Jimmy Buffett: A Pirate Dies at 76

Buffett in a pot-leaf-motif jacket with Jenny Lewis at a 2016 concert in Nashville.

UPDATE: Paul McCartney has posted about playing bass on Buffett's song, "My Gummy Just Kicked In," which was inspired by a phrase uttered by McCartney's wife Nancy. "Then the 60s came alive and she yelled 'Let's Rock!'"

Jimmy Buffett's Parrothead fans are more known for enjoying their margaritas than their marijuana, but Buffett, who died this week at 76, was a Pothead too who named his son for Bob Marley and launched a marijuana brand named "Coral Reefer" after his band in 2018.

In his autobiography A Pirate Looks at 50, Buffett describes himself as a hippie and tells tales of hanging out in various parts of the world (Key West, Cuba, Jamaica, Costa Rica, etc.) with drug smugglers and other interesting characters. 

In the beginning of the book where he writes about his traveling toolkit, he discusses backpacks and bags:

There has been a lot written about the good and the bad effects of the revolutionary sixties, but no one ever mentions the destigmatization of men carrying shoulder bags. Along with the emotional baggage of being a flower child, you had to carry around to the love-ins a lot of shit that just wouldn't fit in a wallet or the pockets of bell-bottom jeans. There were necessary items for the hip and infamous—rolling papers, pot, Richard Farina and Richard Brautigan paperbacks, bags of granola, extra headbands, bandanas, hash pipe, patchouli oil, fruit, and that damn Swiss Army knife. My bag of choice was a woven straw Guatemalan original that I bought at the local head shop in New Orleans. It definitely was cool, and served me well right up until the day I had some kind of a short circuit in my thinking patterns and decided that I had to get married and settle down. 

In his book, Buffett recounts that when he went to France in 1974 to write a soundtrack for a film about tarpon fishing, it was "with an incredible sense of wonder, two hundred bucks, and a Glad bag full of Colombian pot that I first set foot on French soil." 

Speaking of his song "Growing Older But Not Up," Buffett wrote, "I have carried my childish ways with me from altar boy to hippie, from hippie to husband and father. More than the music and the politics of the sixties, I think what made Woodstock the legendary event that it became was the fact that a whole generation was able to act like kids again. That's what I think happens at our [Coral Reefer Band] shows as well. They've always been known as  opportunities to escape for the evening and just has fun, but you should see what happens when it rains." 

Lamenting the change he saw take place in Key West, "when the product went from pot to cocaine and Ronald Reagan became president," he wrote:

Gone were the good old fun days of pot-smuggling hippies and college students, who bought and sold reefer from Rastas in the hills of Jamaica and spent their idle days between runs on the beach drinking Red Stripes, listening to "Catch a Fire," and having water-balloon fights. What followed was an invasion of greedy, coke-snorting, gun-toting macho cowboys from the barrios of Barranquilla and Bogota, where life was cheap and money was the only thing that mattered.

According to Rolling Stone, Buffett intended his signature song "Margaritaville" to be, "in part, a send-up of tourists who flocked to Key West, a subject he had previously touched on 'Migration' off A1A. There was even an extra verse, left off the record, about 'Old men in tank tops/Cruisin’ the gift shops.'" His cautionary tale for women, "Fins," about sharks circling women in bars, has the line, "Boys keep her high as the months go by." 

In the 2019 movie "The Beach Bum," Buffett "portrayed an exaggerated version of himself, helping Matthew McConaughey’s stoner poet Moondog (an exaggerated version of Richard Brautigan) navigate an exaggerated version of Key West." Ganga is mentioned in the song "Moonfog" (above) that Buffett wrote with Snoop Dogg for the film. 

A coupla Parrotheads

Around 1985, Timothy B. Schmit, then the bassist for the Coral Reefer Band, coined the term "Parrothead" for their fans. “People had already started wearing Hawaiian shirts to our shows, but we looked out at this Cincinnati crowd and they were glaringly brilliant to the point where it got our attention immediately,” Buffett said. 'I said ‘Look at that!’ Then Schmit says to me, ‘They look like Deadheads in tropical suits. They’re like Parrotheads!’”

Buffett, whose longtime backup singer (aka "Reeferette") Tina Gullickson is a hemp entrepreneur, tells a tale in his book about knowing he and his family would be safe climbing down a cliff in Jamaica when they heard the strains of a Bob Marley song wafting in the wind, explaining: 

Robert Nesta Marley occupies a big place in the Buffett family. Sarah Delaney [his daughter] grew up listening to my Marley tapes and CD's and developed an immediate affinity for the music. I used to point at the picture of Marley on the Legend CD and ask, "Who is that?" 

"Bob," she would reply. It was her first word. Cameron Marley Buffett [his son] had been named after Bob, and the two of them are probably in a very low percentage of white children under the age of five who have been to the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston. 

This live version of his hit song about a pot smuggler, "A Pirate Looks at 40," ends with a bit of Marley's Redemption Song, with a steel drum accompaniment: 

Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom
All I ever had
Redemption Songs

Among many others, including Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Bob Seger, Sheryl Crow, and Jenny Lewis, President Biden tweeted in honor of Jimmy today. Biden wrote, "A poet of paradise, Jimmy Buffett was an American music icon who inspired generations to step back and find the joy in life and in one another."

RIP and thanks for the redemption songs, Jimmy. 

UPDATE: Delaney Buffett penned a tribute to her Dad posted on Instagram, saying, "Yes, he loved his weed and his wine, but the truth is, most of the time, he was just high on life." She ended saying, "I will love you forever, and I will always keep the party going (responsibly, of course).”