Jimmy Buffett Got Advice From Paul McCartney For His New Album
Life on The Flip Side album cover - Margaritaville / Youtube
Jimmy Buffett’s lengthy career has carved a template for his sound that it doesn’t really need that much effort to craft a new album. But seeing that it’s been seven years before he finally released his new LP titled Life On The Flip Side, he had Paul McCartney lend him a helping hand in its creation.
In a recent interview with Billboard, Buffett said, “You hear all about people running out of material later in life because a lot of them don’t make it this far with a career. I’ve heard a lot about writer’s block, but I’ve never had that problem, ’cause I figure as a traveling man and as a nomad, you run into so many more stories than you can possibly imagine, and the source is always there and it always has been for me.”
The singer-songwriter had also taken advantage of new options that were accessible. “I can run my own Pro Tools thing and all that, and that really helps the process. And I had the good fortune of some people to talk to about this, like Paul McCartney,” he added.
McCartney and Buffett became “friends from knowing each other in St. Barts, and our wives are friends. You get Paul McCartney talking to you about what you ought to do on an album, and you listen. We’d played a show together and hung out, and I played him some stuff and he gave me some feedback. He said, ‘Let it breathe a little more, just kind of let it go along and make it light.’ It was good feedback – and then you got outside and go, ‘Fuck! That’s Paul McCartney!’ You can’t get over that.”
While he planned to tour in support of the album, COVID-19 has made that impossible, making it the first time he’s at home for summer in the last 44 years. “Our silver lining in this dark cloud is I don’t think I would’ve ever spent this much time with my grown kids, ’cause everybody’s got their lives now. I think that’s a treasure. A lot of people are spending more time with their kids than they ever thought they would ’cause everybody’s huddled up, and I think that’s a positive thing,” he noted.
