Whether Eddie Money's delivering corporate heavy metal (the title song and most of the first side of Life for the Taking), pinstripe soul ("Maybe I'm a Fool") or lean, three-button sagas of the street ("Nobody," "Maureen"), he opens up his sample case and gets right to the point.

Talk about your universals! From California ("Gimme Some Water" features death, horses, desperadoes and David Lindley) to Jersey (where it sure sounds like the Belmonts clapping time to "Maureen"); from the great, arid plains of Jimmy Lyon's cornfed, blues-based, bludgeon guitar to the bittersweet, open-ended, pitter-patter melodies of Philadelphia sissy-soul, Money's songs reach effortlessly for the lowest common denominator of every idiom. They can't help but satisfy. Tests show, computers don't lie, a thousand popular songs can't be wrong—these are the riffs you love to listen to.

Tubular steel, modular pop. Form follows function like a hit man pulling down an hourly wage. Life for the Taking is as efficient as a three-minute lay. Rock & roll stripped of all individuality (not to mention romance), except for one calculated glimpse of the star's vulnerable soul. In this case, though, the album's climactic ballad is a fantasy more revealing than endearing. In "Call on Me," Money's a machine without an off switch, a superstud who swears he never sleeps. He's had "women, ladies, little girls," but you know he won't be satisfied until he's had us all.

There's a message here. If you'd never eat at a place called Ma's and you avoid playing poker with men called Doc, you won't go looking for art from a man named Money. Or true stories or good rockin' either. (RS 288)

ARIEL SWARTLEY