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Click
on the sources below to read about Jimmy and 'Euphoria II':-
'A
PIRATE LOOKS AT 50' by Jimmy Buffett (#1 New York Times Bestseller), 1998:
(Buy
this book from Amazon)
P.61-
(chapter-'One
Small Bass') I had given up all thought of combining cold weather and
ocean activity way back in the late seventies when I made my last trip
from Newport to Bermuda on my old sailboat, Euphoria II. The
clearest memory of that trip was the large
icicles hanging from the lifelines
that didn't melt until we were on the other side of the Gulf Stream.
P.135-136-
(chapter-'Island
Girls') - I think back to the time not that many years ago when I first
ventured down here (the Cayman Islands). It was in that now
prehistoric time in 1976, before VHS tapes were even invented. I
had bought a new boat and was headed south.
I didn't know if I would be coming back. Anyway, I had rigged the
boat as if I weren't. Among the improvements I'd made to the
Euphoria II was the installation of a video deck. It was as big as a
microwave oven. The half-inch tapes it played were twice as large as
the eight-millimeter tape players used today. We
sailed with, I believe, five movies: THE
MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, BLACK
ORPHEUS, THE WIZARD OF OZ, KEY LARGO, & THE HARDER THEY COME.
I remember nights being anchored up in the lower Exumas in a deserted
cove, finishing off a
meal of fresh lobster and conch,
then setting our little TV out on the deck and watching movies under the
stars like we were a floating drive-in. A month later, when we
finally arrived in St. Barts, I used to bring kids on board and sit them
in front of the eight inch screen and watch their amazement at their first
sight of the Wicked
Witch of the West.
P.411-
(chapter-'Stopping By the Office'- refers to the Le
Select bar in St. Barts)
Le Select; it is where we went to celebrate the purchase of our dream
hotel, Autour du Rocher, where I danced with Joni Mitchell on the dirt
floor and then took her to our hotel to play 'Carey' for Groovy (the
captain of the Euphoria II) on his birthday; It is where I wrote 'Little
Miss Magic' for
Savannah Jane; It was the bar that I had to clear myself with Maurius and
the local population after the fiasco of events, including my arrest,
after the infamous Rolling Stone cover affair. It is where I sold the
Euphoria II; It is where on various occasions, I ran into Mick
Fleetwood and John McVie, Bobby Short, Lauren Hutton, Mikhail Baryshnikov,
Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, Paul Simon,
and a host of other celebrity gypsies who came and went from the island.
'The
Jimmy Buffett Scrapbook' by Mark Humphrey with Harris Lewine, 2000.
P.143 -
After the Wedding, Buffett took his bride on
an extensive Caribbean cruise on his new
fifty-foot ketch, the EUPHORIA II, but not before dispensing with the
annual business of making next year's album...The songs, Buffett told NEW
YORK TIMES writer John Rockwell, were written the previous summer,
"entirely
on his boat."
Pp.144-145 - SON
OF A SON OF A SAILOR was released in March 1978, and shipped gold
(500,000) copies.
P.145 - Buffett
became a father in 1979 with the birth of Savannah Jane. He took time off
both to adjust to his new role and to write songs for his next album. He
needed atmosphere, so he sailed EUPHORIA II down to Montserrat: "I
came down here to just sit on the boat and
get into a schedule and write every day,"
Buffett told ROLLING STONE'S Chet Flippo. ..."I had about four working titles
for the album, but none of them really grabbed me, and I was wondering,
'What the fuck can I call this record?' Then I looked out the window at
the volcano (Montserrat has an active volcano), and I went DING! 'I'm gonna
call the album VOLCANO."
P.146 -
In his PARROT HEAD HANDBOOK, Buffett recalls the writing and recording
excursion to Montserrat as "one of the
wildest times I've ever had in my career..."
Flippo's October '79 ROLLING STONE profile depicts a parade of stoned
young women eager to bed Buffett,...including one who offered this
striking opening line: "You know, Jimmy, you really oughta drink a lotta
pineapple juice. It'll make your
come taste SWEET!"
