-Jimmy Buffett, we love you.
Thank you so much for coming on. -Jimmy Fallon.
-I know, Jimmy and Jimmy right here.
-Right, yeah. -Thank you for singing
"Margaritaville" earlier in the show.
-Let's talk about Florence Welch, huh?
-I mean, can we just talk about that?
-Doing "Margaritaville." Come on, please.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-She's got everything, right? She's got the voice.
-I know. That was, like, angelic kind of.
-Yeah, take that on tour. You were saying backstage, I go,
"Thanks for doing the bit," and you go,
"Yeah, well, I sang 'Margaritaville'
for the first time on "The Tonight Show."
-That's right. -With Johnny Carson.
-Yeah, 41 years ago. [ Cheers and applause ]
41 years? Oh, oh!
-I have a photo of it. -Oh, my God.
-Here's a picture of you and Johnny, right there.
[ Applause ]
-Oh, that mustache. No wonder it went.
-Look at that mustache. I think you look like a stud.
Come on, bud.
-No, that's a little porn-looking mustache.
[ Laughter ] -Oh, no.
-No, I never -- no. -41 years ago.
This song has stood the test of time.
-It has. -Do you remember
going on "Carson"? -Oh, yes. Yes.
-What was it -- -It was a transitional time
between, like -- Most of the acts before,
there were Vegas acts and people Johnny knew or liked.
And I guess the network probably
was pushing rock and roll in there.
So I studied it for like two weeks like it was a course,
'cause I wanted to know every move,
and I wanted to know who was good, who could talk, and who --
Because he was a straight man. You know that.
-Of course, yeah, exactly. Johnny would set you up, and...
-And so they had Jimi Hendrix on,
and Jimi Hendrix had bad trouble with whatever the sound was,
and he stopped in the middle of the song.
And then started again.
So it was like a transitional point.
When I got on, they were not very kind of friendly to me.
They said, "Listen, the one thing you can't do
is stop because Johnny doesn't like it when you stop."
And so I'd studied, I said, "Well, I'm gonna do
'Margaritaville,'" and then he said, you know,
"You'll never go to the desk. Maybe he does it sometimes.
But in case he waves you, then you walk over.
But it's not gonna happen." [ Laughter ]
-"Anyway, thanks for being here," yeah, yeah.
-Yeah, "Get out of here." -Yeah, "Get out of here."
Good luck." Yeah. -So I said, "Okay."
I was just happy to be on "The Tonight Show."
I mean, come on. I'd studied it.
So what I forgot about was, the good thing was,
there were Parrot Heads in the audience.
-Aha. -Got any out here now?
-Yeah! [ Cheers and applause ]
-Oh, thank God, they're still here!
-Of course, they're everywhere.
-But they started yelling. And Johnny kind of caught on
to the fact that there was a crowd there.
And so, me, I didn't know that much about television,
so I'm playing to the audience and never look into the camera.
That's the first one. So -- But when we started
the song, we were off tempo
because the crowd was yelling so much.
So I basically [bleep] up "Margaritaville"
on the "Johnny Carson Show." [ Laughter ]
-Oh, my gosh! But did you -- did you stop?
-No. -That's exactly right!
That's the lesson learned -- never stop.
-No, as the band knows, there's an old credo is,
"When you get lost, meet me on one," right?
-Yeah. -So we got on one, we did it,
and then I [bleep] up -- I'm going,
"This is never gonna happen."
I looked, and he was going -- -He waved you over.
-And I went over, and I was lucky enough to do that show.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-How many times? -I think 15 or 16 times.
Then he actually invited me on the last week.
What a great guy. And just a pro.
-Became friends with him. -Yeah, but I'm --
That's so weird. I'm getting goose bumps.
41 years later, I'm still on "The Tonight Show."
-Yeah, but come on. [ Cheers and applause ]
Now you get an intro with the "one and only."
Now you're the one and only Jimmy Buffett.
You know, I love you so much because you're just a performer,
and you're an artist, and you need the audience.
-Yeah. -And when the pandemic hit,
I really thought of you -- you're one of the first people
I thought of, because I go, "He must be going insane."
'Cause you love to perform. You don't stop.
-Absolutely. Above anything
that I've been lucky enough to do,
performing is what I love to do.
But I also, as a sailor, I have been on
some rough voyages, and you just have to keep going that way.
And so I just kind of -- you know, I had to take that
kind of sailor mentality to steer through
the bad currents that were going on.
