 was enough to want to strip it all off, leave 0:10:37.920 --> 0:10:41.360 it lying on the beach, step out onto that smuggler's boat, 0:10:41.800 --> 0:11:12.880 and never pick up a guitar again. Jimmy Buffett was 0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:18.080 lost at sea, literally stranded in a tiny dinghy that 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:21.199 had been poorly nodded to a bigger boat, the boat 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:24.120 that the party had been on last night. Jimmy went 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:26.440 to sleep in the dinghy and woke up floating in 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:30.000 the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by nothing but 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:35.560 water and horizon in every direction above. The sun baked 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:39.160 down upon him, and there was nowhere to go. Which 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:43.000 way was home? Which way spelled death? Jimmy didn't know. 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:48.360 Then from far off, Jimmy heard it the buzz of 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:53.679 the cigarette boat's engine. Traffickers. Jimmy flagged them down, and 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:58.200 thankfully Jimmy knew them so incredibly they slowed when they 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:01.000 saw him, and, despite being in the middle of a run, 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:08.400 pointed Jimmy toward home. Jimmy had had a hell of 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:11.120 a run. In the four years since he arrived in 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:15.360 Key West. He released four full length albums, A White 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:18.880 Sports Code in a Pink Crustacean, Living and Dying in 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:22.680 Three to four Times, a one a and Havana dreaming. 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:27.560 He'd scored the excellent documentary Tarpin, filmed in Key West. 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:30.679 It's about Key West Flats Tarpin fishermen, many of them 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:34.119 as friends, and he provided the songs for the soundtrack 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:37.920 to a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges, Rancho Deluxe, 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:41.439 which was scripted by Jimmy's Key West buddy, the novelist 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:46.720 Tom mcguain. That six albums in four years plus touring, 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:50.280 if there was such a thing as island time, Jimmy 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:55.679 Buffett's version included hustle. It was that entrepreneurial instinct Jimmy 0:12:55.760 --> 0:12:59.120 learned back in Nashville, and prior to that from his 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:02.040 family upbringing, being the son of a son of a sailor. 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:05.640 As he said, no one was coming to save his career. 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:09.480 It was just him and he was close. If he 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:12.440 wanted to escape the Nashville grind, if he wanted to 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:15.079 escape the prospect of living a life in the straight 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:17.600 world with a nine to five, if he didn't want 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:19.679 to spend the rest of his days singing in bars 0:13:19.679 --> 0:13:23.920 for tips, hustling one nighters on college campuses, or worse, 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:27.280 propped up against the beach bar yammering on about what 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:31.880 could have been. Then something needed to change. Jimmy Buffett 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:38.120 needed to turn his hustle into record buyers. Back in 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:44.000 Key West, everything was changing. Bumfardo was missing the local 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:47.080 fire chief, the one who somehow could afford a Cadillac 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:51.280 on a fireman's salary, a lime green Cadillac, a car 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:54.040 that he paired with his fire engine red suits and 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:59.160 his rose colored sunglasses. Florida's Governor, Reuben aske You had 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:03.040 had enough of lacks attitude on drug trafficking and put 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:08.360 together a drug squad operation Counch. When state narcotics agents 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:11.120 swept through town in the fall of nineteen seventy five, 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.760 no one was surprised when Bumfardo got popped, along with 0:14:14.880 --> 0:14:19.280 nineteen others suspected drug dealers. Bum Fardo was convicted for 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:24.760 dealing coke and pot, but before his sentencing, he disappeared, vanished. 