The Timeless Themes of Jimmy Buffett
As a kid growing up in south Texas, my parents’ car radios were usually set to two competing stations, KILT and KIKK, which, in the 1970s and early 80s, played predominantly country music. These were the stations you turned the dial to so you could listen to people like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Linda Ronstadt, Charlie Rich, Charley Pride, Johnny Paycheck, and even the Eagles in their early days. These stations were also pretty progressive for the era, and in addition to playing Outlaw Country, they would play music by artists that was not easily pigeonholed into a certain genre and seemed to be the alternative to the already-alternative music coming from the outlaws.
One of those artists was Jimmy Buffett. It’s difficult today for people to fathom that there was a time when Buffett and his music were not the multi-million-dollar conglomerate they are today, with sold-out concert dates, “Parrotheads,” and Margaritaville resorts and restaurants all over the U.S. and Caribbean. His early efforts did not follow the expected Country formula, and they were hard for the Nashville establishment to categorize. He was so unlucky in those days that his first album in 1970 on the Barnaby label flopped, and the master tapes for what was to be his second album in 1971 were lost. After this period of struggle, he picked up and moved to Key West, where his fortunes would gradually begin to improve.
In 1973, he released A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean, which contained the hits He Went to Paris, Why Don’t We Get Drunk? and Grapefruit — Juicy Fruit. He Went to Paris foreshadowed a new genre of song that was part music-part memoir, in which Buffett would introspectively explore the nature of life, question our basic priorities, and seek to find what is really, truly important; almost a quest for meaning. The subjects discussed in He Went to Paris would reappear in future songs.
He followed with 1974’s Living and Dying in 3/4 Time. He raised the bar with the songs Pencil Thin Mustache, Come Monday, Ringling Ringling, Livingston’s Gone to Texas, and West Nashville Grand Ballroom Gown. But although it contained arguably a greater number of popular tunes, the album didn’t fare as well as Crustacean. This is one of the mysteries of Buffett’s music, that at the time it was released, it wasn’t as popular as it is today, some four decades later.
In late 1974, he released A1A, titled after the Florida highway that runs along the Atlantic coast from Fernandina Beach near Jacksonville all the way down to Key West. He continued to develop the themes of memoir and looking back on life-choices, with songs like Stories We Could Tell, Nautical Wheelers, and the poignant Tin Cup Chalice and A Pirate Looks at Forty.
Then in 1977 came his breakthrough. He released Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes, an album he recorded in Miami, and which contained the title track, Biloxi, Wonder Why We Ever Go Home, and the monster hit Margaritaville. Margaritaville went to number 1 on numerous charts and established Buffett as a household name. Margaritaville humorously explored idleness in a beach town, lost love, and one way to deal with the latter. The other songs continued to explore the nature of life, relationships, and coming to grips with the curve balls life often throws at us.
After Changes, Buffett continued his new-found mainstream success, unleashing another group of well-known hits, with Son of a Son of a Sailor in 1978. The album included the title track and the hits Cowboy in the Jungle and Cheeseburger in Paradise.
In 1979 he released Volcano, which included the title track, Fins, and Boat Drinks.
I was but a kid when all this was transpiring in the 1970s, and other than Margaritaville (which seemed to be played incessantly without letup on the radio for years) and Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes, I was not familiar with the rest of his repertoire. It actually got to the point that I was so sick of hearing Margaritaville that as soon as I heard that familiar 5-note opening riff, I would groan and ask my dad to change the station.
Later in college, circa 1987, I had two roommates who loved Buffett and would play his greatest hits Songs You Know by Heart CD — released in 1985 -so much, I actually hid it from them at one point. At the time I thought they had so saturated my brain with his music that it had ruined any chance that I would ever listen to him again in the future. And that feeling held firm for a long time; I spent my early 20s and much of my 30s riding the alternative and grunge wave started by bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, and further refined and developed in the 90s and 00s by Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters. Like the protagonist in He Went to Paris, I was too busy being impressive, young and aggressive, and saving the world on my own to pay much heed to the reflective and introspective questions Jimmy Buffett was asking in his songs.
