Life for the Taking

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Professional reviews
Life for the Taking

Studio album by Eddie Money
Released	1978
Genre	Rock / Pop
Length	40:23
Label	Columbia
Producer(s)	Bruce Botnick
All Music Guide
Eddie Money chronology
Eddie Money (1977)	Life for the Taking (1978)	Playing for Keeps (1980)

Life for the Taking is Eddie Money's second album, released in 1978. This effort, along with Money's 1st and 3rd albums, formed a nice trio typifying the bands early style.

It's modest AM radio hit, "Maybe I'm a Fool," was however, not exactly characteristic of most of the other tunes on this guitar laden effort. The opening track, "Life.." is lyrically the most serious in Money's catalog - though a bit too long to be cast as a single. In addition to "Maybe..", listeners did occasionally hear "Gimme Some Water" on FM. Again, the most notable attribute of this and the 1977-80 trio generally speaking is the distinctive guitar stylings of Jimmy Lyon. That early phase sound rides triumphant in "Can't Keep a Good Man Down,", and a bit of the 1st album's feel resurfaces on the excellent "Nobody" - which is one of three songs on this disk that is credited to one of the prominent songwriters of that earlier album. "Rock and Roll the Place" seems a very near relative (if not identical twin) in sound construction to 1977's "Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star."

Since "Life.." followed immediately after the commercially successful debut album, it did get some exposure. Two years later after this second effort the group would follow up with the outstanding "Playing for Keeps". One wonders what would have happened had the band held to this early sound for a few more years. Other upcoming albums, "No Control" and "Where's the Party," each featured more variety in song construction, more synth additives, but began the move away from the DNA of the 3 early albums.