'THE
PARROT HEAD COMPANION--AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO JIMMY BUFFETT', by Thomas
Ryan
Ch. 3 "the Late
Seventies"
P.44 -
Before touring, Jimmy spent some time sailing
around the Caribbean...With
his royalty payments rolling in [from "Margaritaville"], he
attended a few boat shows and decided to treat himself to a
brand-spanking-new forty-eight foot Cheoy Lee clipper (a
fast sailing ship with long slender lines, an overhanging bow, tall raking
masts, and a large sail area),
which he named EUPHORIA II. When he returned to dry land...he met the
Eagle's manager, Irving Arzoff, who worked out an arrangement for Buffett
to get the opening slot on the Eagle's summer tour of stadiums in support
of their Hotel California album [then #1 in the nation].
P.45 -
Buffett's rise to the pinnacle of stardom was complete and the chips were
falling into place...[at his wedding in 1977] guests included Emmylou
Harris, Bonnie Raitt, Hunter S. Thompson...with their wedding, he and Jane
had entered the strata of the West Coast's social elite...Soon afterward,
it was November [1977], meaning that it was once again time to record a
new album. Buffett stated that he had written
virtually all of the material for "Son of a Son of a Sailor"
while sailing around on EUPHORIA II.
P.52 -
While sitting on top of the world, Buffett sailed the EUPHORIA II to the volcanic
island of Montserrat in the British West Indies,
where he wrote most of the songs for his upcoming album at a blissful and
leisurely pace. He recorded there as well, using George Martin's
[legendary studio producer who really made the Beatles] newly built AIR
Studios.
On October 4, 1979, Jimmy Buffett's image as counterculture hero was
apotheosized when his likeness graced the cover of the country's hippest
magazine for a feature article written by Chet Flippo. The ROLLING
STONE article chronicles a couple of days on the island of
Montserrat, where Buffett and his bandmates would occasionally
sail during a break in the recording sessions...The
article portrays Buffett as a full-blown hedonist who is as genuine as the
characters in his songs...If nothing else, the article leaves the reader
with the distinct impression that Jimmy Buffett must be the luckiest man
alive, blessed with fame, fortune, and the good sense to enjoy every last
bit of both. Not that it required confirmation, but it leaves little
doubt that Buffett was leading a fantasy life that was remarkable even by
his own standards.
P.57-
[after the birth of his daughter Jimmy needed]...to spend some quality
time with his family. Earlier [in 1979], he had decided to unload the
unwieldly EUPHORIA II for something a bit more manageable...
'JIMMY
BUFFETT' by Armand Eisen, copyrighted 2001
P. 24 - {the
album A1A) sold so well that Jimmy was able to buy his parents a new home
and buy himself a boat that he christened the EUPHORIA. 'I didn't know how
long I was going to be around,'he said in an interview, If
it all fell apart tomorrow, I could live on that boat and be happy.
PP 29-35 -
The success of "Margaritaville" allowed
Buffett to buy a bigger boat,
which he named the EUPHORIA II...Then on August 27, 1977, Jimmy married
his longtime love, Jane Slagsvol...The next year Jimmy appeared in the
movie FM...The soundtrack reached number five on the charts. The album
"Son of a Son of a Sailor" appeared soon after, hitting number
ten on the charts and featuring one of his fan's favorite tunes,
"Cheeseburger In Paradise"...When Jimmy and Jane's first
daughter, Savannah Jane, was born in 1979, Jimmy revamped his priorities,
spending less time touring and more time with his family. He traded
his big boat for a smaller sailboat and named it Savannah Jane, after his
daughter...That year, Jimmy appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone
magazine.
"Travels
with a Pirate" from the "Margaritaville.com" website
Jimmy wrote "Cheesburger (In Paradise) after a broken icebox aboard
his boat, The EUPHORIA II left him and his crew with a diet of peanut
butter and canned foods for their passage to Tortola. When they
arrived on the island, the first meal Jimmy got here was: a cheeseburger
that "tasted like manna from heaven".
"JIMMY
BUFFETT - The Man From Margaritaville, Revealed" by Steve Eng, 1996
P.183
- Jimmy was yearning for a larger boat. He had worked on so many
when he was younger; people were always buying boats in Florida and
floating them to the Caribbean---and he had always frequented boat shows.
Thanks to 'Margaritaville', he could afford to buy a forty-eight foot
Cheoy Lee clipper. He christened her 'Euphoria II', and sailed down to the
islands. "She was his outlet, his safety
valve from his mounting success in the high-pressure music world," wrote
Roy Attaway in 'Motor Boating & Sailing'. Up in New England, he sailed
around Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.
