Legendary Cold War satirist Tom Lehrer dies aged 97
Lehrer's body of work was actually quite small, amounting to about three dozen songs.
'When I got a funny idea for a song, I wrote it. And if I didn't, I didn't,' Lehrer told the Associated Press in 2000 during a rare interview. 'I wasn't like a real writer who would sit down and put a piece of paper in the typewriter. And when I quit writing, I just quit ... It wasn't like I had writer's block.'
He'd gotten into performing accidentally when he began to compose songs in the early 1950s to amuse his friends. Soon he was performing them at coffeehouses around Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he remained at Harvard to teach and obtain a master's degree in maths.
He cut his first record in 1953, Songs by Tom Lehrer, which included I Wanna Go Back to Dixie, lampooning the attitudes of the Old South, and the Fight Fiercely, Harvard, suggesting how a prissy Harvard blueblood might sing a football fight song.
After a two-year stint in the army, Lehrer began to perform concerts of his material in venues around the world. In 1959, he released another LP called More of Tom Lehrer and a live recording called An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, nominated for a Grammy for best comedy performance (musical) in 1960.
But around the same time, he largely quit touring and returned to teaching maths, though he did some writing and performing on the side.
Lehrer said he was never comfortable appearing in public.
'I enjoyed it up to a point,' he told the AP in 2000. 'But to me, going out and performing the concert every night when it was all available on record would be like a novelist going out and reading his novel every night.'
He did produce a political satire song each week for the 1964 television show That Was the Week That Was, a groundbreaking topical comedy show that anticipated Saturday Night Live a decade later.
He released the songs the following year in an album titled That Was the Year That Was. The material included Who's Next?, which ponders which government will be the next to get the nuclear bomb ... perhaps Alabama? (He didn't need to tell his listeners that it was a bastion of segregation at the time.) Pollution takes a look at the then-new concept that perhaps rivers and lakes should be cleaned up.
He also wrote songs for the 1970s educational children's show The Electric Company. He told AP in 2000 that hearing from people who had benefited from them gave him far more satisfaction than praise for any of his satirical works.
His songs were revived in the 1980 musical revue Tomfoolery, and he made a rare public appearance in London in 1998 at a celebration honouring that musical's producer, Cameron Mackintosh.
Lehrer was born in 1928, in New York, the son of a successful necktie designer. He recalled an idyllic childhood on Manhattan's Upper West Side that included attending Broadway shows with his family and walking through Central Park day or night.
After skipping two grades in school, he entered Harvard at 15 and, after receiving his master's degree, spent several years unsuccessfully pursuing a doctorate.
'I spent many, many years satisfying all the requirements, as many years as possible, and I started on the thesis,' he once said. 'But I just wanted to be a grad student, it's a wonderful life. That's what I wanted to be, and unfortunately, you can't be a PhD and a grad student at the same time.'
He began to teach part-time at Santa Cruz in the 1970s, mainly to escape the harsh New England winters.
From time to time, he acknowledged, a student would enrol in one of his classes based on knowledge of his songs.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Legendary Cold War satirist Tom Lehrer dies aged 97
'Tom Lehrer is the most brilliant song satirist ever recorded,' musicologist Barry Hansen once said. Hansen co-produced the 2000 boxed set of Lehrer's songs, The Remains of Tom Lehrer, and had featured Lehrer's music for decades on his syndicated Dr. Demento radio show. Lehrer's body of work was actually quite small, amounting to about three dozen songs. 'When I got a funny idea for a song, I wrote it. And if I didn't, I didn't,' Lehrer told the Associated Press in 2000 during a rare interview. 'I wasn't like a real writer who would sit down and put a piece of paper in the typewriter. And when I quit writing, I just quit ... It wasn't like I had writer's block.' He'd gotten into performing accidentally when he began to compose songs in the early 1950s to amuse his friends. Soon he was performing them at coffeehouses around Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he remained at Harvard to teach and obtain a master's degree in maths. He cut his first record in 1953, Songs by Tom Lehrer, which included I Wanna Go Back to Dixie, lampooning the attitudes of the Old South, and the Fight Fiercely, Harvard, suggesting how a prissy Harvard blueblood might sing a football fight song. After a two-year stint in the army, Lehrer began to perform concerts of his material in venues around the world. In 1959, he released another LP called More of Tom Lehrer and a live recording called An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, nominated for a Grammy for best comedy performance (musical) in 1960. But around the same time, he largely quit touring and returned to teaching maths, though he did some writing and performing on the side. Lehrer said he was never comfortable appearing in public. 'I enjoyed it up to a point,' he told the AP in 2000. 