A Parrothead Looks at 40 (January 1998)

Note: This is an article written for the Newsletter, which was a monthly publication put out by the family business. It was published in January 1998.

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I recently found a lode of music that included an 8-track recording of a live performance by Jimmy Buffett called You Had to be There. It sent me into another Parrothead phase.

For those of you who don't know what a Parrothead is, it is simply a devout Jimmy Buffett fan. He has looked at life humorously through his music for more than 30 years. Being a Parrothead requires an attitude that life is good even when things aren't. 

One of his ballads is entitled He Went to Paris. In it he describes the life of Eddie Bartholomew, an old man he met in the islands. Eddie had early ambitions, as we all do, but suffered a lot of tragedy in his life. He lost his wife and child, and one of his eyes, in the bombing of London during WWII. Eddie's outlook on life after "86 years of perpetual motion" was that "some of it's magic, some of it's tragic, but I've had a good life all the way."

We probably all know someone like the person about whom A Pirate Looks at 40 was written. Jimmy says "he just couldn't find his occupation in the 20th century." He sings, "Yes I am a pirate, 200 years too late. The cannons don't thunder; there's nothing to plunder; I'm an over-40 victim of fate. Arriving too late."

Buffett is better known, though, for the humorous way he looks at life. In Peanut Butter Conspiracy, he recalls looking back at his hard luck past: "I really do have to laugh. Working at a dive for $26, and spending it all on grass." In Margaritaville he talks about his "Mexican cutey" tattoo, but "how it got there, I haven't a clue."

Though the song Gypsies in the Palace is really about house-sitters, it might just as well be about unsupervised children. "We're gypsies in the palace. He left us here alone. The Order of the Sleepless Knights will now assume the throne. We ain't got no money; we ain't got no rights; but we're gypsies in the palace, and we got it all tonight!"

It was, indeed, a strike to find my old 8-track. As a bonus, there were a couple of old cassettes by him I hadn't heard in a while. It's not so much that I can relate to all the craziness he sings about; it's more that I find it uplifting to think about life's problems with a Parrothead attitude. The best line to describe it comes from Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitudes: "If we weren't all crazy, we would go insane."

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Here is a video of Jimmy Buffett, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Greg "Fingers" Taylor doing Gypsies in the Palace: