An absolutely legendary story to pair with the legend that was Jimmy Buffett.
Though the world lost Jimmy Buffett back in September of 2023, the spirit of the man behind songs like “Cheeseburger in Paradise” and “Margaritaville” is alive and well. When the leader of the Parrotheads passed away at 76-years-old after a battle with skin cancer, he left behind a sprawling catalogue, a Margaritaville franchise, and countless stories that will forever live on.
This one that Mac McAnally, Jimmy’s frequent collaborator and now leader of the Coral Reefer Band, loves to tell might be the best Buffett story out there.
It was February of 1979, and Jimmy Buffett was sitting at a sports bar owned by a Boston Bruins players named Derek Sanderson. As McAnally explains in the video below, which looks to be from a story time session he fit in during a recent concert, Jimmy Buffett saw an ad on TV that inspired him to go somewhere warm:
“Jimmy’s drinking in Derek Sanderson’s bar. He’s had a couple of drinks, and it’s 20-something degrees outside. A commercial comes on the television advertising cheap airfares to places that are warm. Jimmy’s sitting there looking at that TV going, ‘I’ve got to go. I did my show. I’ve got to go.’
He decided what he was going to do was go straight outside, get a cab, go to the hotel, get his clothes, go straight to the airport and buy a ticket to the first plane that was leaving for somewhere warm. That’s what he was going to do.”
If that sounds like something straight out of a Jimmy Buffett song… we’ll get to that in just a second.
First, we have to get to the rest of the story McAnally happily shared with the crowd. There was a little bit of “Grand Theft Buffett” that took place, because as the tale goes, Jimmy quite literally took a cab to the airport:
“He walked outside, and there was a cab line right outside the bar. The first cab in the line had no driver in it. The door was open, the cab was running and the keys were in the ignition. Jimmy Buffett saw that as a sign from God. He borrowed a taxi cab, drove it to the hotel and got his clothes.
He drove it to Logan Airport, he got out of the cab and he left the door open, the engine running and the keys in the ignition. Just like he found it. I mean some people tell good stories. He lived a bunch of good stories.
It was the days before cell phone cameras, so the amazing thing about this is that Jimmy Buffett stole a taxi cab in Boston, Massachusetts in broad night light and suffered zero consequences whatsoever. The only thing that happened is he got on a plane and went somewhere warm and he wrote this song.”
When Jimmy told the story himself in the past, he also made sure to mention that he left the cab fare in the seat.
As you might imagine, that moment in Jimmy Buffett’s life led to him writing the song “Boat Drinks,” which he released in 1979. It never became a massive commercial hit, but it was always one that Parrotheads looked forward to in the concert set list. And it basically just tells the story of that fateful night that Buffett stole a cab just to get somewhere warm as fast as he could:
“Lately, newspaper mentioned cheap airfare
I’ve got to fly to Saint Somewhere
I’m close to bodily harm
20 degrees and the hockey game’s on
Nobody cares, they are way too far gone
Screamin’, ‘Boat drinks’
Somethin’ to keep them all warm”
“Boat Drinks”
