How to Play Margaritaville on Guitar

Margaritavilleis the defining song of Jimmy Buffet‘s career. Reaching #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1977, it also hit #1 on easy listening, and #13 on country charts as well. The song is also ranked 234th on the RIAA list of  Songs of the Century. The song was a mix of two subjects that included a drink he found at Lung’s Cocina del Sur restaurant in Austin, Texas, and his observance of the first wave of tourism into Key West, Florida. It forever made him the voice of those wanting to live the island live. To learn how to play Margaritaville on guitar, all you need to know are three easy chords and steady strum.

  1. Listen to the song in the video above so that you remember how it goes.
  2. Get the Margaritaville guitar chords and lyrics. This version shows you an A7 chord, but that is optional. You can just play an A chord in it’s place if you wish.The fingerings you need to know are for the standard open D, A, A7 (optional) and G chords. Note that on the original record, they sped up to the tape, so that the song sounds like it’s in E flat (Eb). But if you see Buffet in concert you can see that he plays it in D. Guitar Chord Diagram with Chords for
  3. Watch the video below to see how to play the chords and chord progression. It is good to use a metronome (as found in the eMedia Guitar Toolkit) to help you keep a steady tempo.

Watch this video from eMedia Interactive Rock Guitar, which uses the eMedia Animated Fretboard to make it even easier for you to see how to change between the D and G chords.

Rock-Guitar-v1-72dpieMedia Interactive Rock Guitar also helps you master common guitar techniques like palm muting and barre chords, which are used in the middle section of Free Fallin’ and in many other rock, pop and country songs. It also includes Jam tracks to help you learn lead guitar and other great guitar songs like Tired of Waiting for You and You Really Got Me (Kinks),  All Right Now (Free) and others.

Intermediate Version

If you would like to learn how to play Free Fallin’ on guitar with the same chord voicings as Tom Petty, then you will need to use slightly more difficult chord fingerings. His version has the guitar with a capo at the first fret and uses the E, Aadd9, and Bsus4 chords. as seen in the video below.