Two Tickets to Paradise (1978)

Performer: Eddie Money                                        Writer: Eddie Money
Highest US Chart Position: #22                              Label: Columbia Records
Musicians: Eddie Money, Jimmy Lyon, Randy Nichols, Lonnie Turner and Gary Mallaber

When I was in high school my dad thought it would be a good idea for me to take a public speaking class. Unlike me, most of the kids in the class were on the school debate team, and the teacher was the advisor of the team. One of our early speeches was to do a persuasive speech, and I have no idea what I did for mine, but I will never forget the speech that one of my classmates did. She was a petite girl with long, black hair. We would call her style of dress Goth today, but then it was just eccentric. Anyway, the intent of her speech was to persuade all of us that the album Eddie Money, was the greatest rock and roll album of all time. As it turns out, it wasn’t very persuasive, but through no fault of hers. Back in high school I didn’t have a lot of money and my purchase of music was almost entirely dependent upon hits. Because I already had two 45s from that album, in essence I already owned four out of the ten tracks from the LP, and so there was little chance I was going to spend more money on songs I hadn’t heard. Had I not owned those two singles, however, there’s a good chance I would have purchased it because I loved the hits. “Baby Hold On” was a medium tempo tune that had a deep and relentless groove, with lyrics that alluded to “Que Sera, Sera.” But the standout track, the real rocker, was “Two Tickets to Paradise,” yet another song that should have been a number one and still mystifies me as to why it wasn’t.

The song starts out with Jimmy Lyon’s overdubbed harmony guitars playing quarter-note triplets on three as a pickup into the full band hitting on one. Lyons continues with the harmony melody for six bars of the eight-bar intro, hits and holds on the downbeat of bar seven, and then Randy Nichols hits the organ on the eighth measure, along with drum fills by Gary Mallaber, heading into the verse. Eddie Money comes in with the verse, about taking his girl away on an impromptu vacation, with the addition of Alan Pasqua on piano. At the end of the verse is a sort of vamp, with Money singing “waiting so long” and Lyon responding with the harmony guitars. This leads powerfully into the chorus with the band accenting the first syllable of each of the words of the title and continuing with that rhythm four times until it slides back into the second verse and chorus. At this point Lyon’s takes over with a wonderfully intricate solo, where he once again harmonizes with himself all the way through. Money comes in with the third verse, but this time he provides background vocals singing “whoa, whoa, whoa.” The guitar heading into the third chorus climbs quickly up the neck and solos during the chorus. The chorus repeats one more time heading into the end, with Money holding out the word “paradise,” along with the organ and a splash of cymbals.

Eventually I got rid of all my old records and tapes, ushering in my own digital era in music. But this caused some real disappointments for me along the way as I realized that many of the songs I had taken for granted, weren’t available digitally. One was “Two Tickets to Paradise.” Every CD that had the song on it, from the original LP to his greatest hits package, had a completely different version of the song, most notably absent was the incredibly distinctive harmony guitar fills by Jimmy Lyon. For me, it was as if half the song was missing, and for years I never liked to listen to it because of that. Finally, in the era of illegal downloads I thought I might have a chance, but still couldn’t find it despite exhaustive Google searches. Then one day, on an obscure music blog, I managed to find an unbroken link to a file sharing site and, low and behold, I had the song back. Fortunately the situation has been remedied legally, with the 45 version appearing at last on the CD Playlist: The Very Best of Eddie Money. The song only reached number twenty-two in the charts, entering the Hot 100 at the end of June and staying on the charts all summer, finally peaking in early September. The B-side of the single was a very nice medium tempo blues called “Don’t Worry,” with Money playing the sax. The single version of “Two Tickets to Paradise” is one of my favorite songs of that year, maybe not the greatest song of all time, but definitely in the running.