On His way to the Eternal Margaritaville....

So many times we fall in love...for many of us we go on in morning when things go sideways and you have to go your own way. Then we have some that turn the sadness into a memorable experience and share their life with us. Fortunately for us music lovers some of the greatest songs ever recorded are about breakups...Margaritaville ranks up there with the best of the best.
No one knows the coordinates of the mythical “Margaritaville,” but the real-word origins of Jimmy Buffett’s most famous song began at a Mexican restaurant in Texas and ended with a car crash in Key West.

“Margaritaville” would become not only Buffett’s biggest hit but the cornerstone of a lucrative branding empire that included restaurants, resorts, housewares, a Broadway musical and retirement communities. Buffett,
Before he achieved fame, fortune and the devotion of his loyal followers, known as “Parrotheads,” Buffett was a nearly 30-year-old musician living in Key West, performing gigs and trying to move past the disappointment of his early musical career as a country singer. In 1976, after a night playing a club in Austin, Buffett nursed his morning hangover with a girlfriend over burritos and cold margaritas before she drove him to the airport for a final goodbye.

As Buffett would recount in interviews over the years, he pulled out his guitar at the gate and began strumming the hook, writing most of the song in about five minutes. (Buffett told the New York Post in 2018 that he initially planned to call it “Wasting Away Again in Austin, Texasville”)

A car wreck on the road ahead delayed Buffett’s drive back home to the Keys, putting a little more time between him and that first round of breakup margaritas in Austin.

“There was a wreck on the 7-Mile Bridge,” Buffett said in a 2020 interview on the Bobby Bones radio show. “I wrote the end of the song while waiting in traffic.”

He finished the song at home and soon performed it at the Key West bar where he worked.

“People seemed to like it,” he recalled.

The barflies’ warm reaction to “Margaritaville” was just a tiny sip of the success the song would go to achieve.

Buffett was finishing his album, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” so he added “Margaritaville” to the track list. When they were released in early 1977, the album and the single became Buffett’s breakthrough hits. “Margaritaville” peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. Despite his prolific career that included nearly 30 studio albums, it remains Buffett’s only song to crack the Billboard Top 10.
In 1983, more than six years after “Margaritaville” became a hit, Buffett sued Chi-Chi’s after learning the Mexican restaurant chain had copyrighted the name for a drink special.

As Buffett recounted to The Washington Post in 1998:

“I discovered Chi Chi’s Restaurant chain had copyrighted the word Margaritaville! I had to reach a settlement with Chi Chi’s to use the name of a song I’d written! Then I found a woman in Hawaii had copyrighted ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise’! I was being ripped off everywhere because I wasn’t paying attention. There was a demand there, and everyone was exploiting it but me! So I started taking care of business.”
Buffett said the lesson learned from the “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger In Paradise” fracas was that if you wanted the carefree beautiful beach life where you could admire sunsets and sea planes, “you better damn sure take care of business now or you’ll never get there.”

After settling the lawsuit against Chi-Chi’s, Buffett began branding assets with the Margaritaville name. By the time Buffett died, his Margaritaville brand graced cruises, resorts, senior living facilities, apparel and bar and pantry products. This was in addition to non-Margaritaville entities such as Buffett’s children’s books and Coral Reefer marijuana line.

KEY WEST, Florida -- All the world was “Margaritaville” on Saturday, from Key West to New York City and beyond, as legions of fans mourned the passing of beach-bum balladeer Jimmy Buffett at the age of 76.

Buffett’s eponymous hit song has long been the anthem of Florida’s Key West, where Buffett once lived and built his enduring legacy.

“Everybody equates that song with our city,” said Clayton Lopez, a Key West city commissioner. “I mean, when you say Margaritaville, you’re talking about the city of Key West.”

The community planned a remembrance Sunday along Duval Street, home to some of Key West’s most well-known eateries and music venues, including the Chart Room, a dive bar where Buffett sang early in his career.

“He’s doing another show now, but it’s in the sky,” said Jimmy Weekley, who owns Fausto, a restaurant that is one of Key West’s landmarks.

Buffett's fandom was widespread, and tributes poured in Saturday.
The biography on Jimmy Buffett’s website has been updated to include the musician’s cause of death, confirming that he had been diagnosed with Merkel cell skin cancer.

The “Margaritaville” singer-songwriter battled cancer for four years before he died Friday at 76. Buffett’s official obituary notes that he “continued to perform during treatment, playing his last show, a surprise appearance in Rhode Island, in early July.”

“Jimmy passed away peacefully ... surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” his website says.

“He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.”
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