When Jimmy Buffett started a rumour about himself he’d always regret: “Get a life”
Jimmy Buffett is one of those unique artistic voices with a loyal fanbase who adore everything he’s ever put out, and he started this by releasing plenty of great music and putting on fun shows.
People would often turn up to his gigs wearing amazing Hawaiian shirts, drinking margaritas and ready to enjoy some excellent music, and this continued until the day he died, when he left behind a musical legacy that was celebrated by his contemporaries.
There are very few artists who manage to instil such a universal feeling of joy into those who listen to them, but Buffett managed exactly that. Keep The Party Going: A Tribute to Jimmy Buffett was a tribute concert put on by other musicians to celebrate his life and work after he passed, where clips surfaced of great musicians such as Paul McCartney dancing on stage and singing along to his classic ‘Margaritaville’, and it feels like such a fitting way for people to celebrate the life of such a great artist.
If you speak to Buffett fans, there will no doubt be plenty of different opinions about what his greatest song is; however, his biggest is the classic ‘Margaritaville’. No doubt the musician will always have been proud of this song and its global impact, but there was one aspect of it that always frustrated him, and it was because of a rumour that he started himself.
The rumour was that Buffett said he wasn’t ever planning on recording and releasing the song himself. He said on an appearance on CMT Crossroads in 2009 that the track was originally meant for the ‘King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’, Elvis Presley, and as the show went on, it became evident that Buffett was joking, but you’d be surprised how many fans believed him.
“I’ll confess that he had me going for a moment,” said Paul Leslie, who was at the taping of the show. “Who knew?… It felt abundantly clear that it was all a joke when John Driskell Hopkins, the bass player for the Zac Brown Band, put on Elvis aviator shades and did his best Elvis vocal.”
Buffett wasn’t a stranger to making up complicated stories; he famously had a side job writing short stories, releasing books such as The Heat Wave Chronicles, Margarita Madness and Son of a Son of a Sailor. However, he grew frustrated with the Elvis Presley story, wishing that people would stop taking the rumour he had started so seriously. “On some days, I want to go to [the fans] and [say], ‘Get a life’, you know?”, said Buffett when he was doing a 60 Minutes interview. “It’s just made up, you know?”
He certainly isn’t the only musician to start a rumour about themselves, and he won’t be the last, but let his story be a warning to any other artists interested in creating a narrative around a song. While it might have seemed like a fun idea at the time, Buffett had to learn the hard way that sometimes, the notion that there is no such thing as bad press isn’t always true.
