Jimmy Buffett’s life evokes photographs of boozy chill-outs by the seaside and a sure carefree calm, however in 1996 the singer’s seaplane got here below a hail of gunfire in a dramatic encounter with the Jamaican authorities that impressed a tune.

Buffett’s tune “Jamaica Mistaica” is a laid-back account of a dramatic near-death expertise during which his airplane, Hemisphere Dancer, was mistaken by the Jamaican authorities for a drug-smuggling plane.

It’s one of many many tales which have resurfaced after his demise on Friday.

Whereas on tour on Jan. 16, 1996, Buffett, an avid pilot, had simply landed at an airport in Negril, Jamaica, accompanied by Paul David Hewson, higher often known as Bono, of the band U2, when a sudden burst of photographs rang out, in keeping with one in every of Buffett’s Margaritaville web sites.

“We flew the airplane in, received off, and because the airplane took off to go get gasoline, we had been surrounded by a Jamaican S.W.A.T. workforce,” Buffett mentioned in a 1996 Rolling Stone interview. “I assumed it was a joke till I heard the gunfire.”

As Bono recalled, in keeping with Radio Margaritaville: “These boys had been capturing all over. I felt as if we had been in the course of a James Bond film.”

“I actually thought we had been all going to die,” he added.

Additionally on board the HU-16 Grumman Albatross airplane was Bono’s spouse, Ali, their two younger youngsters, and Chris Blackwell, the founding father of Island Data.

Later that yr, Buffett launched his album “Banana Wind,” during which he recounts the story on “Jamaica Mistaica”:

Nearly to lose my mood as I endeavored to clarify
We had solely come for rooster we weren’t a ganja airplane
Nicely, you must have seen their faces after they lastly realized
We weren’t some coked-up cowboy sporting weapons and alibis.

“Like all issues, it made for a very good tune,” Buffett instructed The Spokesman-Evaluate in a 1996 interview.

“I do know that there are occasions in my life the place I most likely ought to have been shot at for lots worse conduct,” he added. “However on this explicit occasion, I used to be harmless. Not even a spliff.”

The airplane, now an artifact of the Buffett universe, was struck by bullets however no one was damage.

He later acquired an apology from the Jamaican authorities, in keeping with an MTV Information report on the time.

“Some individuals mentioned, ‘God, you can have sued them, you can have sued the federal government,’” Buffett mentioned in The Spokesman-Evaluate interview. “However I went, ‘No, it’s most likely karma. We’re even now.’”