Tom Lehrer

Thomas Andrew "Tom" Lehrer (born April 9, 1928) is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician. He also lectured on mathematics and musical theater.

Lehrer is best known for the pithy, humorous songs he recorded in the 1950s and 60s. His work often parodied popular song forms, notably in "The Elements", where he sets the names of the chemical elements to a tune from Gilbert and Sullivan. Lehrer's earlier work frequently dealt with trivial subject matter, but he also produced a number of songs dealing with the social and political issues of the day, particularly when he went on to write for the TV show That Was The Week That Was.

Biography

Musical career

Before attending college, Lehrer graduated from the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut. As an undergraduate student at Harvard University, he began to write comic songs to entertain his friends, including "Fight Fiercely, Harvard" (1945). Those songs later became (in a joking reference to a leading scientific journal, The Physical Review) The Physical Revue. Influenced mainly by musical theater, his style consisted of parodying various forms of popular song. For example, his appreciation of list songs led him to set the names of the chemical elements to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Major-General's Song", the resulting song has been played in chemistry classes in the UK.

Inspired by the success of his performances of his songs, he paid for some studio time to record an album, Songs by Tom Lehrer, which he sold by mail order. Self-published and unpromoted, the album, which included the macabre ("I Hold Your Hand in Mine"), the mildly risqué ("Be Prepared"), and the mathematical ("Lobachevsky"), became a success via word of mouth. With a cult hit, he embarked on a series of concert tours and released a second album, which came in two versions: the songs were the same but More Songs by Tom Lehrer was studio-recorded, while An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer was recorded live in concert.

Lehrer's major break into the United Kingdom came as a result of the citation accompanying an honorary degree given to Princess Margaret, where she cited musical tastes as "catholic, ranging from Mozart to Tom Lehrer". This produced significant interest in his works, and helped secure distributors for his material. Ironically, it was in the UK where his music ended up more popular due to the proliferation of university newspapers referring to the material, and the willingness of the BBC to play his songs on the radio (something that was a rarity in the USA).

By the early 1960s, Lehrer had retired from touring (which he intensely disliked) and was employed as the resident songwriter for the U.S. edition of That Was The Week That Was (TW3), a satirical TV show. An increased proportion of his output became overtly political, or at least topical, on subjects such as pollution ("Pollution"), Vatican II ("The Vatican Rag"), race relations ("National Brotherhood Week"), education ("New Math"), American militarism ("Send the Marines"), World War III nostalgia ("So Long, Mom", premiered by Steve Allen), and nuclear proliferation ("Who's Next?" and "MLF Lullaby"). He also wrote a song which satirized the alleged amorality of Wernher von Braun. A selection of these songs was released in the album That Was The Year That Was.

The record deal with Reprise Records for the That Was The Year That Was album also gave Reprise distribution rights for Lehrer's earlier recordings as Lehrer wanted to shut down his own Lehrer Records. The Reprise issue of Songs by Tom Lehrer was a stereo re-recording. This version was not issued on CD, but the songs were issued on the live Tom Lehrer Revisited on CD instead.

Departure from the scene

There is an urban legend that Lehrer gave up political satire when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger in 1973. He did say that the awarding of the prize to Kissinger made political satire obsolete, but has denied that he stopped doing satire as a form of protest, and asserts that he had stopped doing satire several years earlier. Another urban legend held that he had been sued for libel by the subject of one of his songs, Wernher Von Braun, and been forced to relinquish all of his royalty income to Von Braun. However, Lehrer firmly denied this in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. (He had also mentioned Frank Fontaine and Jerry Lewis in "National Brotherhood Week", in an uncomplimentary context, on the same album, but nothing ensued from that.)

When asked about his reasons for abandoning his musical career, he cited a simple lack of interest, a distaste for touring, and boredom with performing the same songs repeatedly. He has observed that when he was moved to write and perform songs, he did; when he wasn't, he didn't, and after a while the latter situation prevailed. It has been frequently observed that, though many of Lehrer's songs satirized the Cold War political establishment of the day, that he stopped writing and performing just as the 1960s counterculture movement gained momentum. Lehrer has stated that he doubts his songs had an impact on those not already critical of the establishment: "I don't think this kind of thing has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted... I'm fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the '30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War." In 2003 he commented that his particular brand of political satire is more difficult in the modern world: "The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban landmines... I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them."

Lehrer's musical career was notably brief, stating in an interview in the late 90s that he had performed a mere 109 shows, and written 37 songs across his 20-year career. Nevertheless, the cult following that had grown around his music significantly bolstered the effect that he had on a global scale.

Lehrer returns to music

In the 1970s, Lehrer concentrated on teaching mathematics and musical theater, although he also wrote 10 songs for the children's television show The Electric Company. (Harvard schoolmate Joe Raposo was the show's musical director for its first three seasons.) In the early 1980s, Tom Foolery, a revival of his songs on the London stage, was a surprise hit. Although not its instigator, Lehrer eventually gave it his full support and updated several of his lyrics for the production.

On 7 June and 8 June 1998, Lehrer performed in public for the first time in 25 years at the Lyceum Theatre, London as part of the gala show Hey, Mr. Producer! celebrating the career of impresario Cameron Mackintosh (who had been the producer of Tom Foolery). The 8 June show has been his only performance before the Queen. Lehrer sang "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" and an updated version of the nuclear proliferation song "Who's Next". The DVD of the event includes the former song.

In 2000, a CD box set, The Remains of Tom Lehrer, was released by Rhino Entertainment. It included live and studio versions of his first two albums, That Was The Year That Was, the songs he wrote for The Electric Company, and some previously unreleased material, accompanied by a small hardbound book containing an introduction by Dr. Demento and lyrics to all the songs.

