A Pirate Looks at Heaven

So Jimmy Buffett’s dead?

Man, that’s hitting a Bunch of Boomers where we live…or maybe just where we want to live, which is somewhere on a beach, sipping boat drinks, wearing flip flops and shorts and our biggest worry is whether our blender can stand up to all the wear and tear we plan to put it through before dinner.

I’m not sure when I first heard Jimmy’s Buffett’s music, but 1977 sounds about right because that’s the year Margaritaville became a hit and some friends drug me along to one of his concerts in Sacramento, California.

As you might recall if you lived there, some city-planning genius decided to turn Sacramento’s K Street from a street with cars into a pedestrian shopping mall which didn’t go over all that hot with pedestrian shoppers, but was much appreciated by the homeless people who immediately took up residence and started using the fountains for urinals and that night Jimmy said any city that built a mall for its bums was alright with him.

After that concert I dug into Jimmy’s back catalogue and for the next several years Jimmy Buffett was the soundtrack to my life even though it was an eight-track experience with annoying track changes in the middle of songs which I still played at high volume in my red BMW 2002 and I played so much of his music that friends would say, “Jesus, don’t you have anything besides Jimmy Buffett?”

A question that generally made me respond with some version of: “Get the fuck out my car.”

As you might have already noticed, Kansas City doesn’t have an ocean

So in 1981 I moved to Kansas City which, before I moved there, I assumed was flat and had dirt streets mainly populated by cows which is only fair because when people in KC found out I was from California they asked if I surfed, which requires a pretty good running start when you live in Sacramento.

Then I heard Jimmy was coming to KC to do a concert and went to the Star’s entertainment department back when newspapers employed enough people to divide them into departments and asked if I could do the Jimmy Buffett pre-concert interview.

Nobody cared so I did.

Mostly I was trying to avoid being Chris Farley interviewing Paul McCartney and if you haven’t seen that SNL sketch you really need to right now this minute and ignore the Spanish subtitles because I couldn’t find one without them, but it’s the epitome of a star-struck fan interviewing his hero and here it is:

It’s the most honest celebrity interview ever conducted because that’s exactly how most of us feel when we meet one and I forget what celebrity said it, but he didn’t think anyone acted normal around celebrities including other celebrities. I’ve been behind the scenes at the Big Slick Celebrity Softball Game held at Kauffman Stadium and I think that’s right: fame is so insidious it even makes famous people act goofy.

(I also think Paul gets bonus point for keeping a straight face when Chris wants to know if the rumors of him being dead were a hoax.)

The only question I remember asking Jimmy Buffett was about the changes in lifestyle that went from Peanut Butter Conspiracy (a song about being broke and shoplifting food) to Gypsies in the Palace (a song about the irresponsible people who house-sit your mansion when you go on tour) and as I recall, Jimmy said he basically wrote songs about whatever he was experiencing at the time.

Which is what my pre-concert article was about: the music of a guy who was a few years older than me and writing songs about what I would eventually experience like being on my own and poor enough to shoplift for food and driving old pick-ups and monster hangovers and eventually starting a family and having to grow up.

The Concert

I knew the promoter working Jimmy’s concert and he asked if I wanted to come to that day’s sound check so I said you bet and brought along my article clipped out of the paper and gave it to Jimmy and said I’m the guy who interviewed you and here’s what I wrote and refrained from asking, “Remember when you wrote Margaritaville?” even though the Chris Farley in me really wanted to.

So we’re mid-concert when Jimmy stops the show and asks if Lee Judge is in the audience and if I am he’s sending someone out to bring me backstage.

If you can get a rock star to single you out for special treatment during a show I’d highly recommend it, although there was always a chance Jimmy hated what I wrote and was bringing me backstage so he could kick me in the nuts personally.

But…

Turned out Jimmy liked what I wrote and invited me to hang out in his dressing room back stage while he greeted post-concert visitors and mostly I remember an assistant coming in and saying this next couple are so-and-so’s parent named “Bob” and “Alberta” so when they came in the room Jimmy could say, “Hey, Bob! And look at you, Alberta!”

Which is a neat trick because it made it seem like Jimmy actually remembered Bob and What’s-Her-Name and I could really use one of those Name-Remembering-Assistants because I just got asked “What’s your paternal grandmother’s first name?” as a security question by my bank and I had no clue so I called my mom and she said, “Henrietta. No, wait…it’s Bertha” which turned out to be wrong and got my bank account locked, so thanks a lot mom.

Even though you’re 98 I’m going to have to let you go as my personal assistant and hire some kid as an intern even though he’s already done six internships that haven’t led to a job and this seventh internship won’t either.

Anyway…

As we walked out Jimmy was carrying a big jar of chocolate chip cookies some fan had made him and he looked at me and said: “In the old days, this would have been filled with weed.”

The end of the story is Jimmy gave me a number to call if I was ever in Key West so I made sure that happened and was supposed to go to a party at his house, but Key West got hit by a tropical storm that night so the party was cancelled and that’s as close as ever I got to partying with Jimmy Buffett unless you count attending his concerts and most Jimmy Buffett fans do and should.

Your parents lied; you can’t be whatever you want to be

So here’s the deal on Life: well-meaning parents and teachers who haven’t yet had the enthusiasm beaten out of them will tell kids they can be “anything they want to be” which sounds nice, but let’s face it, is bullshit.

• If you’re 5’9” and want to play in the NBA, you better have a hell of an outside shot.

• If you want to be in the Big Leagues and can’t get around on a 98-MPH fastball, think “equipment manager.”

• If you can’t carry a tune in a bucket and still want to be in the music business, familiarize yourself with the term “roadie.”

As Chris Rock once said after an event at his child’s school, he saw about three kids who could be anything they wanted to be and the rest of them better pay attention in shop class. Turns out, somebody’s going to be tax accountants or rotate tires or ask if you want fries with that and most of us don’t get to be exactly what we want to be.

After Jimmy died a friend remarked that he didn’t have one of the Top 100 Voices of All-Time (I said that probably made him even more popular because try to sing along with Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and see how far you get) but she added, I bet if you asked what were the Top 100 Concerts of All-Time, Jimmy Buffett would be on the list.

Couldn’t agree more.

I’m well aware celebrity lives aren’t always what we imagine them to be, but it at least seemed like Jimmy Buffett was living the life he wanted to: making music with friends and sailing boats and flying his own plane and being the Life of the Party and mainly having fun, which meant while it wasn’t likely, it was at least possible to be anything you wanted to be and to find out Jimmy Buffett’s still not out there doing all that makes Life a little more boring for the rest of us.

And I never got to ask Jimmy if he remembered when he wrote Margaritaville.

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