By Claudia Gardner:
It might seem laughable today, but 25 years ago when members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force stationed in Negril’s West End, mistakenly rained bullets on a planeload of people, including Margaritaville’s Jimmy Buffet and superstar Bono of the group U2, none of the terrified occupants found it funny.
The funny part might be, looking back quarter of a century later, the fact that: the police were poor shots, as of the estimated 100-plus gunshots the lawmen fired, only seven were able to hit the slow-moving seaplane.
The second funny thing, is that out of the January 1996 incident came Buffet’s song Jamaica Mistaica, an amusing ballad in which the American singer, songwriter, author and businessman chronicled what happened during the melee and what transpired afterwards, and the fact that the track became the most played song out of his 1990s repertoire.
The seaplane had reportedly been carrying Buffett, Bono and his wife Ali and their two children, Island Records producer Chris Blackwell, and co-pilot Bill Dindy. They group had flown into Negril for a holiday.
According to Buffet in his autobiography, A Pirate Looks at Fifty, when he and Bono safely taxied in the Negril waters “where they had come for some jerk chicken” they came under a hail of bullets from the police, who thought that his World war II twin-propeller Grumman HU-16 Albatross, bearing the name Hemisphere Dancer, was a ganja-smuggling plane.
Some of the bullets which connected, shattered the windshield and damaged the craft’s fuselage.
Buffet, well-known for poking fun at authority figures in song, hilariously describes the gunfire in the track. Taking aim at the police he crooned:
“It was a beautiful day, the kind you want to toast
We were tree top flyin’ movin’ west along the coast
Then we landed in the water, just about my favorite thrill
When some asshole started firing as we taxied to Negril”
The police was again the brunt of the jokes when he added:
“They shot from the lighthouse, they shot from highway
They shot from the top of the cliff, they had all gone haywire
We’re catchin’ fire, and there wasn’t even a spliff”
What happened afterwards, according to Buffet, was a profuse apology from the then-ruling PJ Patterson-led administration, as highlighted in the song which appeared on Buffet’s 1996 album Banana Wind.
“Well, you should have seen their faces when they finally realized
We were not some coked up cowboy sporting guns and alibis,” Buffet sang, again referencing the police.
Then it was the Government and by extension the Jamaica Tourist Board’s turn to be jeered in the song:
“Well, the word got out all over the island
Friends, strangers, they were all apologizin’
Some thought me crazy foe being way too nice
But it’s just another shitty day in paradise
Come back, come back back to Jamaica
Don’t chu know we made a big mistaica
We’d be so sad if you told us good-bye
And we promise not to shoot you out of the sky’
In an article which was published in the Belfast Telegraph, Bono described the incident as terrifying. The article noted that the U2 singer, his wife Ali and their children Jordan and Eve, then aged just six and three, “were lucky to escape with their lives after 100 rounds of bullets were fired at them”.
“These boys were shooting all over the place. I felt as if we were in the middle of a James Bond movie — only this was real. It was absolutely terrifying and I honestly thought we were all going to die,” he explained in the article.
Bono was so shocked that he and his family left Jamaica almost immediately.
Another article published in the Chicago Tribune presented the incident from the perspective of Buffet’s pilot, Jim Powell.
According to the Tribune, the Cheeseburger in Paradise singer had failed to heed Powell’s warnings, an action which almost cost him his life.
The newspaper reported Powell as saying that the events surrounding the `Jamaica Mistaica’ incident led to the only disagreement he has ever had with the business mogul.
Powell related that Jimmy had wanted to land on Jamaica’s north coast. However, the pilot, having looked at the weather map said he knew the water would be too rough for Buffet’s seaplane to land and that as a consequence, they would have had to “make alternate, last-minute arrangements”.
“I didn’t have any approval for alternate arrangements,” Powell is quoted as saying.
In addition, Powell told the Tribune that he was concerned that the amphibious seaplane, would be confiscated by the Jamaican authorities, and informed Buffett that more research was needed before embarking on the voyage.
“Jimmy was saying, `Come on, let’s go have fun,’ and I didn’t want any part of it at that point. I felt responsible, so I decided not to go,” Powell told the newspaper.
Two days later, Powell heard on the radio that Buffett’s plane, as Powell had surmised, was not able to land on the north, had deviated to the west, landed off the coast of Negril and had been shot up.
The Buffalo News also looked at the incident from a humourous standpoint similar to Jamaica Mistica, noting that “only Jimmy Buffett could get a funny song out of being mistaken for a Jamaican drug trafficker and shot at by police”.
