“Two Tickets to Paradise” by Eddie Money

This past Friday we sadly lost Edward Joseph Mahoney, aka Eddie Money. He was a former NYC police officer trainee, and by all accounts one of the good guys of Rock and Roll.  Before his death, he was still recording and touring.

I got to see him some years ago with my wife and one of my best friends. He was performing at a free outdoor summer concert series. We thought it would be a lark to swing by and catch an old timer barley holding onto the notes and the past. We were wrong. Eddie, his band, and even his daughter Jesse put on a fantastic show and nailed his hits.

For most of us, “Two Tickets to Paradise” was a classic 70’s rock song that conjured images of island getaways. But when Eddie wrote it as a struggling musician in Berkeley California, his idea was to take his girlfriend on a greyhound bus to the Redwood forest.
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This version is the promotional single that rarely gets played on the air. It’s more direct and allows the lead guitarist to egregiously solo all over the vocals…  I don’t like it nearly as much as the album version, but I thought I would share it for those of you who may have never heard it.