I can’t pinpoint the moment that it changed for me. It might have been happenstance. But somewhere I found one of his tunes on the radio one day, and for the first time I heard the lyrics instead of the music. I don’t even remember which song it was, it just resonated with whatever I had going on in my life at that time. By then, I had been married for over a decade and had two young sons, and being a father was the most significant challenge I had yet faced. I was starting to question the way I had been thinking and living to that point and reexamining what was really important to me — just like so many of the characters in Jimmy Buffett’s songs.
In He Went to Paris, Buffett chronicles the life of an 86 year-old friend who has lived a life full of experiences and tragic loss. One gets the impression the protagonist suffered from wanderlust even as a young man, having moved to Paris already in search of answers to questions that troubled him. We learn the young man is full of ambition, young, aggressive and impressive, almost “saving the world on his own,” like the young Ernest Hemingway living as an expat in Paris during the 20s. But the young man becomes entranced with the French summers and culinary delights, and ends up staying there for nearly half a decade. He then moves to England where he meets, falls in love with, and marries an English woman. The couple have a son together, and for the first time, the young man is content, and even locks his questions and answers away in “his attic one day.” He then lives a peaceful life in the British countryside for about twenty years before it all gets turned upside down by World War Two, during which he loses his beloved wife in a bombing and his only son in battle. He even loses an eye in some unnamed calamity. These tragedies prompt him to “reopen the attic” and again ponder the questions he now realizes he never found answers to; the deep questions he took with him to Paris when he was a young man. It’s all too much for him to bear, so he leaves England forever, hopping a freighter and escaping the land of so much joy and anguish. In the end, Buffett finds the man at age 86, living in the islands, where he spends his days fishing and drinking green label beer. He tells the singer as he looks back over his life, it was full of magic and tragic events, but overall, he has had a good life. As the song ends, the listener cannot help but ask his own troubling questions, including, “Could I have that kind of positive attitude if I suffered anything like that?” Such questions as the protagonist struggles with are common, especially in our forties, when we inevitably begin to look back to take measure in mid-life.
In Tin Cup Chalice, the singer longs to get back to the islands: “I want to go back to the island, where the shrimp boats tie up to the pilin’. Give me oysters and beer for dinner every day of the year, and I’ll feel fine, I’ll feel fine.” Clearly, he has been there before, but isn’t there now. Those experiences have made a lasting impact. Wherever he is right now, he would rather be there by the sea “with a tin cup for a chalice, fill it up with good red wine, and I’m-a chewin’ on a honeysuckle vine.” He can almost see the sail boats and feel the salty air, that when it sticks to your skin, “makes you feel fine.” He resolves to go back right then and there and even ends the song by concluding, “I want to go back down and die beside the sea there.” Tin Cup Chalice holds meaning for anyone who has spent extended time near an unadulterated beach or in the Caribbean, where the beach air, the warm sands and clear waters, and the relaxed vibe can quickly and permanently get into your soul; a place you never want to leave.
Similarly, in the overlooked Biloxi off the Changes in Latitudes album, he explores a sea-side town and how the simple delights of such a place can create lifelong memories: “Down around Biloxi, pretty girls are dancin’ in the sea; they all look like sisters in the ocean. The boy will fill his pail with salty water, and the storms will blow from off towards New Orleans.” One can visualize all of this, especially those from the Gulf Coast, where storms and hurricanes are a yearly occurrence. I remember being the boy in the song, at Galveston or Surfside beach, digging in the sand and making sand castles in the salty water: “The air is filled with vapors from the sea; the boy will dig a pool beside the ocean. He sees creatures from his dream underwater. And the sun will set from off towards New Orleans.” Reminiscent of Tin Cup Chalice before it, Biloxi could be the stand in for Corpus Christi, Galveston, Gulfport, Pascagoula, Gulf Shores, Pensacola, Fort Walton Beach, Destin or any number of Gulf Coast towns, and the song brings back memories of when we were all younger and more innocent and reminds us that life can be simple if we just decide to make it so.