'But to me, going out and performing the concert every night when it was all available on record would be like a novelist going out and reading his novel every night.' He did produce a political satire song each week for the 1964 television show That Was the Week That Was, a groundbreaking topical comedy show that anticipated Saturday Night Live a decade later. He released the songs the following year in an album titled That Was the Year That Was. The material included Who's Next?, which ponders which government will be the next to get the nuclear bomb ... perhaps Alabama? (He didn't need to tell his listeners that it was a bastion of segregation at the time.) Pollution takes a look at the then-new concept that perhaps rivers and lakes should be cleaned up. He also wrote songs for the 1970s educational children's show The Electric Company. He told AP in 2000 that hearing from people who had benefited from them gave him far more satisfaction than praise for any of his satirical works. His songs were revived in the 1980 musical revue Tomfoolery, and he made a rare public appearance in London in 1998 at a celebration honouring that musical's producer, Cameron Mackintosh. Lehrer was born in 1928, in New York, the son of a successful necktie designer. He recalled an idyllic childhood on Manhattan's Upper West Side that included attending Broadway shows with his family and walking through Central Park day or night. After skipping two grades in school, he entered Harvard at 15 and, after receiving his master's degree, spent several years unsuccessfully pursuing a doctorate. 'I spent many, many years satisfying all the requirements, as many years as possible, and I started on the thesis,' he once said. 'But I just wanted to be a grad student, it's a wonderful life. That's what I wanted to be, and unfortunately, you can't be a PhD and a grad student at the same time.' He began to teach part-time at Santa Cruz in the 1970s, mainly to escape the harsh New England winters. From time to time, he acknowledged, a student would enrol in one of his classes based on knowledge of his songs.

The Age
2 days ago
- The Age
Legendary Cold War satirist Tom Lehrer dies aged 97
'Tom Lehrer is the most brilliant song satirist ever recorded,' musicologist Barry Hansen once said. Hansen co-produced the 2000 boxed set of Lehrer's songs, The Remains of Tom Lehrer, and had featured Lehrer's music for decades on his syndicated Dr. Demento radio show. Lehrer's body of work was actually quite small, amounting to about three dozen songs. 'When I got a funny idea for a song, I wrote it. And if I didn't, I didn't,' Lehrer told the Associated Press in 2000 during a rare interview. 'I wasn't like a real writer who would sit down and put a piece of paper in the typewriter. And when I quit writing, I just quit ... It wasn't like I had writer's block.' He'd gotten into performing accidentally when he began to compose songs in the early 1950s to amuse his friends. Soon he was performing them at coffeehouses around Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he remained at Harvard to teach and obtain a master's degree in maths. He cut his first record in 1953, Songs by Tom Lehrer, which included I Wanna Go Back to Dixie, lampooning the attitudes of the Old South, and the Fight Fiercely, Harvard, suggesting how a prissy Harvard blueblood might sing a football fight song. After a two-year stint in the army, Lehrer began to perform concerts of his material in venues around the world. In 1959, he released another LP called More of Tom Lehrer and a live recording called An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, nominated for a Grammy for best comedy performance (musical) in 1960. But around the same time, he largely quit touring and returned to teaching maths, though he did some writing and performing on the side. Lehrer said he was never comfortable appearing in public. 'I enjoyed it up to a point,' he told the AP in 2000. 'But to me, going out and performing the concert every night when it was all available on record would be like a novelist going out and reading his novel every night.' He did produce a political satire song each week for the 1964 television show That Was the Week That Was, a groundbreaking topical comedy show that anticipated Saturday Night Live a decade later. He released the songs the following year in an album titled That Was the Year That Was. The material included Who's Next?, which ponders which government will be the next to get the nuclear bomb ... perhaps Alabama? (He didn't need to tell his listeners that it was a bastion of segregation at the time.) Pollution takes a look at the then-new concept that perhaps rivers and lakes should be cleaned up. He also wrote songs for the 1970s educational children's show The Electric Company. He told AP in 2000 that hearing from people who had benefited from them gave him far more satisfaction than praise for any of his satirical works. His songs were revived in the 1980 musical revue Tomfoolery, and he made a rare public appearance in London in 1998 at a celebration honouring that musical's producer, Cameron Mackintosh. Lehrer was born in 1928, in New York, the son of a successful necktie designer. He recalled an idyllic childhood on Manhattan's Upper West Side that included attending Broadway shows with his family and walking through Central Park day or night. After skipping two grades in school, he entered Harvard at 15 and, after receiving his master's degree, spent several years unsuccessfully pursuing a doctorate. 'I spent many, many years satisfying all the requirements, as many years as possible, and I started on the thesis,' he once said. 'But I just wanted to be a grad student, it's a wonderful life. That's what I wanted to be, and unfortunately, you can't be a PhD and a grad student at the same time.' He began to teach part-time at Santa Cruz in the 1970s, mainly to escape the harsh New England winters. From time to time, he acknowledged, a student would enrol in one of his classes based on knowledge of his songs.