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:29.160 No one knew where he was. Some Key West residents 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:31.960 told themselves bum grabbed his go bag and split for 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:36.960 South America, but most believed something else. Bumfardo was shark 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:41.600 bait and gone. Maybe gone. Jimmy Buffett laughed it off, 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:45.640 wearing a wears Bumfardo shirt on stage until he was 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:48.560 pulled aside by a local in the know, and this 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:51.000 fellow quietly told Jimmy that if he himself didn't like 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:53.720 the idea of being chummed for bol Sharks, then he'd 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:59.920 be wise to never wear that shirt again. After Bum disappeared, 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:04.720 everything changed in Key West. With the drug dealers off 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:08.920 the docks, the city instituted a revitalization project in nineteen 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:12.880 seventy six, and downtown was cleaned up and a new 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:16.840 tourism marketing plan brought in college kids, gays, and even 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:21.040 vacationing families. There was now a strange air of overt 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:25.360 commercialism blanketing Jimmy Buffet's adopted hometown as he set out 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:30.560 to make his next record, Changes in Latitudes. Changes in 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:34.520 Attitudes was true to its title. Like Key West in 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:39.760 nineteen seventy seven, this record was about change. It was 0:15:39.840 --> 0:15:43.400 Jimmy's first to fully feature the Coral Reefer Band, the 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:46.120 group that was once a fictional group of musicians Jimmy 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:49.840 had conjured up slowly grew into an actual touring band, 0:15:50.440 --> 0:15:53.160 then a gaggle of musicians who accompanied Jimmy along with 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:56.560 other session players in Nashville and finally into a band 0:15:56.680 --> 0:16:01.680 in the truest sense. On Changes, the album, unlike Jimmy's 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:05.920 previous long Players, wasn't recorded in Nashville. It was made 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:11.560 in Florida in Miami at Criteria four sixty one Ocean Boulevard, 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:17.400 where Eric Clapton had recently found greatness. On Changes, Jimmy 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:21.960 collaborated with producer Norbert Putnam, whose own genius stroke was 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:25.200 hearing Jimmy Buffett for who he was not just a 0:16:25.240 --> 0:16:29.520 singer songwriter, not Jim Crochey or some flip flop Chris Christofferson. 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:34.840 He was something totally different. He was Jimmy Buffett, an 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:37.360 artist with a completely unique point of view on the world, 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:39.840 one that was heavily influenced by the end of the 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:44.160 world that he'd escaped to Key West. His lyrics reflected 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:48.040 that island escapism, so the album needed to sound like 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:52.800 island escapism. It needed to sound like Jimmy Buffett, which 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:54.400 is to say, it needed to sound like a dude 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:56.000 who just fell out of a hammock and hit his 0:16:56.080 --> 0:16:58.320 head on a tequila bottle on his way down before 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:01.360 shaking it off, grabbing his easy one and rolling a spliff, 0:17:02.880 --> 0:17:06.760 Norbert Putnam went to work throwing tropical sounding instrumentation all 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:10.120 over the recordings he Jimmy and the Coral Reefer Band 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:15.320 were putting down at Criteria congas, steel drums and overall 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:19.919 laid back feel to everything. And then Jimmy brought in 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:23.720 a new song and nothing would ever be the same again. 