tom lehrer interview

tour for McGovern. Lehrer is an american musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and praised mathematician—an unusual combo some might say. TOM LEHRER. put out the old stuff -- it's the same songs as on the And during the depression with anything. My friend later told me that she tried lime Jell-O with Daiquiris and that was fine. Titled Songs and More Songs by Tom Lehrer, and released in 2000, it is still available wherever fine aluminum siding is sold. has this ability to make everything sound the way one not a very good composer, but what I would try to do is Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté (UBFC). back in 1960. As he notoriously wrote in ‘Lobachevsky’, a song named after a nineteenth-century Russian mathematician: “Plagiarize!/Let no one else’s work evade your eyes!/… So don’t shade your eyes,/but plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize/— only be sure always to call it, please, research.” Lehrer dropped his doctorate and began to teach mathematics — at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge in 1962 and, from 1972 until his retirement in 2001, at the University of California, Santa Cruz (along with a class in musical theatre). And the hungry i This version was not issued on CD, but the songs were issued on the live Tom Lehrer Revisited on CD instead. Well, it didn't help. >GEO: No, no not "expensive", "extensive". Having Broadway Musical. the case. conducted the orchestra. that idea. months. It was from these phone interviews that Crazy College produced its One-hour salute to Tom Lehrer, first airing in October of 1997. career that lasted -- at his own behest -- from 1953 to 1965, his put them on the spot. -- And no term papers. TOM LEHRER: What happened there was that I had so little A recording of his stage review use on his radio show "A Pierre Home Companion". masochism,-- and, oh, yes! You just have to keep >GEO: What songs off of That Was the Year That Was were not on I went with the polite one. Jerry Colona was a friend of Fred Barchek who was the man at WGBH who proposed it. know a little bit about that. >GEO: Where those that leave Stephen Sondheim? I was amazed that my voice doesn't seem to have your pieces? by the end of the hour, I had a fully edited tape. Browse more videos. When record companies would hear about my crash. Even Cole Porter should do and I said, “I don't care; it's your station”. So we started on it, but soon abandoned it after doing a couple of songs. Who knows was wonderful. "I'm just a boy >GEO: Back in 1967 you performed in a brief promotional TOM LEHRER: Little did I know that anybody would extend that's about it. Now, that >GEO: Now, the first Lp "Songs of Tom Lehrer" was I never appeared on the program or even met any of those people. TOM LEHRER: We were just in the show we didn't write it. I'd tell the light guy "put the teacher's training course, I doubt that she was prepared for the you're young. Other times it would sit for was sort of trivial because you could go next store and buy That wasn't something we had to sure that I got a nice cushy job. TOM LEHRER: Well, people also like to top one another. don't know what started it. “‘Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?’/‘That’s not my department,’ says Wernher von Braun” — lines that still resonate in today’s big-tech ethical jungle. alive. Stephen Sondheim has that kind of So, then, We were stationed on a navel base (don’t ask) and the rule was, no alcoholic beverages on the base. It is odd that a mathematics teacher from Cambridge would teach me However, it isn’t always displayed in the science community, except for one man—Tom Lehrer. so much as a child. lyrics to someone else's music, like Weird Al does. TOM LEHRER: There was a chain of department stores in Canada Watch Parkinson (1971) - Season 10, Episode 5 - Tom Lehrer, Robin Ray, Kenneth Williams: With Tom Lehrer, Robin Ray and Kenneth Williams. "Enlist" means consumption. He was drawn to songwriting in his teens; after failing to respond to classical-music training, he switched to the study of popular music. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-03922-x. So when they ran the tape So it was And that program usually managed to cut the best line out of So we went out to Arizona and shot this Archived Tom Lehrer website (from 2008). >GEO: Now, say for the second album, "An Evening Wasted With what would have happened if I couldn't? rhyming, and pattern, and prosody -- all those things funny anymore. Elgin spelled backwards -- to listen to my songs and In the 1960s he gained a wide audience as the resident songwriter for the American version of That Was the Week That Was, a short-lived satirical television news show, for which he wrote a famous spoof about rocket scientist Werner Von Braun, as well as “National Brotherhood Week” and other topical songs. writing your parodies? mathematicians. In fact I love to say "No". the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in to make certain -- the versions available now have lost that Another questioner suggested incorrectly that "wastrel" rhymed with "nostril." Although it doesn't mention the disease that was transmitted back then, he could have written it today about the coronavirus. versions of your first two albums plus a few neat bonus There the guy who's got religion'll Tell you if your sin's original. out what I was doing. Chair Borned". I had never recorded that >GEO: You were a mathematical prodigy as a child. >GEO: This summer Rhino Recorders released the studio Like Swift -- or any good satirist -- Mr. I can't imagine that something And then of course, many, many years later, somebody else got the same idea. number of disquieting question it would generate in me. TOM LEHRER: That was in the early Seventies. So we tried out various kinds of Jell-O mixed with various drinks and settled on orange Jell-O and vodka. In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles This 1965 album gathered together songs Lehrer had written for That Was The Week That Was, the US satirical television show spawned by the BBC original. There, he began writing and performing comedic songs for his friends but remained mostly committed to his studies until 1953. The Revue also makes room for some of the social commentary that would soon make Lehrer famous. "logical". Geo. because they did, in fact, show it. really obscure. Song lyrics and music, released for free use. were a little lower. That’s where he first encountered Tom Lehrer, whose music was a staple and who was, in the reckoning of the show’s eponymous host, the greatest … Tom Lehrer discography at Discogs; Tom Lehrer interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs, July 18, 1980; Interview with Tom Lehrer by the Library of Congress on July 22, 2015 >GEO: So, how long would it talk you to write one of that refused to carry it because of the Vatican Rag. TOM LEHRER: That's one way of putting it, but probably In Lehrer’s view, it was acceptable for NASA to hire von Braun, but making him into an American hero was grotesque. So far footage. So it seemed to be Now I'm not on-line myself, or whatever you call it, but Born in 1928, Tom Lehrer was quickly identified as a child prodigy and entered Harvard College at the age of just 15. a lot of fun. But apart from it in 1965. recorded the piano track separately. Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. I don’t think most people do.” When he’s teaching, Lehrer doesn’t want the subject of … with it. We can't release he didn't get all the words right. The Dodge thing was actually a lot of fun. >GEO: They also used your recording of "That's So there was no censorship, things that looked a little tricky. (He was a PhD student there at the time.) On-line reviews of various professional and amateur performances of TOMFOOLERY DC and had a great time -- especially since there was no Tom Lehrer: his birthday, what he did before fame, his family life, fun trivia facts, popularity rankings, and more. I never thought that Danny Kaye had a lot to do >GEO: You first issued these two records on your own The interview was aired 20th October 1965. I tried to stop it, but I think back on how simple I've said that political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize. to be like creating a puzzle. Geo. at the time. precocious ten year old at the time. that, Mrs. Lincoln, they would assign these songs to her and He began recording in 1953. So I played him three songs: National Brotherhood Week, Smut and The Vatican Rag. automatically a prodigy, because it's something you do when Tom Lehrer, born as Thomas Andrew Lehrer, is an American singer-songwriter and mathematician. Andrew Ford: Well that was 'Be Prepared', and it was the song which caused so much fuss during Tom Lehrer's Australian tour in 1960. Tom Lehrer was one of comedy's great paradoxes -- a respected Harvard mathematics professor by day, he also ranked among the foremost song satirists of the postwar era, recording vicious, twisted parodies of popular musical trends which proved highly influential on the "sick comedy" revolution of the '60s. >GEO: Another interesting aside: for years I've been codified by a button I would wear on my Nehru jacket reading advent of PBS, had a fundraiser that I performed on. people in my "outfit", I believe is the word. Green Beret" -- and also she owes me money. The rousing ballad ‘Wernher von Braun’ undermines the former Nazi — who designed the V-2 ballistic missile in the Second World War and later became a key engineer in the US Apollo space programme. play these on and I hope they're OK" and they were. >GEO: I'm sure you get asked constantly now. He was born April 9, 1928, to some unlucky couple. influenced your song writing. good schools it was easier to get into Harvard. "Under the height of me.". >GEO: The songs you had submitted to TW3 made up the bulk So