So what we were lucky enough to do, because we had already had
Radio Margaritaville, we had Margaritaville TV,
and my daughter, who was doing filmmaking at the time,
got me saying, "Well, you got to just
play to people on both of those things."
So we stayed in touch with our audience
on Radio Margaritaville, Margaritaville TV.
People that were still working and first responders
and people in hospitals, and people got on.
At least we were staying in touch,
but we weren't physically in touch.
So physically in touch came -- the first show was 10 tables,
four people to a table, at a place called Belly Up
down in Southern California.
-Now you really made it. [ Laughter ]
-I said, "Am I back to the beginning?"
-Belly Up -- that's a great name.
-Was I time traveling in the other direction?
-40 people, and you go, "Wow." -And so what it was --
And we went to rehearsal before that so three of us were in --
in California, and two of us were in New York,
and they Zoomed in. And the three of us
in California were in my piano player Mike Utley's apartment,
and we started to play, and we broke down crying,
it was that emotional.
We hadn't seen each other -- because that's the other family.
-Exactly. -And so at least we did it then
because when we got in front of the 40 people,
they started crying immediately.
[ Laughter ] -Yeah!
"Because we missed it." -They missed it so much.
So we went from 40 people initially and tried to
work our way up safely, and then last --
Sunday night, we played to 60,000 people in New Orleans.
-That's what I'm talking about. Come on.
We're coming back. -Thank you.
-We're coming back. [ Cheers and applause ]
New Orleans. -In New Orleans, yeah.
-Now, that's a place right there, New Orleans.
When you play there, I mean, if you crush there, you've made it.
-Yeah. -Because that's the good crowd.
That's a good spirit right there.
-I started out on Bourbon Street as a folk singer.
-You did? -Yes.
-Wow. What was that?
-Well, I was working, and -- There was a lot more music
on Bourbon Street then than there was
the latest attractions. [ Laughter ]
And so all the musicians that I really loved,
jazz and other people, were there.
And I worked in a little place called The Bayou Room
for kind of a lower-level Mafia pair of brothers.
And, uh -- [ Laughter ]
And so I was just so happy to be there,
and I made $150 a week and half price on drinks.
And the first week, I owed them money.
[ Laughter ]
-That's legendary. Come on, that is legendary.
-I got into it. Listen, as an ex-Catholic
altar boy, I went hard. -Yeah, right, yeah, yeah.
-But I did start there. And that was really
my musical roots came in New Orleans.
And I've stayed connected to that
for as long as I've been here.
-let's talk about your new documentary,
"Jazzfest: A New Orleans Story."
I mean, Jazzfest is legendary, but I don't know if anyone knows
the history and the story behind it.
-You know, to me, I think, Jimmy, what starts it,
Jazzfest is like the child of Mardi Gras, you know?
'Cause I grew up as a child of Mardi Gras,
because you were allowed --
You know, fun is important in this world.
-Thank you. -As we're learning now,
when you see audiences coming back,
they're so amped up to just see a performance.
-It's the greatest. There's nothing like it.
[ Cheers and applause ]
It's tough for us not to get emotional.
-And so Jazzfest, I think I went to the third or fourth one.
And our other friend, Quint Davis, who helped,
who was instrumental in finding the right musicians
for the documentary with Frank Marshall,
he ran a little head shop called The Love Shop, and we met then,
when I was going in to buy papers.
And so -- -Not newspapers.
-No, not newspapers. [ Laughter ]
So I experienced my whole kind of musical beginnings
on Bourbon Street and in New Orleans,
and so I went to the festival that early and continued
just to go until they asked me to come play it,
and that was like 20 years ago.
I played it pretty much ever since.
-It's pretty fun It's actually beautiful.
I want to show everyone a clip. Here's Jimmy Buffett
in "Jazzfest: A New Orleans Story."
Take a look at this.
-I grew up on the Gulf Coast.
I was an 18-year-old virgin Jesuit altar boy,
and I came to New Orleans to not be that.
♪ I come here each season ♪
We couldn't get to California, so we kind of hippied out
right here in New Orleans.
♪♪
♪ But it's a real beauty ♪
♪ Oh, these Louisiana cuties ♪
♪ And I know I got cutie that slid over from Mississippi ♪
♪ And got a clue ♪
Everything about the songs, I heard the melodies,
and the rhythms that I loved came out of here.
♪ Again in Margaritaville ♪
-Oh, my goodness.
Jimmy Buffett, everybody. -Thank you.
-Always good to see you.
Go see "Jazzfest: A New Orleans Story."
Florence + The Machine perform after the break.
Stick around, everybody. Jimmy Buffett!