From News.com.au: “Jimmy Buffett hopes to not fall off stage and stay away from sharks on his return gig to Australia”
Famed American singer Jimmy Buffett hopes to share a margarita with the Sydney trauma doctor who “probably saved my life” when he returns to Australia to perform at Bluesfest on Friday April 14th.
The Margaritaville star walked off the stage towards the end of his Hordern Pavilion concert on Australia Day in 2011 — at the tailend of his first Australian tour in more than two decades — and sustained a head injury.
St Vincent’s Hospital head of emergency Professor Gordian Fulde was enjoying the concert from the front row and leapt over the barricades to treat the performer.
Buffett hopes the doctor will join the rest of his legion of Parrothead fans at his one-off concert at the Byron Bay festival on Friday.
“Hopefully I am going to get him up to Byron. That fall off the stage is a memory burned into whatever part of my brain I fell on,” Buffett said ahead of his Australian visit.
“I remember coming to with Gordian over me and telling me I had fallen but to stay with him and keep looking him in the eye.
“He was in the front row … who else gets the head of trauma surgery on Australia Day sitting in their front row? “I am sure they probably saved my life.”
As the news of his fall went viral, Buffett said he startled the fellow patients and staff in the hospital’s intensive care when he guffawed at the first text he received from his close friend, world champion surfer Kelly Slater.
“Kelly sent me a text saying ‘Did you make it?’ I just started laughing and the people in intensive care thought I was crazy or they had given me the good medicine.”
Buffett’s next spin-off from his successful “lifestyle” brand is a retirement village in Florida.
“I’m already thinking of the street names,” he said. “This thing has gone so viral now the challenge is to deliver to the standards we set for it to be the best place to spend your life.”