The Advertiser
2 days ago
- The Advertiser
US musical satirist Tom Lehrer dies at 97
Tom Lehrer, the math prodigy who became an influential musical satirist with his barbed views of American social and political life in the 1950s and 1960s, has died at the age of 97, according to news reports. Lehrer died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Saturday, his longtime friend David Herder told the New York Times. No cause of death was specified. Lehrer's career as a musician and revered social commentator was little more than a happy accident that began with composing ditties to amuse classmates at Harvard University. His heyday lasted about seven years and, by his own count, produced only 37 songs before the reluctant performer returned to teaching at Harvard and other universities. "There's never been anyone like him," Cameron Mackintosh, the Broadway producer who created Tom Foolery, a revue of Lehrer songs, told BuzzFeed in 2014. "Of all famous songwriters, he's probably the only one that ... is an amateur in that he never wanted to be professional. And yet the work he did is of the highest quality of any great songwriter." As the US nestled into the post-war complacency of the 1950s, the liberal-leaning Lehrer was poking holes in the culture with his songs while maintaining an urbane, witty air. Some of his works reflected his mathematical interests - New Math about subtracting 173 from 342 and Lobachevsky about a 19th-century Russian mathematician - but his meatier songs were deemed by some to be too irreverent and shocking. In 1959 Time magazine lumped him in with groundbreaking comics Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl as "sicknicks" who had "a personal and highly disturbing hostility toward all the world." The song I Wanna Go Back to Dixie looked at racism in the South ("The land of the boll weevil where the laws are medieval") while National Brotherhood Week took on hypocrites ("It's only for a week so have no fear/ Be nice to people who are inferior to you"). Be Prepared exposed the dark side of a Boy Scout's life, I Got It from Agnes was about venereal disease, and We Will All Go Together When We Go addressed nuclear Armageddon. "If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while," Lehrer wrote on the notes that accompanied one of his albums. Thomas Andrew Lehrer was born on April 9, 1928, in New York. He grew up in the Big Apple listening to musical theatre and one of his first works was The Elements, a recitation of the periodic table set to a Gilbert and Sullivan tune. He enrolled at Harvard at age 15 and his Fight Fiercely, Harvard with the line "Won't it be peachy if we win the game?" became a popular spoof of the school's sports fight song. After serving in the US Army from 1955 to 1957, Lehrer began performing and recorded more albums but was losing his zest for music. By the early 1960s, working on his doctorate - which he never finished - and teaching became greater concerns, although he did contribute songs to the TV news satire show That Was the Week That Was in 1963 and 1964. Tom Lehrer, the math prodigy who became an influential musical satirist with his barbed views of American social and political life in the 1950s and 1960s, has died at the age of 97, according to news reports. Lehrer died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Saturday, his longtime friend David Herder told the New York Times. No cause of death was specified. Lehrer's career as a musician and revered social commentator was little more than a happy accident that began with composing ditties to amuse classmates at Harvard University. His heyday lasted about seven years and, by his own count, produced only 37 songs before the reluctant performer returned to teaching at Harvard and other universities. "There's never been anyone like him," Cameron Mackintosh, the Broadway producer who created Tom Foolery, a revue of Lehrer songs, told BuzzFeed in 2014. "Of all famous songwriters, he's probably the only one that ... is an amateur in that he never wanted to be professional. And yet the work he did is of the highest quality of any great songwriter." As the US nestled into the post-war complacency of the 1950s, the liberal-leaning Lehrer was poking holes in the culture with his songs while maintaining an urbane, witty air. Some of his works reflected his mathematical interests - New Math about subtracting 173 from 342 and Lobachevsky about a 19th-century Russian mathematician - but his meatier songs were deemed by some to be too