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Irish Times

Learnings from Lehrer: Brendan Balfe on tracking down and interviewing one of his favourite performers

Tom Lehrer asked: 'How did you find me?' It was 1987 and in those pre-internet days, the standard biographical references to the musical satirist all said 'keeps a low profile' and 'notoriously secretive'. But I was planning a trip to the United States for a radio series and was trying to arrange an interview with one of my favourite performers. I hit on an idea. I contacted the Boston telephone operator and eventually got a phone number and through the reverse directory also acquired an address. I wrote to Tom Lehrer and in his reply, he told me to call him when I was in the States, so on September 9th, I turned up at his house in Cambridge, adjacent to the campus of Harvard University , a small wooden building, sparsely furnished, with a grand piano in the living room. Tom had learned piano at an early age and was an accomplished player. His first song, Fight Fiercely, Harvard, was written in 1945 when he was 17, a football song for the college he attended while studying mathematics. Then he wrote and sang more songs for friends at parties. Taking advantage of the invention of long-playing records, in 1953 he paid $400 to record an album of songs. 'Suddenly,' he told me, 'my songs spread like a social disease.' READ MORE When the first British chart of hit albums was issued in 1958, Tom Lehrer was in the top ten for 19 weeks. His songs satirised popular music, politics, nuclear arms and human behaviour. Songs like Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, When you are Old and Grey and The Masochism Tango proved popular. The latter was a skit on slightly threatening love songs like Kiss of Fire and Jezebel. It wasn't specifically Irish, but a reaction to the inanities of folk songs — Tom Lehrer 'There used to be a liberal consensus who agreed with me, [but] now the audience would be split,' he said. 'Now, it's a case of 'don't satirise me, satirise them'. Back then, I was described as sick or accused of being a cynic, an assertion that was untrue. A cynic damns everything, a sceptic questions everything, liking some parts, not others.' I asked him had he anything to say to our audience about his composition The Irish Ballad, with lyrics like: 'About a maid I'll sing a song / who didn't have her family long / not only did she do them wrong / she did every one of them in.' 'Well,' he said, 'it wasn't specifically Irish, but a reaction to the inanities of folk songs and singers who believe those with the most verses win.' On his writing method, he said: 'Some songs are instant and others take months, where I find myself filling in words like a crossword puzzle. Some current stand-up comedians hit topical points and the audience greets them with applause, whoops and cheers. I didn't want them to applaud, I wanted them to laugh. Irreverence is easy – wit is hard." One song raised an element of earthly rather than heavenly irreverence, although deftly aided by adroit rhyming: 'Do whatever steps you want if / You have cleared them with the Pontiff / Everybody say his own / Kyrie eleison / Doin' the Vatican Rag.' [ No one sent up Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun better than satirist Tom Lehrer Opens in new window ] Tom Lehrer retired from singing and performing in 1967. His idea was to perform to audiences and get a good recording of the concert. He thought the material was the important thing, not his personal appearances. 'Just like novelists don't do a tour reading from their own novel, my idea was make the record and go home.' Going home meant going back to the academic life. He had been a graduate student in 1952 working at the Atomic Energy Commission. 'Nuclear power had not yet become dangerous, was viewed as a good thing in some cases,' he recalled. But that changed as the 'superpowers' got more access, prompting some pointed songs, some written for the American version of the TV show That Was The Week That Was . He went back to teaching mathematics at Harvard and at the University of California at Santa Cruz, adding a social science element to his lectures. He also wrote songs for the Children's Television Workshop and was quietly delighted when in 1980, Cameron Mackintosh assembled a stage revue of his songs called Tomfoolery, a musical also staged in Dublin by Noel Pearson. He instigated a course on the American Musical Theatre, forming a cast of 15 students who every week came to the room were sitting in to read and perform an entire musical, like Carousel or Oklahoma. It feels appropriate to return to his first question: 'How did you find me?' Well, I found a charming and astute man with a unique talent for music and language, and a spirited approach to satire that made us all laugh. So long, Tom. Nice to have met you. '