He wrote “Two Tickets to Paradise,” but he never wrote a traffic ticket.
On Friday night, the NYPD cleared up the mystery of whether rocker Eddie Money was ever a cop, as he’d sometimes claimed: He wasn’t.
But the rocker was, briefly, a trainee, a police spokeswoman said of Money, who died in Los Angeles on Friday at age 70.
“Eddie Money served in the capacity of a police trainee,” Sgt. Mary Frances O’Donnell told The Post. “He was never appointed to the rank of Police Officer. The NYPD offers their condolences to his family.”
Over the years, the rocker, who was born Edward Mahoney in Brooklyn, has sometimes claimed in interviews that his first career was as a cop with the NYPD back in the late ’60s or early ’70s — but he’d also claimed he was a training dropout.
His official website says he served two years as an NYPD officer before making it big in rock-n-roll.
“I’m proud of the fact that I served in the police department,” he said in an interview with rock historian John Beaudin posted on Rockhistorymusic.com.
Earlier Friday — before officials cleared up that he’d only ever been a trainee — the NYPD’s Counterterrorism squad even tweeted out it’s condolences to a fallen veteran.
Money was more forthcoming in recent interviews.
He told Music Recall magazine in 2013 that as a trainee, “I ended up typing the roll calls.”
And he joked to the New Times Broward-Palm Beach in 2015 that his cop father was so disappointed, it bugged him for years, even after Money made the big time.
“I played Madison Square Garden with Santana and Cyndi Lauper and my father comes to the show and was still pissed off I quit the police,” he said.
“Can you believe that s–t? He thought rock and roll was a fly-by-night job.”
Last March, he joked to The Tolucan Times in LA that he’d only made it as far as the Police Academy waiting list when he got cold feet.
“I couldn’t see myself in a police uniform for 20 years of my life, with short hair,” he quipped.
Additional reporting by Craig McCarthy