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:31.800 Margaritaville is a fictional place we all know. The sun 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:35.159 never stops shining, and the whaler's music plays softly in 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:39.880 the distance. Men and women, Married couples dance slowly, connected 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:43.240 in ways they haven't been in years. The beer is 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:46.440 ice cold and the cocktails are just sweet enough, and 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:49.800 nothing ever runs out. The food puts you taste buds 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:53.159 to work somehow. The cheeseburgers don't even make you fat. 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:56.119 The bartender is a poet and flirts just enough to 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:57.960 let you know you still got it going on, but 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:01.159 not enough to piss off your spouse. And there are 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:04.040 no hangovers, just bloody Mary's in a short walk to 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:10.720 the beach, where a rejuvenating dip and coral blue seawater awaits. Shoes, shirts, hell, 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:16.199 even shorts are all optional. What isn't optional, however, is 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:20.200 a relaxation. You feel like your best self in Margaritaville. 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:26.040 No boss, no commute, no kids, no pressure, no problems. 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:33.640 Except Margaritaville wasn't really this at all. Margaritaville was Jimmy Buffett, 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:37.600 mercilessly hungover after a gig in Texas, killing time in 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:40.680 a Mexican strip mall restaurant before a flight, trying to 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:44.200 drink away his headache with bottomless Margarita's while writing the 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:46.880 lyrics to a new song of his called Wealth. Why 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:54.080 not Margaritaville. That's where the song sprang from. The escapism 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:56.600 you hear in the storytelling of that song's lyrics, the 0:18:57.080 --> 0:19:00.480 half a fuck up culpability of the protagonists. Some people 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:02.440 say it's a woman to blame, but I know it's 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:07.560 my own damn fault. That's Jimmy Buffett's genius, pulling that 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:11.640 story so simple, yet so layered and so different from 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:15.359 its actual place of origin, and turning it into something else, 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:20.520 something so powerful. That was only part of Jimmy Buffett's superpower. 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:25.480 The other part was what Jimmy Buffett eventually did with 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:29.480 that song. Not only was it a hit, the signature 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:33.440 song off of changes Margueriteville rocketed him to a level 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:36.440 of fame that until then had eluded him. It was 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:40.159 the artistic spark that launched a commercial empire and the 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:51.000 level of escapism Jimmy Buffett never could have imagined. We'll 0:19:51.000 --> 0:20:02.760 be right back after this. We're We're where. One hit song, Margeritaville, 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:09.040 changed Jimmy Buffett's life. Released in nineteen seventy seven on 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:12.280 his seventh album, the song charted higher than any of 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:18.840 Jimmy's previous singles. Margaritaville, despite its hungover origins, nailed not 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:21.359 only what Jimmy Buffett was all about, but what Jimmy 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:26.040 Buffett had to offer a break and escape from the grind, 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:29.639 and it opened him up to a much larger audience. 