Posted: February 25, 2006 7:45 pm
by Harbour Shark
I think this is the entire interview:
"High Times" article (December 1976 Issue)
By: Bob Anderson
A Journalism graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi, Jimmy Buffett decided not to be a police reporter, but to go to Nashville and sing about the things police reporters write about with a slightly different slant, of course. But he didn't take to Nashville and vice versa, so he drifted down to Florida where he knocked around with Jerry Jeff Walker, who showed him that it was possible to be a no-account drifter and a successful artist simultaneously. So after seeing all that Florida and the seas to the south had to offer, Jimmy settled in Key West.
Once Buffett successfully retired in Florida, he found that he could go back to Nashville where he recorded his first[sic] album, "A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean" for ABC. His music has its roots in Mobile and Nashville and the Southern tradition, but influences flow in from everywhere, from the copacetic calm of drifting in the Gulf Stream, to the frantic rush of chemical cut- ups in back-water towns. With each new album, "Living and Dying in 3/4 Time," "A1A" (named for the highway that links the Florida Keys) and "Havana Daydreaming[sic]" Buffett has tapped new sources of musical and lyrical inspiration - every outlaw has a good story, and Buffett has an eye and an ear for them.
Outlaw artists stick together and so Jimmy has been breaking into film lately, collaborating with Montanan Tom McGuane, who produced romantic but existential novels: Ninety-two in the Shade, set in Key West, and subsequent blood and guts pieces with such nostalgic titles as Rancho Deluxe and Missouri Breaks. Buffett acted in and wrote the soundtrack for Rancho Deluxe and is currently co-writing a screenplay with McGuane. McGuane sees Buffett as a kindred spirit, a frontiersman with a frontier shortage. "What Jimmy Buffett knows," writes McGuane in the liner notes of "Pink Crustacean," is that our personal musical history lies at the curious hinterland where Hank Williams and Xavier Cugat meet with somewhat less animosity than the theoreticians would have us believe."
High Times: You're not really just a country and western singer. How did you end up in Nashville?
Buffett: The only reason I went to Nashville was because I didn't have the money to buy enough gas to get to L.A. I went there because that's one of three places to go and make it. You can go to New York, which is not so much anymore, unless you want to play in clubs and starve. But if you want to record and write, you really have to go to Nashville or Los Angeles. But then all of a sudden you're wrapped in, you're in Nashville so you're country. And then the fact that we did "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw"-now, I did that as a total satire, wasn't even going to put it on the album. We did it foolin' around in one take. But immediately that song became controversial, and there were jukebox sales. So I'm sitting there with "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw" as the first recognition I've got. Boy, it takes a helluva long time to get over that. It took us two years.
High Times: What was the story about the girl in the middle of "Why Don't We Get Drunk" taking off her clothes during a Florida show?
Buffett: It was in South Carolina. She just took off her blouse and started shaking her tits around.
High Times: What was your reaction?
Buffett: What do you think it would be?
High Times: I heard you gave her a backstage pass.
Buffett: That's *****. Didn't happen. People that write about these things should actually be there to see them. A lot of journalists take a whole lot of f****' liberty. That's why if you misquote me I'm going to kick your ass. It's just sensational muckraking. I was talking to a lady tonight who told me they have rooters at the general hospital. They cheer the ambulances and hang out at the hospital to see what kind of cases are coming in on Friday night. Think about it. Why do they have windows in ambulances? So you can see out? That's always baffled me. Macabre thing.
High Times: The other side of that record was 'Great Filling Station Hold-up," which was a country hit.
Buffett: Yeah, so that came next and I went, my God, what are they doing to me? The next thing I know...
High Times: You're a country star.
Buffett: And I've never played country rooms at all. I've always played folk clubs, coffeehouses and rock-and-roll bars. I've never played a country gig.
High Times: You said you've done benefits for Jimmy Carter. Were you politically active before?
Buffett: No. It's been 12 years since we've had anybody to vote for. I went out and saw Carter work. I have a good gut feeling about him, and that's it. I live on audience response and intuition, and I react to it. Have all my life. When he started out, the way that he had to go was very calculating. You gotta be calculating, you gotta bust your ass if you want to do anything. For me, it's like I can't just be a sensitive artist and still be out here surviving. I've also gotta be a businessman. Certain things have to be done in order to get you where you're gonna go. It's no different than wanting to be president. I think he honestly wants to help. And he's very into getting input.
