He did his bit of smuggling, he once sang, and he ran his share of grass. Now, the late, great Jimmy Buffett is being honored by an assortment of his many friends and admirers in an all-star tribute concert Thursday night at the Hollywood Bowl.
Keep the Party Going, as the show is billed, takes place seven months after Buffett died from skin cancer in September at age 76, leaving behind a lifestyle empire that reportedly made him a billionaire — and, of course, a deep catalog of wryly literate songs that blend country, pop, folk, rock and Caribbean music.
For the record:
3:20 p.m. April 12, 2024In an earlier version of this article, a photo caption did not identify Jackson Browne and referred to him as a member of the Coral Reefer Band.
In the wake of his death came warm remembrances from the likes of former President Clinton, who said Buffett’s work “brought happiness to millions of people,” and Alan Jackson, with whom Buffett recorded the No. 1 country hit “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.” Elton John called him “a unique and treasured entertainer”; LL Cool J said he was “glad we had time to vibe.”
Among the many acts set to perform at the Bowl are Paul McCartney, the Eagles, Jon Bon Jovi, Jackson Browne, Brandi Carlile, Kenny Chesney, Eric Church, Sheryl Crow, Zac Brown, Jack Johnson, Pitbull and members of Buffett’s longtime Coral Reefer Band.
7:11 p.m. Greetings from Margaritaville! (Sorry, I had no choice.) With a lineup long on boomer icons — and an audience full of the fans Buffett often compared to Deadheads with credit cards — tonight’s show promises to be like a stylishly graying Coachella, a prospect for which I’m all in. I’m Mikael Wood, The Times’ pop music critic, and I’m happy to be here with my colleagues August Brown and Erin Osmon to play-by-play this tribute to the man who did as much as anyone to bring fruity drinks and sandy desperation into the pop vernacular. — Mikael Wood
As the native Floridian on The Times team here, I am thrilled to see tonight as the beginning of a Buffett-sance among L.A.’s songwriter set. Parrothead wear is the look of the summer to come. — August Brown
And we’re off with a festive take on “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” by Buffett’s stalwart backup crew, the Coral Reefer Band. — M.W.
Introducing himself as a Florida boy, Jake Owen says he knows “a lot about citrus” — his way to queue up “Grapefruit — Juicy Fruit.” — M.W.
The Coral Reefer Band puts a brass-infused NOLA spin on “Pencil Thin Mustache,” opener of Buffett catalog highlight “Living and Dying in 3/4 Time.” This colorful crowd — the Bowl looks like a pastel kaleidoscope of leis and Hawaiian shirts — is on its feet and loving it. I wore my Hush Puppies for the occasion. Perhaps I’ll join them. — Erin Osmon
7:26 p.m. Woody Harrelson is here in a beat-up cowboy hat recalling the time he and Buffett smoked a joint on the roof of the Vatican. “That’s not true of course,” he adds, “but wouldn’t that be a great story?” As one of the night’s first celeb presenters, the actor goes on to extol Buffett’s creation of “a new genre of music — and hotels and restaurants and old folks’ homes.” — M.W.
Kenny Chesney
(Randall Michelson/Live Nation-Hewitt Silva)
7:32 p.m. Kenny Chesney takes “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” — which, as bite-size philosophies go, is up there with the best. — M.W.
7:33 p.m. Chesney says that, when he was a kid growing up in east Tennessee, Jimmy Buffett was the first person who showed him that a person can paint pictures with words; a touching and fitting sentiment before he launched into “Where I Come From,” a song that evokes the powerful, everyday images of Buffett’s (and Chesney’s) rural upbringings. — E.O.
7:35 p.m. In a video tribute, Dolly Parton emphasizes Buffett’s multi-hyphenate brilliance — songwriter, author, mogul — and that he was more than just a dude in flip-flops. — E.O.
7:42 p.m. The Jimmy Buffett lifestyle crosses seas and transcends continents, as Angélique Kidjo proved on a regal take of “One Particular Harbour.” The two were old pals and collaborators on “Ti Punch Café,” from Buffett’s final album, “Equal Strain on All Parts,” and the respect and camaraderie between them is really delightful. — A.B.
7:58 p.m. Zac Brown debuts a tender new song, “Pirates and Parrots,” at the Bowl tonight, written about and dedicated to Buffett as Brown promises he is “picking up where you left off … when the sun goes down we’ll raise our drinks.” Very sweet reminder that this music really meant a lot to a lot of songwriters who took it to new places. Another fitting tribute: Brown changing into shorts onstage. — A.B.