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:33.760 Throughout the late seventies and early eighties, Jimmy shows began 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:36.679 to take on something akin to Grateful Dead concerts, but 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:41.480 without the darkness. Jimmy's fans weren't zonked out deadheads. They were, 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:44.760 as Jimmy's bassist at the time, the former Eagle, the 0:20:44.760 --> 0:20:50.840 Great Timothy B. Schmidt, coined them, parrotheads. Parrotheads are a 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:54.639 very specific type of rock and roll fan. First of all, 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:59.640 they're Jimmy Buffett fans, the second they're shameless dorks, and 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:02.800 that in the best possible way. There's no shame in 0:21:02.840 --> 0:21:05.640 wearing whatever you want in public, even if that means 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:07.960 a Hulu skirt and a gaudy Hawaiian shirt in the 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:11.879 middle of October. That's kind of the point. Jimmy Buffett 0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:14.600 shows are all about escaping the confines that prevent you 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:16.880 from wearing whatever the hell you want and having fun 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:19.400 on a work night in the middle of October. There's 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:22.640 nothing wrong with that, despite the fact that every bit 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:24.919 of fashion sense I have has led me to rebel 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:27.080 against this tribe for as long as I can remember. 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:31.240 But now with age, unless punk rock piss and vinegar 0:21:31.320 --> 0:21:34.720 coursing through my veins, I kind of admire it. It's 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:37.240 that hole so not cool. It's cool type of thing, 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:40.119 and in my mind, nothing is cooler than not caring 0:21:40.160 --> 0:21:42.639 what other people think, which, in a weird way, is 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:45.840 what your pediatrician or accountant or lawyer were doing back 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:47.960 in the nineties and two thousands when they were going 0:21:48.000 --> 0:21:50.919 to Jimmy Buffett concerts dressed like a coconut and drag 0:21:52.040 --> 0:21:55.720 and of course the parrot Heeads leader himself, Jimmy Buffett 0:21:55.760 --> 0:21:59.920 was also a shameless stork, despite his cool seventies must 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:02.880 dash and three inch in scene cut off jeans from 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:05.679 back in the day. Jimmy was and always had been 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:10.000 a shameless dork on stage. At least he was a 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:13.359 ham My sense is that's who he was off stage 0:22:13.400 --> 0:22:15.920 as well, And again I mean that in the best way. 0:22:16.560 --> 0:22:18.439 Ask my wife who the biggest dork in the houses 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:20.480 and she'll tell you it's me. And it's because I'm 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:22.879 most comfortable at home for you to act and be 0:22:23.040 --> 0:22:25.320 however I want around my loved ones who accept me 0:22:25.400 --> 0:22:28.439 for who I am. I believe Jimmy Buffett acted this 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:31.320 way too, except he did it on stage every night 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:34.840 in front of sixty thousand people, which means Jimmy Buffett 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:38.920 was totally authentic. And that tracks because it's the authentic 0:22:38.960 --> 0:22:42.679 creators and artists who developed the most devoted fans, Just 0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:45.800 as Jimmy Buffett did with his Parrot Heeads. They took 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:48.640 their cue from Jimmy not only in fashion and they 0:22:48.680 --> 0:22:51.719 exaggerated that whole Key West casual thing to the nth degree, 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:57.520 but also in attitude. They bought concert tickets and records 0:22:57.520 --> 0:23:00.159 in T shirts, and when the money started flowing for 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:03.800 real in the mid eighties, Jimmy recalled those Nashville days 0:23:03.800 --> 0:23:06.840 and the lesson he learned about control. He invested his 0:23:06.960 --> 0:23:11.840 hard earned capital into himself first. Before even the success 0:23:11.840 --> 0:23:15.040 of Margaritaville, Jimmy realized he was getting hosed on merch 0:23:15.119 --> 0:23:18.440 sales by bootleggers, so he opened his own Beach Them 0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:21.600 Merchandise T shirt shop in Key West in the late seventies. 0:23:22.680 --> 0:23:25.199 In nineteen eighty five, he took a big swing and 0:23:25.280 --> 0:23:29.160 expanded the T shirt shop into the Margeritaville store and cafe. 0:23:29.720 --> 0:23:32.680 Now he was serving food and drinks to fans and tourists. 