High Times: How did you end up working for Carter?
Buffett: He called me in Washington. He was in Oregon. I'd known some people in his campaign, and they were interested in us playing a rally he was doing in Portland. That was a pretty critical state at the time, because he was getting the rush from Jerry Brown and Frank Church. But he finished pretty well. Carter called me personally after we had just sold out a concert in Portland, and asked me to do it. He invited me to go out on the campaign plane, which I did for a day.
High Times: What was that like?
Buffett: I thought I worked hard. But the strain that man has to deal with and the way he does it...but he can handle that whole schedule. That was what impressed me the most - his stamina.
High Times: Tell us about your bus.
Buffett: Oh, it's a great bus. The band got it about a year ago. It's a Silver Eagle, and done like a boat inside, with driftwood and barn lumber. Got a video cassette, big sound system, ice chest full of beer, telephone, CB, bunk-to-bunk intercom it's just a cruiser. You get in there and it's like being on the moon. Finish up a gig, you load up your stuff, get on, smoke a joint, go to the bathroom, and you're there the next morning.
High Times: What's this we hear about the crazy destination signs on the thing?
Buffett: When you order the bus, they allow you to pick out 26 marker signs. We got "Governor's Staff" to use for parking so no cops will bother us. There's a "Loretta Lynn" so we can get primo service in truck stops. Another one is "Teens for Christ." One morning we had just picked up some pot. We stopped at a filling station and all of a sudden this car pulls up and two really slick- looking guys get out after circling the bus. My friends were freaking out, thinking it was a setup. But it was just two Billy Graham miniatures - hey, how're ya doing, brother - like those people you see on Saturday gospel shows. They had seen the "Teens for Christ" sign. Let's see, we've also got the "Enterprise" and "Havana." The last one's tricky, especially in Key West.
High Times: Why don't we talk about your dissatisfaction with your record company?
Buffett: I don't want to say that much about it, but we have had our disagreements in the past. First of all, they didn't know exactly what I was. It's not just ABC - it would be anybody. They tried to categorize me with rock-country or as an outlaw, but I can't be categorized. ABC didn't know. But I figured it was their tab to find out. I think they know that they've let me down. I've got a legitimate b****. They take the standpoint that they do everything for you; if it wasn't for us you wouldn't be here. But I don't buy that s*** at all. It's a mutual cooperation thing, and I think some people at ABC now are comin' around to that. I can't demand all their time, but I want my fair share. I know what other artists get.
High Times: Are you aiming to become a number one artist'?
Buffett: s***, no. I don't care about that. I am not out there driving every day to get a Top 10 or number one record. I like albums. And I owe an obligation to my following. I get to affect people's lives, and artists have an obligation - I mean you're affecting a whole lot, and most people take that for granted. We have a tremendous amount of power. You can't describe what it's like when you walk out there and work 12,000 people into a total frenzy. You can do anything you want to; you can tell them anything you want to. That is where responsibility lies.
High Times: What do you think about artists who pretty well shun their own followers?
Buffett: I don't think they'll be very long-lived. But there are still some acts that made it to the top that keep their roots about them. They still know where they came from. But others don't.
High Times: You don't want to be a number one artist, but you are unhappy with your record company and what it's done for you. Does that mean you're not satisfied with your career?
Buffett: No. Just that certain things should be done. I've never had an ad in Rolling Stone, for example. I don't care about Billboard ads. They're for the trade people. They count in several areas. That's just one example. Rolling Stone. High Times, they sell records.
High Times: How much of your songs are journalistic and how much of them are fictional?
Buffett: They're about 90 percent based on fact, things that I've done or seen other people do. The only one that is really more fiction than fact would be "Cuban Crime of Passion."
High Times: Where did "Death of an Unpopular Poet" come from?
Buffett: I was watching Walter Cronkite one night, and he had a little blurb on there that Kenneth Patchen had died. That surprised me, because hardly anybody ever heard of Patchen except in small circles. He was one of my favorite poets. So I was thinking about him, and then I thought about Richard Farina. These guys contributed so much, but they died and we never appreciated them until afterwards. They starved their asses off and didn't get to stick around to reap their rewards. If you're going to go up there and try to make it, you're not out there totally for aesthetic value. Let's face it-you're out there to secure your future anybody that says they're not is totally false. I couldn't say that money doesn't mean anything to me. You have to pay your bills - I have to keep the band on the road. But you can still have a good time and write good songs. You don't necessarily have to prostitute your music, as long as you know how to handle it, put it in perspective. Those guys had a good time, but I'm sure they were miserable a lot of times. The success that they wanted, they never knew they actually reached it.