P.197 -
When he had just bought Euphoria II, Jimmy
and his captain, Larry Gray, were about to
leave Ft. Lauderdale, when they sent Tom Corcoran down to pick up a
McDonald's bag of burgers. The next morning, Corcoran took a picture of
Jimmy and Larry Gray drinking beer and eating their last two Big Macs.
Hence the song, written months later, which repudiates the diet of
sunflower seeds and carrot juice, prescribing therapeutic
cheeseburgers instead; The song was
supposedly written at the Select bar on the island of St. Barthelemy,
according to Phil Kaufman, a legendary road manager. In his brilliantly
bawdy memoir, 'Road Manager Deluxe' (1993), Kaufman says the bar was a
hideout for all the rock'n'rollers in those days.
P.
98-
Sometime after the recording session (for
Son of a Son of a Sailor),
Jimmy went on a three month Euphoria II cruise (the boat contained two
five-hundred pound air conditioners, a room for forty
eight cases of beer, a hardback-book library,
a freezer filled with tenderloins, and a
salon which converts into a dance floor.
PP. 208-209- As
for his band members, Jimmy took them on his Euphoria II in between shows,
And the band members were SAFE on the Euphoria II. At least when a customs
inspector climbed aboard, Jimmy believed he
would be pacified by the framed picture hanging over his chair: of
Jimmy in the Oval Office, with President Carter and Vice President Mondale.
PP. 214-215-
But newborn Savannah Jane
would have her own effect on her daddy. It was time to dump (not
sink) the Euphoria II. And build a new, smaller boat, named "Savannah
Jane". How much do you live on your boat?, asked radio interviewer
Jim Ladd. Jimmy told him how he'd put it up for sale. "It's not
that tragic. I wasn't spending enough time to warrant it. I
had a great time on that boat and I wrote a lot of great songs {on it}.
When I built that boat, I went totally OVERBOARD on the thing."
"What can you have on a boat that's 'overboard'?"
"I put everything on it you can possibly have on it. At that time, I
was only thirty, and I was nowhere near ready to retire and sail away. I
was enjoying what I was doing for a living, but I wasn't going to the ends
of the planet. Which is what I built that damned boat to do; it had
everything on it. So there it is with
this beautiful fifty-four foot catch; it can do anything, it could split
the atom!"
Jimmy would come off the road, with two or three weeks off, and tell his
captain and crew: "Oh man, I'm burned out. I'm ready to hit it".
They would mildly agree that they were ready; "as soon as
that part comes in from Puerto Rico." To Jimmy, ordering a part from
Puerto Rico was like ordering one from Thailand. So with all these
hassles, and so little time for Euphoria II, he sold it. Or rather
he sold her.
'Where
does the Cheeseburger Come from?' www.iparty.com/Parrot/ff_40.asp
The
myth of the cheeseburger in paradise goes back to a long trip on Jimmy’s
first boat, the Euphoria. The Euphoria had run into some very rough
weather crossing the Mona Passage between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico and broke
its bow sprit. The ice
in their box had melted, and the crew was doing the
canned-food-and-peanut-butter diet. The vision of a piping hot
cheeseburger kept popping into Jimmy’s mind. They limped up the Sir
Francis Drake Channel and into Roadtown on the island of Tortola, where a
brand-new marina and bar sat on the end of the dock, like a mirage.
"The
overdone burgers on the burned, toasted buns tasted like manna from
heaven, for they were the realization of my fantasy burgers on the
trip," Buffett
recalls.
Jimmy
Buffett Plays St. Barts by Ellen Lampert-Gréaux, November 2000.
(www.islands.com/islmj00/crossbuffet.asp)
When
a famous bar turns 50, the singer and a flock of his
"parrothead" fans show up for a big Caribbean bash.
I
’d be willing to bet that back in 1949, when Marius Stakelborough sold
his first glass of rum punch at Le Select, he never dreamed his modest
St.-Barthélemy bar would someday host a concert by one of America’s
most popular musicians. But that is exactly what happened last November 6,
when Marius celebrated the bar’s 50th anniversary with a concert
headlined by Jimmy Buffett and attended by Le Select loyalists from around
the world.
"For
25 years I’ve dreamed of playing on this quay. Vive St. Barts! Vive Le
Select! Vive Marius!" a barefoot Buffett roared as he took the stage.
And the crowd roared back...
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