By Sharon Oliver
Contributing Writer
BOSTON – Not everyone can take the frigid temps or thigh-high snow drifts common to Massachusetts, yet plenty are still drawn to the state’s many charms. The late tropical rocker Jimmy Buffett was one prime example. One day in February 1979, the “Margaritaville” singer, who hated cold weather, found himself sitting in a Bruins’ sports bar feeling quite homesick and desperate to leave.
Escaping a Boston snowstorm
During an appearance on the “Drifting Cowboy Podcast,” Buffett’s long-time collaborator Mac McAnally recently recalled, “He’s got a song called ‘Boat Drinks,’ and it’s about not wanting to be in cold weather, and he never wanted to be in cold weather. But he was in Boston, and one of the Bruins had a sports bar, and he’s sitting in the sports bar, and it was freezing, and it was snowing. An ad came on about cheap flights to the Caribbean, and he’s just like, ‘I’m going.’ He went out to get a cab, there was a cab line right outside the bar, but the front cab, the driver wasn’t in, and the door was standing open. Jimmy stole the cab. He got, he got in the cab, and he drove it to the Boston airport, got out of it, left it running with the keys in it just like he found it.”
Musician Jimmy Buffett’s song “Boat Drinks” came from a madcap February night in Boston that involved a stolen cab.
Although he faced no consequences for stealing a cab so that he could get to the airport and purchase a ticket to “St. Somewhere,” Buffett offered up a defense in the liner notes in his 1992 box set “Boats, Beaches, Bars & Ballads.”
He wrote: “It was February in Boston, and I was cold and wanted to go home. I was in a place owned by Derek Sanderson, who was a very famous player for the Boston Bruins in the ’70s. I came out of the bar and couldn’t find a cab except for the one that was running in front of the nearby hotel. There was no driver in it, and I was too cold to care about the consequences. There is an old Navy expression which says, ‘Beg forgiveness, not permission.’ I hopped in and drove back to my hotel. I did leave the fare on the seat.”
Nantucket plane crash
That would not be the only time Buffett experienced a moment of escape while visiting the Bay State. An avid pilot, Buffett was taxiing his nine-passenger twin-engine plane at Nantucket in 1994 when he hit a sudden swell. He told the National Transportation Safety Board, “Just prior to lifting off the water, out of the corner of my left eye, I spotted some contrary water what looked to be to me some kind of swell, and decided to pull the power, but before I could do so, the plane veered extremely to the right.” The plane then nose-dived into the water and capsized.
Fortunately, his aviation survival training kicked in. He swam away and was soon picked up by a passing boat. Buffett returned to the state twice to record two live albums. The first at the Tweeter Center for the Performing Arts (now Xfinity Center) in Mansfield in 2003 and at Fenway Park in 2004.
Death and legacy
The singer-songwriter, author and businessman passed away in 2023 at age 76 from a rare and aggressive form of skin cancer, leaving behind a legion of devoted fans known as “Parrot Heads” who will always have songs like “A Pirate Looks at Forty” (1974); “Cheeseburger in Paradise” (1978); “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” (1977) and “Son of a Son of a Sailor” (1978) along with his Margaritaville brand for their island escapism.
Jimmy Buffett was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Musical Excellence category in 2024.
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