High Times: Do you do any other writing besides songs?
Buffett: When I was in college, just for rhyme schemes and like that. I've always been interested in poetry. If I ever studied anything in college that I retained, it was that. Poetry.
High Times: Do you do any other writing besides songs?
Buffett: Yeah, we're working on a screenplay now with Tom McGuane. It's about a Cuban dope dealer in Florida. It happens in a reptile jungle - totally fictional, of course.
High Times: Of course.
Buffett: It started out as a comedy, but we worked it into a really tight melodrama. I'm also thinking about writing a book about rock and roll the tell it all story.
High Times: Tell us somemore about the other movie you're working on.
Buffett: I got this script from Jack Cummings, who's a pretty successful screenwriter. It's a good, funny smuggling story. Most of the characters are based on characters in my songs. Quickly, it starts out with this kid running around on a boat. He gets burned on a deal and he's cruising around trying to dump this hot boat, and he picks up this old man in raft. They get together and hijack this 50- foot Hattaras and take it to Mexico to paint it up to do a big deal. We're still working on it, but that's the outline of the story.
High Times: How do you prefer to write? Drunk, stoned, or what?
Buffett: It depends. I don't get high before I go on stage. I'll have a couple of drinks to take the edge off. Sometimes I wonder how the ***** I do it. Man, you walk out to the edge of the stage and there are 14,000 crazies. If you aren't good, they're going to let you know right away. That's the difference between novelists and entertainers. I get that instant feedback. But you writers, there are 13 f**** critics in New York that run your life. They can make you slash your wrists in the bathroom, depending on what they say about you in The New York Times Sunday Book Review Section. You spend maybe a year writing a book, and then you wait a month for ten people to decide whether it's good or bad.
I don't get stoned before shows. But afterwards, I get real high. Writing to me, is a very sporadic thing. It can happen in any state of mind. After the shows I have to cool down, 'Cause when you're up on stage, your adrenaline is flowing. It's a buzz when you get up there. That may be the best high there is.
High Times: Can you listen to other artists and tell what kind of drugs they're doing?
Buffett: Sure, in concerts, that is. You can tell when somebody's coked out or up on pills. Get up there and just brrrrr-r-rr. Or I can tell if somebody's real stoned. A lot of people can play great stoned, but I just lose it all. Different strokes for different folks.
High Times: That was an interesting reaction you got at the concert last night when you said that you "just finished doing an interview with High Times, that commie dope magazine."
Buffett: Yeah, I was surprised by the way everybody cheered.
High Times: Were you hesitant about doing this interview?
Buffett: I had to think about it, yes. Some things in your everyday lifestyle you take for granted, until someone wants to know more about it. I'm not scared, I just want to be accurately quoted. High Times is all right. Some people can't understand sitting there and reading 60 pages mostly about this. But a lot of people do it. I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to do it. I figured it would be a good opportunity for me to say what I have to say about certain things.
High Times: Do you agree with the push by NORML and others to change the drug laws?
Buffett: I think marijuana will be legalized because all the lawyers smoke it. I know Keith Stroup of NORML, and I admire what he's doing. You can't legislate morality, they should know that by now. The only crime-oriented drug is heroin, I think.
High Times: Is it that way because it's illegal?
Buffett: I don't think so. You don't see people out there breaking into stores to pay for a coke habit. And that's pretty expensive.
High Times: Why is coke so expensive?
Buffett: There's a demand for it, and somebody figured, we'll make this one be less affordable than marijuana. What other reason could there be? It's easy to process.
High Times: A lot of people at concerts are downer freaks.
Buffett: We don't have that, which is the nice thing about it. I don't have to look at four f**** rows of Quaalude freaks. Our fans are listening to the songs. And that's the satisfaction I get out of it. As long as I can do this, and as long as I know that I am doing it, I'm going to be content to stay at a certain level. I'm not going out there to try and sell my lifestyle to America. Because they ain't going to buy it. They never have. Most of the people that live in this country, the average - let's face it, we're a minority. You have to realize it.
