YouSaid · the spoken record

Jimmy Buffett

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13
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2023-10-03
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2023-10-03
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Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “He would play any gig anywhere that would have him. And so at this point, that is repeated over and over again. This is the note I left myself on this page, describing Jimmy. Blue-collar work ethic, learning machine, loves it, won't quit. Again, people that have a blue collar work ethic, learning machines, love what they do and won't quit are so hard to beat.”

    2023-10-03 · Founders · #323 Jimmy Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “To. So he winds up, and I didn't even know this was an entire industry, and they actually tracked how many sales. So in 1973, he sold on jukeboxes 50,000 copies of that song, why don't we get drunk? And so he's like, oh my God, I'm going to be rich. I'm going to take this money from the song and I'm going to buy a boat. And the reason that didn't happen is because at this time, the mafia controlled the jukeboxes and they would never pay out a dime. A young Jimmy Buffett gets stiffed by the mafia. This is also a lesson he learns later on. Okay, I need to control my own distribution. And so what is Jimmy's response to the fact that he's got a song that a lot of people are requesting? A lot of people are playing. Well, it says there be no...”

    2023-10-03 · Founders · #323 Jimmy Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “And so Jimmy just keeps on doing what he was doing. He tries to get as many reps as possible. He winds up making like eight or nine albums in the first like 10 years of his career. I think he winds up publishing over like 30 albums in his lifetime. So he grabs his guitar and he goes back on the road and will play literally any place that will have him. And then he starts doing something that is very fascinating. And they talk about this in documentaries. You can see it on YouTube as well. He doesn't just play songs. He will play a song and then he'll just talk directly to the audience. Sometimes he'll talk for 12 minutes and then play another song. Then he'll play a few songs. Then he might talk for 20 or 30 minutes. This guy's like a, again, think of him more as a performer, not a musician. And what you realize is like, wait a minute, these people aren't there just for the music. They're there for him. And this idea that Jimmy was just communicating directly to his audience is really important because it's repeated over and over again. Says stuff like, hey, this guy could talk. And people loved him for it. He was quick. Another description on stage.”

    2023-10-03 · Founders · #323 Jimmy Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Album, it's called a white sport coat and a pink crustacean is like that. And this is what it says. This album was the first Jimmy Buffett record that only Jimmy Buffett could make. It wasn't folk or country or rock, and it wasn't trying to satisfy anyone but Jimmy Buffett. And so Jimmy is working with Don Light. They share the same philosophy. And the philosophy is that anything that rises above the mire is a success. Anything that draws attention to itself and continues on without some sort of great preposterous hype cycle involved is a success. And that's what Jimmy's music started doing. There was no niche. There was no genre that you could put him in. In fact, he created his own genre. It's called Trop Rock, Tropical Rock.”

    2023-10-03 · Founders · #323 Jimmy Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “And so even when he was a young man, he had this relentless self-belief in himself and his work, and he was trying to make a product that only Jimmy Buffett could make. And so he releases this album. And so he has a song on there called Why Don't We Get Drunk? This is his first, what we would call like a hit, like a middling hit, but at this time it was the biggest song they ever had. And what was fascinating is people around him were trying to change the lyrics of the song because why don't we get drunk if you leave it there? That'll play on country radio. Nashville will play that. But he adds in the lyrics, it's, why don't we get drunk and screw. Remember, Jimmy is living in Key West. They are dedicated to the twin gods of inebriation and fornication. And so he's writing his lyrics about how he's living his life at this time. And so people around him say, hey, you got to take those words out of there. This could destroy your career. And Buffett said, why? I don't even have a career yet. How can it destroy it? This could make it. And so the entire...”

    2023-10-03 · Founders · #323 Jimmy Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Jimmy had a fierce work ethic. He had a fierce work ethic when he was in his 20s. He had a fierce work ethic when he was in his 60s and his 70s. He talked about in the documentary. He was interviewed with the documentary as well. He says, yeah, I'm definitely a workaholic. And so one thing that he's working at this time, the way to get successful, there was a path, right, in the music business to get successful. That path was through radio. Radio refuses to play. Jimmy's trying to get on the radio over and over again. They refuse to play him. And radio is what's influencing record executives. They influence not only what people listen to, so the consumers, but also the executives in the music industry. This is really important. It says radio was what record executives knew to establish an artist, to build a fan base and sell records, you had to get airplay different was a risk. Risk was a hard sell. Buff it wasn't like any other artist at the time. And so along the way, there's a bunch of people that meet Jimmy and have a fear there'd be individuals, multiple individuals that”

    2023-10-03 · Founders · #323 Jimmy Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “And so his costs are low. He's got infinite runway. And now he could just, all he's dedicated to is practice, practice, practice. That's another main theme of this book. Buffett, Jimmy Buffett wanted reps, reps, reps, reps. He understood that's how you get good at anything. And so when he's not in Key West, he's in Atlanta. He's in Chicago. He's in New Orleans. He's in Biloxi. He's playing colleges. He's playing bars. He's traveling all over Texas. He's playing Dallas, Houston, Austin. To get to these gigs, he was willing to drive, take a train, or fly. And here's a great line in there. He needed to play live. He needed to hit the road. He needed to perform. There's no substitute for experience and there's only one way to get it. And he's running his entire business out of the bar in Key West. He doesn't have a phone. So this guy that's booking him said, this is the time before fax machines. This is before email. Buffett didn't even have a phone of his own. So the guy that's booking him would call the chart room, which is the bar that he's working on. And he says, that's where we did business. I had leave word for Buffett to call me back from there.”

