Eddie Money Finally Comes Clean About That ‘Shakin” Lyric
Eddie Money scored a Top 10 Mainstream Rock hit with "Shakin'," which appeared on 1982's No Control. But it's possible that it could have placed higher than No. 63 on the Hot 100 if he had removed a word that was forbidden from the airwaves.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Money recalled how he was able to slip the line "Her tits were shakin'" -- which appears at the 1:04 mark in the below video -- past his label.
"Nobody noticed it," he said. "And [my manager] Bill Graham was so, so pissed off at me because he said that could've been a Top 5 single, and 'You and your sophomoric fucking bullshit, now I can't get it on the radio.' But when I talked to people, they go, 'I loved it when you said that! Wow!'"
Often in those situations, the offending word would be edited out from the version that was shipped to radio, but Money said that didn't happen "because nobody caught it till the end. Yeah, I said it and I thought it was funny, but in the long run I wish I wouldn't have said it, because that record probably would've went double platinum. But I thought it was funny. ... I was high. I didn't give a shit. I said it. Who cares?"
Money also admitted that he wishes he didn't have to play one of his biggest hits, 1986's "Walk on Water," at every show. "I hate singing 'Na na na na na na na na na,'" he noted. "I feel really silly singing the song, but you gotta go out there and do the songs that they love. 'Na na na na na na na na na.' I mean, come on. You try doing that for 30 years in a row. It's not even a lyric. It was supposed to be a horn part, but the horn player never showed up, so I had to do it with my mouth."