Eddie Money

In September 2019, two of America’s most distinctive rock singers died within two days of each other. Ric Ocasek, leader of The Cars, had been as hip as they come, a new-wave icon and innovator. Eddie Money, by contrast, had never really been fashionable at any point in his long career, even when he was racking up million-selling hits at his peak in the 70s and 80s. He was one of the best of his generation, with a voice as soulful as it was gritty, but the songs he sang, mixing rock’n’roll, pop and R&B, were unpretentious and unashamedly mainstream. He was, as Rolling Stone stated with no little affection, “the patron saint of uncool”.

Born Edward Joseph Mahoney in Brooklyn, New York on March 21, 1949, he started singing in a number of local bands in his teens, and also briefly trained in the city’s police department, where his father