The Eddie Money Story

From the desk of "Drunk and Stupid":

In light of Whitney’s post about Eddie Money (kind of) yesterday afternoon, the good people at G:TB have asked me to recount my now (quasi) famous Eddie Money story. Now, I know that most great stories have some kind of descriptive title like “The Party Pooper” or “Roberto made out with a man” so you’re probably a little skeptical about a tale with a title as plain as “The Eddie Money Story”. However, I assure you that once you’ve read this story you’ll realize why it needs no further explanation within the title. This is THE definitive Eddie Money story. Well, at least for my…alright, that would’ve been extremely cheesy.

Anyway, the story takes place about 6 years ago in Ft. Lauderdale, FL at the local horse track, Gulfstream Park. In addition to holding daily races, Gulfstream runs a concert series each spring weekend over a two to three month period. These concerts are free to the public and often feature musical acts on the downside of their respective careers such as Cheap Trick, The Allman Brothers, or in this case, Eddie Money. During this time I had a friend (we’ll call her Melanie) working at Gulfstream whose job it was to fulfill the conditions of each act’s rider. The main responsibility of this usually boiled down to picking up specifically requested booze or food and delivering it backstage to that day’s musical guest whilst they awaited showtime. This particular day was no different as Melanie was sent off to pick up assorted foodstuffs as well as a few bottles of liquor for Mr. Money and his bandmates. However, since Eddie was the marquee name he had a separate rider (and trailer) from that of his bandmates.

Once Melanie had finished purchasing the various requested items, she returned to Gulfstream in order to deliver them to their respective owners. She quickly made her way to the trailer for Eddie’s band (forgive me, I have no idea what they call themselves) and dropped off the items as they had requested. Shortly thereafter, Melanie walked up to Eddie’s trailer and knocked on the door. No answer. After waiting a few seconds, Melanie once again knocked on the trailer door. Still no answer. At this point, Melanie grabbed the door handle and discovered that the trailer door was unlocked. After knocking one last time, Melanie assumed Eddie was not on the premises and proceeded to open the door to Eddie Money’s trailer. As Melanie walked in with an armful of groceries, she realized that Eddie Money was, in fact, present in his trailer. To be more specific, Eddie Money was sitting on the couch in his trailer with his arm fully rigged up and a needle sticking out of one of the veins in his arm. Not surprisingly, Melanie freaked out. Though she doesn’t remember specifically, she says she muttered something to the effect of, “Oh God, I’m sorry” before she dropped the bag of groceries at Eddie’s feet and ran out of his trailer as fast as humanly possible.

Kind of gives “Two Tickets to Paradise” a different feel, doesn’t it?