Eddie Money (1949-2019)
Eddie Money (1949-2019)
Edward Joseph Mahoney was born into a large family of Irish
Catholics in Brooklyn. His parents were Dorothy Elizabeth (née Keller), a
homemaker, and Daniel Patrick Mahoney, a police officer. He grew up in
Levittown, New York, on Long Island, but also spent some teenage years in
Woodhaven, Queens. Money was a street singer since the age of 11. As a
teenager, he played in rock bands, in part to get dates from cheerleaders. He was thrown out of one high school for forging a report card. In 1967, he
graduated from Island Trees High School.
At the age of 18, he tried to follow in the footsteps of his
police officer grandfather, father, and brother as a New York City Police
Department trainee. However, after working as a clerk and typist, he left in
1968 to pursue a career in music, as the police did not allow him to grow
his hair long. “I couldn’t see myself in a police uniform for 20 years of my
life, with short hair,” he later said. His bandmates also fired him because
they did not want a police officer in the group. His father was not happy
with the decision to play music and tore the Jimi Hendrix posters from his
wall.
In 1968, Money moved to Berkeley, California. There, he
studied with vocal coach Judy Davis, and took on the stage name Eddie Money,
dropping a few letters from his name and sarcastically referencing the fact
that he was always broke. He supported himself by selling bell-bottoms.
Edward Joseph Mahoney (March 21, 1949 – September 13, 2019),
known professionally as Eddie Money, was an American rock singer and songwriter
who had success in the 1970s and 1980s.
Achievements:
11 Top 40 songs including "Baby Hold On",
"Two Tickets to Paradise", "Think I'm in Love",
"Shakin'", "Take Me Home Tonight", "I Wanna Go
Back", "Walk on Water", and "The Love in Your Eyes".
Money was known as a working-class rocker with a husky voice. In 1987, he
was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for
"Take Me Home Tonight".
Money became a regular performer at clubs in the San
Francisco Bay Area. After gaining the attention of Bill Graham, he
secured a recording contract with Columbia Records, releasing his debut album
in 1977. He charted with singles such as "Baby Hold On" and "Two
Tickets to Paradise", about visiting his girlfriend despite not having
money.
In 1978, Money opened for Santana at Boston Music Hall. The following year, he sang the bridge section on "I'm Alright", a
song written and performed by Kenny Loggins. In 2014, Money claimed that
Loggins had never given him credit for his contribution.
In 1982, Money took advantage of the MTV music video scene
with his humorous narrative videos for "Think I'm in Love", performed
at The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa, and "Shakin'". In the early
1980s, he appeared on The Midnight Special, Fridays, and Solid Gold. In 1978
and 1984, he appeared on American Bandstand.
Money's career began to decline following an unsuccessful
1983 album (Where's the Party?) and struggles with drug addiction. However,
he made a comeback in 1986 with the album Can't Hold Back, which received a
music recording certification of platinum. "Take Me Home
Tonight", a single from the album, peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot
100 chart in the United States. Money only agreed to perform the song—which
included a line from "Be My Baby", a song Ronnie Spector performed as
part of The Ronettes—after Spector agreed to sing the line herself. In 1987,
Money was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for
"Take Me Home Tonight". "I Wanna Go Back" and
"Endless Nights"—two other singles from the Can't Hold Back
album—peaked at No. 14 and No. 21, respectively.
In 1988, Money released Nothing to Lose, which featured the
Top 10 hit "Walk on Water" and the Top 40 hit "The Love in Your
Eyes".
Beginning in 1992, Money opened the summer concert season
for DTE Energy Music Theatre in Clarkston, Michigan. In 1996, he wrote the
theme music to Quack Pack, a Disney cartoon.
Money was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame
in 2008. In January 2010, he performed a medley of his hit singles during
the halftime performance at the Liberty Bowl.
Money wrote and performed original songs for the films
Americathon (1979), Over the Top, Back to the Beach (both 1987), and Kuffs
(1992), along with the television series Hardball (1989–1990).
In the three days following Money's death, fans streamed
"Take Me Home Tonight" more than 3.1 million times, which was an
increase of 349 percent compared to the previous three-day period. Fans also
streamed his other songs by 931 percent more than the three previous days.
Money made several screen appearances.
In 1997, he appeared in Wonderland, a documentary film about
Levittown, New York, where Money went to high school. In the film, he said if
he had "two tickets to paradise, I'd probably get back to
Levittown".
Money played a fictionalized version of himself on a 1999
episode of Season 5 of The Drew Carey Show. In the episode, he had been Mimi's
first husband early in his career and they never made their divorce
official. In May 2002, he played himself on an episode of the sitcom The
King of Queens.
In October 2011, Money became the host of “Money in the
Morning”, a radio show on WSRV. The gig lasted about three months. He
appeared in a 2012 GEICO insurance commercial in which he is depicted as a
travel agency owner who sings "Two Tickets to Paradise" to a family
that wants tickets for a vacation.
In 2018, Money appeared in episode 6 of The Kominsky Method
as a fictionalized version of himself who is indebted to the Internal Revenue
Service and portrays the character "Freddie Money" in an eponymous
tribute act at a casino to avoid further tax problems.
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