8:01 p.m. A sepia-tone Indiana Jones-style video, titled “Quest for the Shaker of Salt,” tees up the night’s next presenter: Harrison Ford. “Jimmy Buffett was a cool guy,” he says. Ford recalled a “boozy lunch” with Buffett and Ed Bradley that inspired him to get his ear pierced (because they both had earrings and he thought that was so cool). He clarifies that for a “cool guy” Buffett was also singularly kind and loyal. “There will never be anyone else like him.” — E.O.
8:04 p.m. Longtime Miami Heat coach Pat Riley recounting the time Buffett got ejected from a game for calling the referee a Parrothead.”That’s not an insult, that’s a compliment,” Riley recalled yelling back. Truly a crime against Florida to throw him out. — A.B.
8:08 p.m. Eric Church intros a lightly snarling “Son of a Son of a Sailor” with a remembrance of the many summers he and Buffett spent in California, where they’d hike, enjoy “afternoon wine” and then end the day drinking “tequila till there wasn’t anymore tequila.” — M.W.
8:11 p.m. The Eagles bassist Timothy B. Schmit, ex-member of Poco, and the Coral Reefer Band, leads the band and the Bowl in a spirited performance of “Volcano,” a tune custom-tailored for crowd participation. He’s also, apparently, the first person to say “Parrothead.” I didn’t know; I didn’t know. — E.O.
8:14 p.m. Jane Fonda wants to set the record straight, she says as she takes the stage to introduce Brandi Carlile: “I was actually the one that smoked a bowl with Jimmy on the roof of the Vatican.” Big laugh in the crowd. Fonda hails Buffett’s generosity of spirit and his “ability, like Tinkerbell, to sprinkle happiness” wherever he went. — M.W.
8:18 p.m. Reliable as always, Carlile does her tender-soulful ‘70s folk-rock thing in “Tin Cup Chalice,” then talks about her experiences fishing with Buffett, whom she says impressed many a lesbian fisherwoman by bragging that he was friends with Brandi Carlile. — M.W.
Brandi Carlile
(Randall Michelson/Live Nation-Hewitt Silva)
8:22 p.m. If I’m being completely honest, I had hoped that Jackson Browne would be the celeb pal to sing “Come Monday” this evening — refracting Buffett’s most tender composition through his soft-rock pedigree and “These Days” poignancy. Instead, it was Carlile, who led the Coral Reefer Band on acoustic guitar. She explained that Buffett’s widow, Jane, is one of her “most precious friends,” which makes it make more sense, as Buffett wrote the song for her. Carlile’s vocals were characteristically smooth and her love for Buffett evident. In other words, it was a job well done. — E.O.
8:28 p.m. “Exactly the person you expected to see,” said actor Will Arnett, an unlikely Parrothead. “I have so many awesome memories of Jimmy. I was staying with him in the Caribbean — he said, ‘I gotta get certified in takeoffs and landings at the St. Barts Airport, you wanna go? I gotta do like 30 of them.’ Jimmy has been in like three plane crashes. I bailed.” — A.B.
8:34 p.m. The Coral Reefer Band takes “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” Buffett’s hardest-rocking hit — at least until the classic bridge about how Buffett likes his burger, at which point the assembled Parrotheads threaten to drown out the pros onstage. — M.W.
8:39 p.m. Instead of “Come Monday,” Jackson Browne played “He Went to Paris” — after a little stumble with his in-ear monitors. “You know what?” he said with a laugh. “I can’t hear any levels because I forgot to put these in my ears.” After course correcting, he offered a mellow rendition of Bob Dylan’s favorite Buffett tune. It’s not always a good sign when folks sit down during a song, but here it read like a necessary vigil, a kind of reverence — with the twinkle of neon necklaces instead of the flicker of candles. — E.O.
8:42 p.m. J.D. Souther tells the crowd that, as Buffett often said, he’s got a sailing song for us, which turns out to be a rollicking take on “Southern Cross” by Crosby, Stills & Nash. — M.W.
8:47 p.m. “When Jimmy wrote this song, there hadn’t been a song like this in country music,” says Mac McAnally of the Coral Reefer Band — one way to describe the proudly raunchy “Why Don’t We Get Drunk.” (If you don’t know what comes next in the lyric, look it up.) — M.W.
Snoop Dogg
(Randall Michelson/Live Nation-Hewitt Silva)
8:52 p.m. Snoop Dogg in the house! After encouraging the crowd to smoke “sticky icky” (what else?) he threw down a spirited and incredibly well received performance of “Gin and Juice” to honor his “main man Jimmy.” — E.O
8:59 p.m. Anyone who doubts Snoop Dogg’s Parrothead bona fides should watch him in Harmony Korine’s “The Beach Bum.” Underrated movie! — A.B.
9:12 p.m. John McEnroe keeps the gag going as presenter with a memory of the time he and Buffett smoked a joint at center court at Wimbledon. — M.W.