    2023-10-03 · Founders · #323 Jimmy Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Or $200 a month, you could actually get an apartment on the ocean. This is a different Key West than what it's like today. And then what does he do? He goes to the local bar and he's like, hey, can I just play for your customers? And you could pay me in tips and alcohol. And they say, yes, this book is full of stories. These are wild men in a wild place during wild times. So the bar he's playing at, it's like the bar everybody goes to. Now, this is the kind of place that Key West is. Think about the city that you live in, right? This is what the city that he's living in at the time. Key West was run out of that bar in those days. The mayor was there. The police chief was there. The fire chief, the city attorney, and the state attorney. You could get arrested, bonded, tried, and get a building permit all in the bar. This is the beginning of this party lifestyle that Jimmy packages up and sells. He sells like a more moderate version of this. I mean, there's insane stories about this. Like this guy's walking around the bar. He has an aspirin bottle.”

    2023-10-03 · Founders · #323 Jimmy Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Gets his first record deal. He's putting out songs. He's putting out music. Nobody is knocking on the door. Nashville is not interested in Jimmy Buffett's sound. And so you'll see a bunch of sentences spread out through the book describing this time in his life. And he'll say something like, the album didn't do anything. Nothing happened. He was completely stiffed. Jimmy Buffett got turned down by every single label and the bad times were not just in his career. He got married young. It was a very hard time. They were young. It was very hard on them because they had no money and nothing was going well. And so he winds up. At the same time, he's failing professionally, right? He winds up getting divorced. And so it's just year after year of struggle and rejection. So he's like, all right, I got to get out of here. He said he hated Nashville. And he's like, I need a change of place. I think I need a change of place. And so he goes, where can I go? He goes to the furthest place he can think of and he goes to Key West. And so there's two things that came to my mind when I was reading this part of the story. The first thing that came to my mind was that excellent.”

    2023-10-03 · Founders · #323 Jimmy Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “And in that book, he says there was nothing normal about me. My drive was not normal. My vision of where I wanted to go in life was not normal. The whole idea of a conventional existence was like kryptonite to me. That line especially, the whole idea of a conventional existence was like kryptonite to me applies to Jimmy Buffett as well.”

    2023-10-03 · Founders · #323 Jimmy Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I have paid attention when I had to, and I have made more right decisions than wrong ones to end up at this moment with a thousand ports of call behind me, and I hope a thousand more to see. My voyage was never a well conceived plan, nor will it ever be. I have made it up as I went along.”

    2023-10-03 · Founders · #323 Jimmy Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Away to St. Bart's. I got separated from the girl, sold the boat, sold the house in Aspen, moved back to Key West, worked the road, and made more records. I rented an apartment in Paris, went to Brazil for carnival, learned to fly, went into therapy, quit doing dope, bought my first seaplane, flew all over the Caribbean, almost got a second divorce, moved to Malibu for more therapy, and got back with the right girl. I worked the road, moved back to Nashville, took off in an F fourteen from an aircraft carrier, bought a summer home on Long Island, and had another baby girl. I found the perfect seaplane and moved back to Florida. My son joined me in the house of women. I built a home on Long Island, crashed the perfect seaplane in Nantucket, lived through it thanks to Navy training, tried to slow down a little, woke up one morning, and I was looking at fifty, trying to figure I would comes next.”

    2023-10-03 · Founders · #323 Jimmy Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I made it through adolescence without killing myself in a car. I flunked out of college. I learned to play the guitar. I lived on the beach, lived in the French quarter, finally got laid, and didn't go to Vietnam. I got back into school, started a band, got a job on Bourbon Street, graduated from college, broke up my band, and went out on the road solo. I signed a record deal, got married, moved to Nashville, had my guitar stolen, bought a Mercedes, worked at Billboard Magazine, put out my first album, and went broke, wrecked the Mercedes, got divorced, and moved to Key West. I sang and worked on a fishing boat, went totally crazy, did a lot of dope, met the right girl, made another record, had a hit, bought a boat, and sailed away to the Caribbean. I started another band, worked the road, had my second and last hit, bought a house in Aspen, started spending summers in New England, got married, broke my leg three times in one year, had a baby girl, made more records, bought a bigger boat, and sailed.”

    2023-10-03 · Founders · #323 Jimmy Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source