High Times: Where do you run across the best pot today?
Buffett: Well, there was some that washed up in Key West that wasn't too bad, even though it was wet, I think good Colombian is about as good as you can get, when it's available. But really, we're not that much of a loadie band. Everybody gets high, but it's not like what people would perceive a rock-and-roll band to be as far as drug intake, women, running around. I mean, people get scared of groups like Kiss. Well, they'd scare the s*** out of me, too, I mean, I'd have the son- of-a-bitches locked up. But to middle America it's the same thing, no difference.
High Times: Tell us about "A Pirate Looks at Forty." You know it's a big hit down in Colombia.
Buffett: It's a true story.
High Times: "I've done my share of smuggling. I've run my share of grass. I've made enough money to buy Miami, but I p*** it away so fast. Never meant to last, never meant to last..." It's got to be about a doperunner.
Buffett: Yeah... He was a friend of mine. It's a true story. and it's pretty self-explanatory. It's one of my favorite songs. You know, if the DEA reads this. I'll be put on their list.
High Times: You're probably on it already. You haven't exactly been quiet about your lifestyle, up until now, you know.
Buffett: Hell, everybody's done it. It goes back to rumrunning. I'm reluctant, but I'll tell you about it without getting too specific. When I was growing up in Alabama, my grandfather was a sailing ship captain. He was from Nova Scotia and went away when he was 13 to join a whaling ship. It's part of a whole coastal culture, and anybody who grows up on the ocean is exposed to it. So I'd been on the ocean and sailing boats. Smuggling and piracy have always been associated with coastal areas. The shrimpers on the Gulf used to run cigarettes to South America in the holds of their ships, 'cause they could get a ton of money. That's how it started. Then they decided to pick up a load of weed on the way back. It was no big crime until it became like a big business involved with supplying Jamaica with gunboats, and with Third World politics. It was just average fishermen looking for a little extra to feed their families. We're not revealing any big secrets here. Hell, everybody knows how it gets in. It was a way of life for a lot of people.
HighTimes: Is it still like that?
Buffett: Not to the degree it was. It's obvious. There's no pot in the country. There's a shortage. I travel, so I get a perspective of knowing there's really not any now. They are cutting it off.
High Times: What did you think of High Times singling you out as the smugglers' favorite?
Buffett: As long as I don't get arrested, that's fine. I guess everybody would like be a smuggler. I mean, it's a fascinating thing, right? It's adventurous, romantic, swashbuckling. There's something about going to sea there's this mystery and romance that I think is carried over in literature and music. Everybody'd like to be a rock-and-roll star, too. But, boy, if they saw the inner workings! There's always the glamorous aspects of everything, and then the hard, cold, work side too. Everybody would love to be a rock star or a smuggler. They think that you just get up there and do your show, or that you can just sail a boat down and pick up some pot and come back and make a ton of money, just like that.
High Times: Do you find that smugglers are romanticized to the point where, even though they make more money than anyone else, they're not looked upon as greed heads?
Buffett: Absolutely. It goes back to Errol Flynn movies. Sir Francis Drake, for example, was a total pirate, and even though he was working for the government he was doing a lot of things that they let slide. He was more of a hero than a badguy.
High Times: Where are you living now?
Buffett: In Colorado part of the year and in Key West, Florida, the rest. But Key West isn't the good old place it used to be. It used to be an open town of smugglers, shrimpers and crazies. It was the end of the world.
High Times: When you were in Key West, did you have any contact with the Coast Guard?
Buffett: I'll tell you one story about that. You know their excuse for popping people now is checking your boat out for that safety equipment s***. They make a bust and four days later there'd be some good pot on the street. At any rate, every time they'd make a bust, they had this huge flag they'd fly from the masthead of the cutter. I couldn't believe it, but the flag had a big marijuana leaf with a skull and crossbones. It's something like when World War II submarines would make a hit, they'd paint one the side.
High Times: Would you like to retire say at 65 and go into rumrunning or some other kind of activity with a boat?
Buffett: Oh, that's what I'll do. I'll go down to the Islands. If I live to be real old. I'll go down there and become a character in a bar. I'll have enough stories to tell. I mean, what else do you do when you're 65 or 70? You can't get laid....
High Times: Any last words of wisdom for our readers?
Buffett: I'd like to say hello to my mother. I hope she doesn't read this. But I know she will.
