ESCAPE ARTIST
Mellow multimillionaire Buffett reveals the real story behind ‘Margaritaville,’ as Parrothead fans await his Broadway musical
IT took Jimmy Buffett just six minutes to write the song on which he built an empire — and a Broadway musical.
He was in Austin, Texas, some 40 years ago, visiting a woman he was dating, and “there was the potential for a breakup,” Buffett says.
After a couple of margaritas and a few tears, she drove him to the airport so he could catch a plane back home to Key West, Fla. At the gate, he got out his guitar and found the hook and the chorus for a new song.
“I was going to call it ‘Wasting Away Again in Austin, Texasville,’” Buffett tells The Post.
He came up with a far better title after he got on the plane.
Buffett played “Margaritaville” in public for the first time a few days later at a restaurant called Logan’s Lobster House. Back then (the late ’70s), Key West attracted a literary crowd, and sitting at the front table were Truman Capote, novelist Dotson Rader and poet John Malcolm Brinnin. By the end of the song they were all singing, “Searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt.”
“And that,” says the jeans-clad 71-year-old, over a couple of drinks, “is when I knew I had something.”
Buffett’s toured the world on the strength of the song. He’s also financed a line of blenders and barbecue sauces, built resorts, casinos and even “Margaritaville” retirement communities. Along the way, he’s amassed a fortune that Forbes put at $550 million in 2016.
The latest addition to his empire is the Broadway musical “Escape to Margaritaville,” which begins previews Friday night at the Marquis Theatre. Buffett’s not in the show — Paul Alexander Nolan (“Jesus Christ
Superstar”) stars as a free-spirited bartender unmoored by love — but his songs are: “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” “Why Don’t We Get Drunk?” and, of course, “Margaritaville.” (In case you’ve wondered what that “nibblin’ on spongecake” lyric means — is the guy sponging off people? — Buffett says it’s a nod to his grandmother, who made a delicious lemon spongecake.)
The show is set in the Caribbean, and Shubert Alley is bracing for an onslaught of Parrotheads.
Buffett may be new to Broadway, but he’s had musical theater in his bones since he was a kid. His mother “was a real Auntie Mame-type character,” he says. She worked in the shipyards of Mobile, Ala., as a union secretary, but in her spare time she “took any part she could get” at the Mobile Community Theater.
She’d go to New York a few times a year to see Broadway shows and come back with the original cast recordings, which she played over and over. “You listened to what your parents listened to back then,” he says. A big favorite was “South Pacific.” “When we first started rehearsals here, I walked down Broadway from my apartment at Columbus Circle, and two songs were in my head —‘Some Enchanted Evening’ and ‘On Broadway’ by the Drifters,’ ” he says. “And I thought, ‘My God, I’m doing a Broadway show.’ It’s taken a long time to get here, but we’re here.”
Buffett’s other Broadway connection is his friend, theater veteran Elizabeth Ashley, (“Barefoot in the Park,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”). When they met in the early ’70s, Ashley tells The Post, Buffett was “a cute little guy who played the guitar and was always bor- rowing money: five bucks here, 10 bucks there. Never paid us back, but we didn’t care because we loved him.”
It was Ashley who later told him, “Honey, you can play wherever you want to, but you gotta get to New York.”
She was responsible for the biggest break of Buffett’s career: his first appearance on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.”
Carson was reluctant to have pop singers on his show back then. He preferred his Vegas crowd — Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. But, under pressure from his network, NBC, he relented.
Ashley was good friends with Carson’s talent booker, who got Buffett, then charting with “Margaritaville,” on the show.
“I was so nervous, I stayed up watching Carson for two weeks,” says Buffett, “just to see what interested him.”
The producers told him, “Look, you’re just doing a song. But if he happens to wave at you, that means go over to the couch.”
Buffett dedicated his performance that night to his parents, who were celebrating their anniversary. When he finished the song, he got the wave.
He appeared 11 more times on the show, including Carson’s final month on air.
Reminiscing over pinot noir at Bond 45, across the street from the Marquis, Buffett can’t escape the drink that made him famous.
When restaurant owner Shelly Fireman comes to the table, it’s with an enormous pitcher of Italian margaritas. “This is in honor of your show,” Fireman says. Buffett eyes the pitcher, which is so big it could have its own booth. Smiling, he says, “Well, it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere, but if I drink that thing I won’t get to my show.”