9:18 p.m. And now we have Pitbull doing his “Don’t Stop the Party” — just one fun-loving Florida Man paying tribute to another fun-loving Florida Man. Says Pitbull of Buffett: “He’s the definition of what it means to unite, not divide.” — M.W.
Pitbull and Bon Jovi
(Randall Michelson/Live Nation-Hewitt Silva)
9:22 p.m. And the award for Most Unexpected Collab goes to Pitbull and Jon Bon Jovi doing “Thank God and Jimmy Buffett.” — E.O.
9:23 p.m. “We all think we’re rock stars, but he flew his own plane to his own show. That’s a rock star,” Bon Jovi said of his late pal, before admitting his backstage edible was kicking in, a common theme of the night. Judd Apatow agreed. “I swear I just thought I saw Snoop Dogg do ‘Gin and Juice’ with the Coral Reefer Band,” the director said, before praising Buffett’s longevity and loyalty to his band. ”50 years, Jesus. It’s the band that made it all work. They got f— up together as a family.” — A.B.
9:27 p.m. Sheryl Crow instructs folks to put up their “land shark” fins before launching into Buffett’s tune of the same name. There were fins to the left, fins to the right and fins on the stage — Crow couldn’t resist joining in. — E.O.
9:35 p.m. After telling a story about the time a friend of his mistook Buffett for a plumber due at his house to fix a broken toilet, Jack Johnson sings “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” which he calls “the reason I kept playing music” after he learned the song at age 14. — M.W.
Dave Grohl
(Randall Michelson/Live Nation-Hewitt Silva)
9:39 p.m. It wouldn’t be a classic rock tribute show without Dave Grohl showing up to play something or other, so of course he’s back manning the Coral Reefer drum kit for Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” with Zac Brown, out for round two tonight. — A.B.
9:41 p.m. Dave Matthews describes his offering of “Lovely Cruise” — performed via video — as a “postcard.” Fittingly, his stripped-back acoustic rendition emanates the feeling of a beautifully chill day on an island beach, which is where he first met Buffett. — E.O.
9:45 p.m. Here to introduce the Eagles is Don Johnson, who recalls the time at Snowmass when Buffett cooked up a duck dish that smelled so good it cut through all the cocaine they were doing that night. “Aspen in the ‘80s,” he says. — M.W.
Don Henley
(Randall Michelson/Live Nation-Hewitt Silva)
9:48 p.m. The Eagles open not with a Buffett tune but with one of Don Henley’s that catches something of Buffett’s perpetually sun-tanned vibe: “The Boys of Summer.” — M.W.
9:50 p.m. “The Boys of Summer” is a neat choice because it name-checks the only act that comes close to rivaling the unique world-building that Buffett achieved: the Grateful Dead. — E.O.
9:59 p.m. We’re all thinking about Buffett, of course, but Vince Gill’s precision-geared vocals in “Take It to the Limit” also feel like a warm tribute to the Eagles’ Randy Meisner, who originally sang the song and who died last year. — M.W.
10:05 p.m. No clue what “In the City” has to do with a guy whose whole deal was finding a (comfortable) way out of the rat race, but damn if the Eagles don’t sound great right now. Invite Joe Walsh to everything, is my idea. — M.W.
Paul McCartney
(Randall Michelson/Live Nation-Hewitt Silva)
10:15 p.m. “Hollywood f—ing Bowl!” says Paul McCartney, who tells a story about being invited to one of Buffett’s places during “the last week of his life” to “sing a couple songs for Jimmy.” Buffett “was in a pretty bad way, but he still had that twinkle in his eye,” McCartney says. “Tonight I thought I’d sing one of those songs.” That’s his cue for a stately “Let It Be,” for which he brings out the Eagles — have these rock giants jammed together onstage before? — and which gets what looks like the entire place on its feet. — M.W.
10:20 p.m. If there is anything I learned tonight it is that Jimmy Buffett was a singularly unifying force. The ability to assemble Paul McCartney, Eric Church, Snoop Dogg and Pitbull on the same stage is a large enough feat, let alone calling each of them a friend. Tonight, the cast was diverse and the vibeage was off the charts. Turns out, Margaritaville is a special place. — E.O.
10:25 p.m. McCartney chugs a giant margarita onstage tonight to introduce the night’s sendoff. — A.B.
10:35 p.m. All the heavyweights are back onstage for a rousing, appropriately wobbly “Maragaritaville,” and there’s something very moving about the way this weird (and really very sad!) little party song has become the anthem it has to so many different types of people. And that’s a wrap for Buffett-palooza — except, perhaps, for Paul McCartney, who looks like his night is just getting started. — M.W.
