The Pirate Edition
by Scott Atwell
Learn more at BuffettBackstories.com
Phil Clark was immortalized in song by Jimmy Buffett, but "A Pirate Looks at Forty" belies his privileged past. This new edition of Buffett Backstories features a 9,000-word chapter on the life and times of Phillips Clark, providing a fascinating glimpse into his reinvention as a pirate of the Caribbean. Author Scott Atwell also adds new backstories for three classic Buffett tunes: Life Is Just a Tire Swing, Pascagoula Run, and Johnny’s Rhum.
Former Buffett tour manager Bob “Lipbalm” Liberman provides the foreword, and the new song additions round out a list of fifty backstories that include Railroad Lady, I Have Found Me a Home, Death of an Unpopular Poet, Cuban Crime of Passion, He Went to Paris, Grapefruit Juicy Fruit, Peanut Butter Conspiracy, Ballard of Spider John, Why Don’t We Get Drunk, Pencil Thin Mustache, Come Monday, The Wino and I Know, God’s Own Drunk, A Pirate Looks at Forty, Nautical Wheelers, Tin Cup Chalice, Captain and the Kid, Something So Feminine About a Mandolin, Woman Going Crazy on Caroline Street, My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes, Margaritaville, In the Shelter, Miss You So Badly, Son of a Son of a Sailor, Cheeseburger in Paradise, Coast of Marseilles, Volcano, Chanson Pour Les Petits Enfants, Fins, It’s My Job, Little Miss Magic, Growing Older But Not Up, One Particular Harbor, Twelve Volt Man, Last Mango in Paris, Gypsies in the Palace, If the Phone Doesn’t Ring, When the Coast is Clear, That’s What Living is to Me, Changing Channels, Love in the Library, Everybody’s Got a Cousin in Miami, The Night I Painted the Sky, Jamaica Mistaica, It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere, Bubbles Up.
Curious Conch storyteller
In Key West, Florida, grown men can live their entire lives answering to names like Mockingbird, Jungle Rat, and Bow Wow. Stroll the city’s venerable cemetery, perched on the island’s highest peak—Solaris Hill—at 17 feet above sea level, and you will note that many have carried nicknames to their graves, a small slice of the town’s culture etched in granite. The southernmost city is a city of nicknames—or at least it was. Scott Atwell earned his moniker as a teenager in the mid-1970s after volunteering to work for a sports news program on hometown radio station WKWF (call letters that stand for Wonderful Key West Florida). The young lad’s penchant for efficiently gathering final scores along the Little League Baseball circuit impressed one of the official scorekeepers (Brooks Cathey), who likened him to a “news flash.” Presto, the “Flash” was fixed into the Key West vernacular. Atwell continued to pursue sports casting and eventually became an anchor for Tallahassee, Florida’s CBS affiliate, where he covered many of Florida State University’s legendary athletes and served as a fill-in co-host of the Bobby Bowden TV show. Later, he went to work for FSU in public relations and then served a decade as the university’s chief alumni officer. Atwell earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Miami (where he was drafted from the sports information office in 1980 to serve as the junior varsity’s backup quarterback) and a Master’s degree from FSU (where he was not asked to suit up). After a 35-year hiatus, the “Key West Flash” returned to his island home and the local radio airwaves, hosting a program of exclusive Jimmy Buffett music, where each week he illuminates the origins of one song. Atwell gathered those stories in book form and on the 50th anniversary of the singer’s arrival in Key West, self-published “Buffett Backstories—Fifty Years, Fifty Songs.” One day, he will be buried in the Atwell family’s cemetery plot, where you will find him listed under the nickname “Flash.”