This song is inspired not so much by actual counterfeiters, as by movies about them—and, I think, especially the Burt Lancaster comedy "Mister 880", based on the real-life case of Edward Mueller.
Mueller didn't counterfeit millions of dollars, and he didn't get caught trying to pass bills to a bank and take off in a Jeep—but everything else fits. He was "living simple, and trying to get by", and failing. As a junk collector, he'd accumulated some old but professional printing equipment, which he installed in the basement, and used to start printing money. He stored his ink in jelly jars. He began printing just a few dollars at a time to pay his expenses, making sure never to pass bills at the same shop twice. His counterfeiting was terrible (he didn't even spell "Washington" right), and at one point in either the Burt Lancaster movie or the other movie based on Mueller but gender-swapped that I forget the name of, one of the shopkeepers calls it trash and compares it to grass. He got away with it for years just because a guy passing $1 at one shop at $2 at another shop a week later just isn't the Secret Service's top priority.
Also, I love the line "those gangster presidents". It just doesn't have the same connotations post-Ice Cube as it did in 1983, when "dead presidents" was still ironic retro-1940s slang used by investment-banker yuppies.
This song is inspired not so much by actual counterfeiters, as by movies about them—and, I think, especially the Burt Lancaster comedy "Mister 880", based on the real-life case of Edward Mueller.
Mueller didn't counterfeit millions of dollars, and he didn't get caught trying to pass bills to a bank and take off in a Jeep—but everything else fits. He was "living simple, and trying to get by", and failing. As a junk collector, he'd accumulated some old but professional printing equipment, which he installed in the basement, and used to start printing money. He stored his ink in jelly jars. He began printing just a few dollars at a time to pay his expenses, making sure never to pass bills at the same shop twice. His counterfeiting was terrible (he didn't even spell "Washington" right), and at one point in either the Burt Lancaster movie or the other movie based on Mueller but gender-swapped that I forget the name of, one of the shopkeepers calls it trash and compares it to grass. He got away with it for years just because a guy passing $1 at one shop at $2 at another shop a week later just isn't the Secret Service's top priority.
Also, I love the line "those gangster presidents". It just doesn't have the same connotations post-Ice Cube as it did in 1983, when "dead presidents" was still ironic retro-1940s slang used by investment-banker yuppies.