CD Stuck in Drive and Won't Start Up

First of all, this is my son's G5 iMac who is at college, and I am trying to do tech support over the phone.
When the power is turned on, the folder with a question mark flashes (meaning damaged OS and/or hard drive) and stays there. My son tells me he always sees the question mark folder momentarily at startup, which suggests to me that he does not have his startup drive properly selected. There is also a music CD in the drive which he cannot get out. I guess iMacs don't have that little paper clip eject hole any more. The CD will not eject when holding down the mouse button on startup. I'm guessing that's because it's not finishing the startup process.
I think it may be possible that since the startup drive has not been selected, it is getting confused with the CD being in the drive trying to boot up off of that. I also think that if he can get the CD out, it may just start up as it usually does. If it does, then I can talk him through selecting a startup drive.
So my question is, how do you eject a CD from an iMac that won't start up?

MGW wrote:
Try having him put the computer face down on a soft towel and turning it on as much as it will go, and pressing the eject key quickly.
Let us know if he has any success.
Has he tried starting holding down the Option key, which will let him select the start up disk?
I didn't think about the Option key. But that did not work. He just gets arrows that point at nothing, no hard disk icon or anything else on the screen. Clicking either the left or right arrow does nothing. Which is now making me think it really is a hard drive problem and the stuck CD is not relevant.
And the eject key does nothing.
Thanks.

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