Eddie Money, who was one of the major voices of the 80s, died on Friday. He had been in poor health for a while and had recently been diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer. He was 70 years old and he will be missed. He leaves behind a legacy of music that epitomized a decade.
I Wanna Go Back was not originally recorded by Eddie Money. The song was first performed by a band called Billy Satellite. Their version was released in 1984 and was their first song to place on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Eddie Money’s cover version, which featured backing vocals by Marilyn Martin, came out in 1986 and was included on his Can’t Hold Back album. Both the song and the video were released as a follow-up to Money’s monster hit, Take Me Home Tonight.
The song is about a man thinking about the past and wishing that he could go back to the way that things were. The video features Eddie revisiting his old high school. (I don’t know if that’s actually Eddie’s high school in the video or not.) The scenes of Eddie wistfully remembering the past are interspersed with scenes of Eddie and his band playing for an enthusiastic audience so maybe the present wasn’t as bad as the song suggests.
Enjoy!