0:23:33.400 --> 0:23:36.320 In nineteen eighty nine, Jimmy launched his own record label, 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:40.880 Margeriteville Records, as an imprint of MCA, seizing not only 0:23:40.920 --> 0:23:43.600 creative control of his own music, but a bigger piece 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:46.080 of the pie as well. This would last for ten 0:23:46.160 --> 0:23:50.240 years until in nineteen ninety nine, Jimmy started Mailboat Records 0:23:50.280 --> 0:23:54.000 to release his music independently. Mail Boat went on to 0:23:54.040 --> 0:23:58.120 release records by artist Jimmy l liked, Boz Skaggs, Sammy Hagard, 0:23:58.160 --> 0:24:02.280 def Leppard Walter Becker in More. In the year two thousand, 0:24:02.520 --> 0:24:06.040 Jimmy opened to Margaritaville restaurant in Casino in Las Vegas. 0:24:06.560 --> 0:24:09.600 In two thousand and five, he launched Margaritaville Tequila. He 0:24:09.720 --> 0:24:13.200 followed that with a hotel in Pensacola, Flora in twenty eleven, 0:24:13.280 --> 0:24:16.639 and a resort in Orlando in twenty eighteen. And along 0:24:16.680 --> 0:24:19.640 the way he launched everything from the wildly successful land 0:24:19.640 --> 0:24:23.200 Shark Lagger to beach chairs, flip flops, frozen foods in 0:24:23.320 --> 0:24:28.680 CBD gummies. In nineteen ninety six, this billion dollar empire 0:24:28.720 --> 0:24:31.600 in the making was doing more than keeping this son 0:24:31.640 --> 0:24:37.080 of a son of a sailor afloat. That January, Jimmy 0:24:37.160 --> 0:24:40.679 was in the air piloting his new plane, nineteen fifty 0:24:40.680 --> 0:24:46.280 four Grummin HU sixteen Albatross seaplane. His passengers were none 0:24:46.280 --> 0:24:49.680 other than U two's Bono, Bono's wife and their two 0:24:49.720 --> 0:24:53.879 young children, aged six and three. Jimmy was held ban 0:24:54.040 --> 0:24:57.920 on landing in this particular area of Jamaica because he 0:24:58.000 --> 0:25:01.640 knew of a little place with the perfect chicken, jerk 0:25:01.760 --> 0:25:06.040 chicken that would blow Bono's mind. Jimmy brought the plane 0:25:06.080 --> 0:25:09.840 down with ease, and the only problem was Jimmy didn't 0:25:09.880 --> 0:25:13.240 have permission to land. As Bono and his wife and 0:25:13.320 --> 0:25:16.800 children began to make their exit, that's when it happened. 0:25:18.400 --> 0:25:22.560 Bullets started flying. Bono, his kids, his wife. They dove 0:25:22.680 --> 0:25:25.800 back into the plane. One bullet cracked the plane's windshield, 0:25:26.119 --> 0:25:29.480 six others peppered the rest of the plane. Jamaican authorities 0:25:29.520 --> 0:25:32.439 descended upon the plane, looking for answers. Who were these 0:25:32.480 --> 0:25:34.399 drug traffickers and what made them think they could just 0:25:34.480 --> 0:25:38.679 land their plane unannounced at their small airport And there 0:25:38.720 --> 0:25:42.200 were no drug traffickers, of course, Jimmy Buffett had sworn 0:25:42.200 --> 0:25:45.679 off that career path years ago. There was only confusion. 0:25:46.760 --> 0:25:51.000 Bono was pissed, he his wife, his children. Once things 0:25:51.040 --> 0:25:54.640 were cleared up with authorities, they split from Miami, leaving 0:25:54.680 --> 0:25:58.560 Jimmy Buffett and his jerk chicken behind. How it all 0:25:58.600 --> 0:26:02.320 got to this point was anyone's guess. A pissed off 0:26:02.359 --> 0:26:06.359 pop star, violent Jamaican authorities firing bullets at his plane. 0:26:07.000 --> 0:26:10.920 There wasn't Jimmy's first escape from death's clutches. He'd survived 0:26:10.920 --> 0:26:13.480 the plane crash in Nantucket a couple of years prior. 0:26:14.440 --> 0:26:17.280 But where was all this going? And what was the point? 0:26:18.160 --> 0:26:22.840 More money for more toys, more business endeavors, more adventure, 0:26:24.080 --> 0:26:27.200 where's the fund? And escape if it ends up killing it? 0:26:28.119 --> 0:26:34.280 Jimmy Buffett needed his own change in latitude and attitude. 0:26:52.960 --> 0:26:56.400 Throughout the nineteen eighties and nineties, Jimmy Buffett steadily built 0:26:56.400 --> 0:26:59.040 a commercial empire that was on the verge of eclipsing 0:26:59.080 --> 0:27:02.240 his success as a musician. Not that he wasn't a 0:27:02.280 --> 0:27:06.480 success musically. He most certainly was. He sold records, he 0:27:06.560 --> 0:27:10.360 packed stadiums with fans, but he wasn't atop the zeitgeist, 0:27:10.359 --> 0:27:14.680 and he never really was sure. Margaritaville was a smash, 0:27:14.760 --> 0:27:18.199 but by the early two thousands that was decades in 0:27:18.240 --> 0:27:20.919 the rear view. And yes, Jimmy had his name and 0:27:21.000 --> 0:27:24.000 face on all manner of merchandise, but that was all 0:27:24.080 --> 0:27:28.879 fans service. Weird as it seems, even with all the success, 0:27:29.640 --> 0:27:32.520 Jimmy Buffett in two thousand and three was kind of 0:27:32.520 --> 0:27:36.240 a niche product. You know, it wasn't a niche product. 0:27:36.280 --> 0:27:41.000 In two thousand and three country music, the genre was 0:27:41.040 --> 0:27:44.080 doing hundreds of millions in concert tickets, in record sales, 0:27:44.400 --> 0:27:47.800 and resurging with youth and American culture beyond the Bible Belt, 0:27:48.760 --> 0:27:52.000 country radio stations were enjoying more success than they ever 0:27:52.080 --> 0:27:55.520 had in non traditional markets. Alan Jackson was one of 0:27:55.560 --> 0:27:59.000 country's biggest stars, so when he asked the question in 0:27:59.040 --> 0:28:02.480