The hilarious advice James Brown gave to Eddie Murphy: “The government’s gonna take your money”
One of the most iconic and influential figures in modern music, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for any aspiring stars to take advice from James Brown without questioning his words of wisdom any further.
However, as a superstar in his own right, Eddie Murphy didn’t end up taking it on board. That was probably for the best, considering the ‘Godfather of Soul’ proposed something that was every bit as labour-intensive as it was a little on the deranged side.
After bursting onto the scene as a Saturday Night Live cast member in the early 1980s, Murphy wasted no time at all in becoming a world-famous A-lister. Alongside his sketch comedy, his legendary stand-up routines and box office-busting adventures on the big screen made him an era-defining performer before he’d even left his 20s, which inevitably made him a very rich man.
Like many actors who find fame very early on, though, chasing the almighty dollar eventually got the better of Murphy, who had to take a step back from acting to reassess his priorities after headlining one too many commercial disasters and critical calamities. Not that he was ever broke, but had he heeded Brown’s advice, he would have ended up with much dirtier hands than he did in a literal sense.
One of Murphy’s most famous SNL skits came when he played the soul favourite in ‘James Brown’s Celebrity Hot Tub Party’, which the subject took in good humour. When they met backstage after one of his gigs, the latter indicated that the former should be much more hands-on with his finances.
“I went to see him, and he was backstage,” he told Jimmy Fallon. “He had the curlers in the head, and he said, ‘When are you gonna start working clean? You gotta stop doing all that cursing. And you gotta make sure you get your money, any money you got, and bury it in the woods.'”
When Murphy queried why he needed to withdraw all of his funds and plant them six feed under, Brown had his reasons. “The government’s gonna take your money,” he said. “If you have it in a bank, the government will take your money. Get you a piece of land, and you bury that money in the woods.”
Understandably, Murphy opined that the government was equally capable of seizing land as it was money. “Well, they won’t know where the money is,” came Brown’s response, which was a logical-if-flawed one.
It was in Murphy’s best interests not to take Brown at his word when the ‘Godfather of Soul’ had repeatedly faced issues over his own unpaid taxes, a sum that ran into millions of dollars over several separate incidents. Then again, maybe he owed them a lot more, and the government never knew because he kept a slush fund buried in the woods.