Perhaps the most wistful song on Changes in Latitudes — indeed, maybe his most mournful song ever — is Wonder Why We Ever Go Home. “Years grow shorter, not longer, the more you've been on your own. Feelings for moving grow stronger, so you wonder why you ever go home.” Buffett recognizes what we all eventually come to realize, that as we get older, our time here grows shorter and time itself seems to go by much quicker. “People are movin' so quickly. Humor's in need of repair. Same occupations and same obligations, they've really got nothing to share, like drivin' around with no spare.” The rat-race mixed with our own ambitions and dreams give us little time for worthwhile pursuits; indeed, if we are not careful, we will make little time for those we care about most, including our parents whom we can neglect by not making time to “go home.” “River gets deeper not shallow, the further you move down the stream. Wonderin’ if I can keep her as I race to catch up with my dreams. How they shine and glitter and gleam!” If life is the proverbial river, then as long as we are close to the bank in the shallow water, we can change our minds and go back with little effort or negative effect. But as we continue on out into the middle and down the river into deeper waters, change becomes harder as we are carried along in much stronger current where it becomes more dangerous to alter our chosen course, even when we want to. And sometimes in life we are forced to make hard choices between dreams and whom we love. If we are extremely lucky and blessed, we get to have both of them.
But perhaps my favorite introspective and self-analytical Buffett song that captures the mindset of looking back over your life to see how and why you arrived where you are is Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes. It’s the perfect bookend to the questions asked by the man in He Went to Paris: “I took off for a weekend last month just to try and recall the whole year. All of the faces and all of the places, wonderin’ where they all disappeared. I didn’t ponder the question too long; I was hungry and went out for a bite. Ran into a chum with a bottle of rum, and we wound up drinkin’ all night.” Like the man in He Went to Paris, the singer has some questions to ponder, but he makes little effort before heading to dinner, where he runs into a buddy and ends up drinking the night away. Instead of locking his questions away in an attic, this time the singer puts them away for the moment to hang out with a friend who becomes a most welcome and convenient escape from the more serious matters on his mind. “It's those changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes, nothing remains quite the same. With all of our running and all of our cunning, if we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane.” We are all running around so much and going through constant change, engaging in our daily machinations, trying to get ahead, that if we don’t stop for a minute to relax and have some laughs with good friends then we definitely will go crazy. “If it suddenly ended tomorrow, I could somehow adjust to the fall. Good times and riches and son of a bitches, I’ve seen more than I can recall.” If all of the running ended tomorrow, he wouldn’t be sad; he would adjust. Because all of his experiences — like the man in He Went to Paris — have given him a full life and prepared him for anything that might come his way. “Yesterday’s over my shoulder, so I can’t look back for too long. There’s just too much to see waiting in front of me, and I know that I just can’t go wrong with these changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes, nothing remains quite the same. Through all of the islands and all of the highlands, if we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.”
And that’s really it in a nutshell; Buffett’s themes of living life to its fullest, stopping once in a while to reflect, asking the big questions of life, and trying not to take ourselves too seriously, are timeless and repeated with each generation. One of the constants in his songs and in life is change: changes in relationships, friends, jobs, addresses, and eventually our priorities. But to Jimmy Buffett, that’s not something we should fear; it is something we should expect and embrace head on. And that makes his music and its themes timeless and relevant for all generations.
Glen Hines is the author of six books, including the recently published Welcome to the Machine, all available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. His writing has also been featured in Sports Illustrated, The Cauldron, Task & Purpose, the Human Development Project, and elsewhere.