Lehrer as a scholar

Lehrer earned his BA in mathematics (Magna Cum Laude) from Harvard University in 1947, when he was 18. He received his MA the next year, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He taught classes at MIT, Harvard and Wellesley. He remained in Harvard's doctoral program for several years, taking time out for his musical career and to work as a researcher at Los Alamos, New Mexico. He joined the Army from 1955 to 1957, working at the National Security Agency. (Lehrer has been rumored to have invented the Jello Shot during this time, as a means of circumventing liquor restrictions. ) All of these experiences eventually became fodder for songs: "Fight Fiercely, Harvard", "The Wild West Is Where I Want To Be" and "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier", respectively. There was perhaps some truth to his comment in the intro to the latter song, in which he said he had left the Army and was now in the "Radioactive Reserve".

In 1960, Lehrer returned to full-time studies at Harvard. However, he never completed his doctoral studies, and never received a PhD in mathematics. In 1972, he joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz, teaching an introductory course entitled "The Nature of Mathematics" to liberal-arts majors — "Math for Tenors", according to Lehrer. He also taught a class in musical theater. He occasionally performed songs in his lectures, primarily those relating to the topic.

In 2001, Lehrer concluded his last math class (on the topic of Infinity) and retired from teaching. [2] He has remained in the area, and still "hangs out" around the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Legacy

Lehrer was praised by Dr. Demento as "the best musical satirist of the 20th Century."

A play called Letters from Lehrer was written by Canadian Richard Greenblatt, and performed by him at CanStage, from January 16 to February 25, 2006. It follows Lehrer's musical career, the meaning of several songs, the politics of the time, and Greenblatt's own experiences with Lehrer's music, while playing some of Lehrer's songs. There are currently no plans for more performances, although low-quality audio recordings have begun to circulate around the net.

Other artists who cite Lehrer as an influence include "Weird Al" Yankovic, whose work generally addresses more popular and less technical or political subjects. More stylistically influenced performers include American political satirist Mark Russell, and the British duo Kit and The Widow.

Interesting Facts

• The popular ironic use of the phrase "copious free time" comes from the introduction to Lehrer's "'It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier".
• Wernher von Braun, Hubert H. Humphrey and Pope Paul VI, three of the four living public figures Lehrer satirized in That Was The Year That Was (1965), all happened to die over a period of just over a year in 1977-1978. (The fourth, George Murphy, lived until 1992.)
• In an interview on the BBC, Lehrer says the song "My Home Town" was inspired by "Dear Hearts and Gentle People," and "Masochism Tango" was inspired by "Kiss of Fire" (a phrase he actually used in his intro to the song).
• Lehrer's song "Alma" [about a woman who was the wife, successively, of one of the 20th century's leading composers (Gustav Mahler), architects (Walter Gropius), and novelists (Franz Werfel)] is played as a Valentine tribute during the "Rose pattern three-lobe waltz" at the Skokie Valley Skating Club's biennial Ice Dance Weekend in Wilmette, Illinois.
• Both "New Math" and "Who's Next" were sung on the television show Picket Fences during its first season.

Reviews selected by Lehrer for his liner notes

• "Mr. Lehrer's muse is not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste." — New York Times (9 February 1959)
• "More desperate than amusing" — New York Herald Tribune
• "He seldom has any point to make except obvious ones" — Christian Science Monitor
• "Plays the piano acceptably" — Oakland Tribune

Discography

• Songs by Tom Lehrer (1953) (Rereleased in 1990 as Revisited with the additional songs "Silent E" and "L-Y")
• An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer (1959)
• More of Tom Lehrer (1959)
• Tom Lehrer Discovers Australia (And Vice Versa) (1960)
• That Was The Year That Was (1965)
• Tom Lehrer in Concert (1994)
• Songs & More Songs by Tom Lehrer (1997)
• The Remains of Tom Lehrer (2000)

Many Lehrer songs are also performed (but not by Lehrer) in That Was "That Was The Week That Was" (1981)

The sheet music to many of Lehrer's songs is published in Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer (Pantheon, 1981, ISBN 0-394-74930-8).

Mathematical publications

The American Mathematical Society database shows him as co-author of two papers:

• RE Fagen & TA Lehrer, "Random walks with restraining barrier as applied to the biased binary counter," Journal of the Society for Industrial Applied Mathematics, vol. 6, p.1-14 (March 1958) MR0094856
• T Austin, R Fagen, T Lehrer, W Penney, "The distribution of the number of locally maximal elements in a random sample," Annals of Mathematical Statistics vol. 28, p.786-790 (1957) MR0091251

External links

• Videos of Tom Lehrer performing around the 1960s
• Discography of Tom Lehrer
• Tom Lehrer Song Lyrics (with annotations)
• Tom Lehrer's earliest recordings at Harvard 1951/52
• A video recording of five songs performed by Lehrer (for Irving Kaplansky in 1997)
• Tom Lehrer: The man, his myth and his music
• A Tom Lehrer and Tom Foolery web page
• Tom Lehrer: The Political Musician Who Wasn't
• An interview with SF Weekly
• The Irish Ballad -- production blog about a stop-motion film
• Conversation with Tom Lehrer
• Lobachevsky song by Tom Lehrer, in MP3 format.
• Tom Lehrer at AllMusic
• Tom Lehrer at IMDb
• Tom Lehrer Deposit #10 Authorized website that plays Lehrer's entire song "New Math" and encourages you to download the track or buy the CD.