Remembering Rocker Eddie Money
The Irish Catholic, Edward Joseph Mahoney was born March 21st, 1949 in Brooklyn, New York. He would grow up on Long Island & become a New York City Police trainee in the NYPD, like his father. But after just two years, he left the NYPD, moved to Berkley, California & became Eddie Money.
After playing the San Francisco club circuit, he finally got a record deal with help from non other than, Bill Graham in the middle seventies. By the late seventies, he became a regular on rock & roll radio with the hits "Baby Hold On" "Two Tickets to Paradise". By the early eighties he was a star, his hits continued as did his successful music videos. "I Think I'm In Love" followed by the great hard rock classic "Shakin".
The video featured Apollonia, who would soon be famous with Price's band in Puple Rain. She replaced Vanity, Nicky Sixx of Motley Crues ex girlfriend, but that's another story.The record company hid the actual lyrics of "Shakin" a cover up for years. After the line 'She was doing 80 & she slammed on the brakes. Got so high we had to pull to the side".
The lyrics were originally meant to say "We did some shaking till the middle of the night"But Money recently came clean & said we were right, the words we thought we heard all these years were slipped in. "Her t*ts were shakin till the middle of the night".
Quotes: Eddie Money:" Nobody noticed it & my manager, Bill Graham was so pissed off & me, because he said it could have been a top 5 hit". But when I talk to people, they go 'I loved it when you said that! Wow!"
But one of the reasons he did slip the dirty word into his song was because he was high. At that point he began a battle with drug addiction, which hurt his career for a few years. He beat his demons & realized (in his words) he didn't need drugs for his quick wit.
In 1986 he teamed up with the original rock & roll bad girl, Ronnie Spector. Spector who also needed a career boost, did the a cameo duet with Money "Take Me Home Tonight". The song & video got massive airplay & hit #4 on the Billboard charts.
Money, an all around nice guy with rock star humor, continued with four more top forty hits into the 1990s. He would continue to tour, do musical soundtracks, appear on television shows & commercials, most notably a GEICO commercial where he sings "Two Tickets". In 2018 he even had a reality show with his family called Real Money.
He sings "Shakin" as Arthur asks with a dumfounded look on his face, who is this guy?
In a 2018 routine check up he was diagnosed with stage four, esophageal cancer.
He & his wife made the public announcement in the summer of 2019. He had to stop treatments due to heart valve issues, that kept him in the hospital for three months.
Eddie was married to his wife, Laurie for thirty years. They have five children.
Rock on Eddie!!!