Monday September 12, 2022 “Two Tickets to Paradise” Eddie Money
We had a week of numbers a while back for those keeping track and we started with the obvious and unclever (?) number one so I thought let’s move ahead this week and jump all the way to number two and what better place to start than with two tickets to paradise.
Eddie Money grew up listening to groups like The Rascals and Dion & The Belmonts and one thing he learned from them about songwriting was that words didn't have to rhyme exactly, they just had to come close and sound right. So when he hit on "paradise" as a close-enough rhyme for "tonight," he was on his way.
Raised in Brooklyn, New York, Eddie Money (Mahoney) tried becoming a police officer like his father and brother. It didn't take ("it was a little too militant for me"), so Eddie took off for San Francisco and enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he met a sorority girl, and fell in love.
“I wanted to take her on a bus ride up to the redwoods. 'Two Tickets To Paradise' could be anywhere: could be Hawaii, could be anywhere. It's a state of mind."
Money never did get to take this girl to paradise. She dumped him before he could…bet she regretted that when he became Eddie Money.
In 2012, Money appeared in a Geico commercial where he played a very enthusiastic travel agent, singing "Two Tickets To Paradise" to a family whose trip isn't for another month. The tagline: “Geico makes you happier than Eddie Money running a travel agency."
Stay safe and well…and am actually looking at two tickets to paradise which turns out to be in New Jersey.