irreverent and shocking. In 1959 Time magazine lumped him in with groundbreaking comics Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl as "sicknicks" who had "a personal and highly disturbing hostility toward all the world." The song I Wanna Go Back to Dixie looked at racism in the South ("The land of the boll weevil where the laws are medieval") while National Brotherhood Week took on hypocrites ("It's only for a week so have no fear/ Be nice to people who are inferior to you"). Be Prepared exposed the dark side of a Boy Scout's life, I Got It from Agnes was about venereal disease, and We Will All Go Together When We Go addressed nuclear Armageddon. "If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while," Lehrer wrote on the notes that accompanied one of his albums. Thomas Andrew Lehrer was born on April 9, 1928, in New York. He grew up in the Big Apple listening to musical theatre and one of his first works was The Elements, a recitation of the periodic table set to a Gilbert and Sullivan tune. He enrolled at Harvard at age 15 and his Fight Fiercely, Harvard with the line "Won't it be peachy if we win the game?" became a popular spoof of the school's sports fight song. After serving in the US Army from 1955 to 1957, Lehrer began performing and recorded more albums but was losing his zest for music. By the early 1960s, working on his doctorate - which he never finished - and teaching became greater concerns, although he did contribute songs to the TV news satire show That Was the Week That Was in 1963 and 1964. Tom Lehrer, the math prodigy who became an influential musical satirist with his barbed views of American social and political life in the 1950s and 1960s, has died at the age of 97, according to news reports. Lehrer died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Saturday, his longtime friend David Herder told the New York Times. No cause of death was specified. Lehrer's career as a musician and revered social commentator was little more than a happy accident that began with composing ditties to amuse classmates at Harvard University. His heyday lasted about seven years and, by his own count, produced only 37 songs before the reluctant performer returned to teaching at Harvard and other universities. "There's never been anyone like him," Cameron Mackintosh, the Broadway producer who created Tom Foolery, a revue of Lehrer songs, told BuzzFeed in 2014. "Of all famous songwriters, he's probably the only one that ... is an amateur in that he never wanted to be professional. And yet the work he did is of the highest quality of any great songwriter." As the US nestled into the post-war complacency of the 1950s, the liberal-leaning Lehrer was poking holes in the culture with his songs while maintaining an urbane, witty air. Some of his works reflected his mathematical interests - New Math about subtracting 173 from 342 and Lobachevsky about a 19th-century Russian mathematician - but his meatier songs were deemed by some to be too irreverent and shocking. In 1959 Time magazine lumped him in with groundbreaking comics Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl as "sicknicks" who had "a personal and highly disturbing hostility toward all the world." The song I Wanna Go Back to Dixie looked at racism in the South ("The land of the boll weevil where the laws are medieval") while National Brotherhood Week took on hypocrites ("It's only for a week so have no fear/ Be nice to people who are inferior to you"). Be Prepared exposed the dark side of a Boy Scout's life, I Got It from Agnes was about venereal disease, and We Will All Go Together When We Go addressed nuclear Armageddon. "If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while," Lehrer wrote on the notes that accompanied one of his albums. Thomas Andrew Lehrer was born on April 9, 1928, in New York. He grew up in the Big Apple listening to musical theatre and one of his first works was The Elements, a recitation of the periodic table set to a Gilbert and Sullivan tune. He enrolled at Harvard at age 15 and his Fight Fiercely, Harvard with the line "Won't it be peachy if we win the game?" became a popular spoof of the school's sports fight song. After serving in the US Army from 1955 to 1957, Lehrer began performing and recorded more albums but was losing his zest for music. By the early 1960s, working on his doctorate - which he never finished - and teaching became greater concerns, although he did contribute songs to the TV news satire show That Was the Week That Was in 1963 and 1964.