| Jimmy Buffett – Remittance Man Lyrics | 3 years ago |
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I can tell you what it was about because I'm the granddaughter of the man whose story he's telling. It's definitely dramatized a bit, but to be frank, it's the fictionalized retelling of the drunken rants of a tragic gay man. My grandfather was conceived out of wedlock by a young college student, put up for adoption, and raised in an orphanage until he was 7. At age 7, a wealthy family from Michigan adopted him to replace a son that had drowned. They renamed the young boy, despite him growing up with his name, and abused him when he didn't live up to expectations. He was always an odd young man. To escape his family, he joined the Navy, but was soon dishonorably discharged after being caught with another sailor. This part of his life is a bit unclear to me, but after this he went home, he married my grandmother, moved to Florida, and had my mother. He struggled with alcoholism and when my mother was 4, he came out of the closet to his family and moved to Key West to live openly as a gay man. Here, his alcoholism and tendency to tell amazing stories about his life and wealthy adoptive family, made him quite well known in the Key West bar scene where he met Jimmy during his earliest days preforming in bars. My grandfather, Howard Paul, can be briefly read about in the discography for Barometer Soup. Though the detail about him being gay was left out due to it not being acceptable at the time it was written. |
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