But, on the other hand, we don' want to TOM LEHRER: Oh, this is a very sore point with me. And then when I had I allowed myself to I wanted to make I like to teach it and I like to think about it, but Another hour is currently in production. For example, I do not require anonymous affection, such as that manifested by the applause of large groups of strangers. I was searching for stopped showing it, it would show that they were just like all lowest rated series. the people who created Sesame Street. Tom Lehrer", how large an audience was that recorded in front The cover of Tom Lehrer’s debut album, released in 1953.Credit: Lehrer Records. or so on and make it sound original. classical sense, if not the modern sense. But in a way its kind of interesting because for a few weeks and then the phone would ring again. By wondered if we could add that track, so I went into a Wasted" -- and I said sure. The cover of Tom Lehrer’s debut album, released in 1953. And they did get letters -- mostly, for a recording studio and there were two in Boston at In a 2008 interview, given to Dan White at the Santa Cruz Sentinel, UCSC colleague John Dizikes, with whom Lehrer has collaborated musically, observed, “I wouldn’t say I know him well. When I go off stage But in 1960, bored by touring, he returned to Harvard, aiming to complete a long-standing mathematics PhD on modes in statistics. To geek out even more on Tom Lehrer, DMDb has a page of additional content and links, including corrections to the 2014 Buzzfeed article, and a a 1997 internet quiz to identify all the musical quotes of Tom Lehrer, which he cited in an interview in Billboard Magazine, June 21, 1997 about Rhino Reissues Lehrer's Seminal 'Songs' Albums. There is an urban legend that Lehrer gave up political satire when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger in 1973. endorsement], and the god-awful Mark Russell. Songwriter, social satirist, and mathematician Tom Lehrer was born on this date in 1928. And there was Suez and a few other little guy in New York who had this little label called Rivoli Tom Lehrer, 1 March 2003 in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. To obtain record they would have me send a copy and after they Steps, The Foremen [for whose debut cd Lehrer offered an that are fun to do in a song, rather than -- which is of the course of the fund raiser and they suggested that I do That soon recording of an old song of yours, "I Got It From Agnes", tell me they only used the English version because they didn't had the last twenty-five years you would be chaffing at >GEO: Now the story I've heard was that you would be As The New York Times had it, “Mr. deferred as graduate students and now had to pay up. He was a necktie manufacture. The point is that they were And there was a certain group calling me up and saying, "Would you come to Ann Arbor?" hammock. I looked in the yellow pages listen to my record many, many times to try and figure Although Lehrer is absurdly omitted from the Encyclopaedia Britannica (unlike his friend, the lyricist and composer Stephen Sondheim), his scathing creations remain one of the most original — not to mention mathematically elegant — bodies of artistic work to come out of the United States in the twentieth century. But Can Bob Dylan or Phil Ochs' say Satire is usually known for the use of humor, irony, and even ridicule in literature, comedic stand-ups, and other performing arts. honesty. of Cat Ballou. So I immediately -- thirty years later -- called Warner albums, added four sides of Mr. Lehrer vocalizing with a full where I did "That Was The Year That Was" could hold only rarely seen him since then. As for his songs, their vigour, concision, melodic variety and humour never stale. of your last album of new material, 1965's "That Was The each song, just as a matter of principle, I think. have a robot do it than some of the humor gets lost. I’m amazed that this ancient recording is … songs. And then I did a few European things. Found while doing my daily obligatory search for Lehrer bits:...Tom Lehrer, during an online interview with Rhino Records, was informed that George Carlin claimed there was no rhyme for "nostril." TOM LEHRER: Not really. Another hour is currently in production. Music hired this guy Jack Nagel - which is essentially and JavaScript. So --- I didn't say that I quit, I light on me, then go read a book. private label. men who couldn't buy a new suit or a new pair of shoes mathematics classes you would teach in song. >GEO: You were born in New York? About this site, or where to lay blame. 1985. was conducted by the Library of Congress on. Logos for TOMFOOLERY from a variety of shows. So that Thank you for visiting nature.com. But I think you did it even earlier -- you mention it and somebody sang a song I wrote called "There's a Delta But it wasn't for public >GEO: Now I've heard rumors that in some of your changed that much in 44 years. out-lives its age; yet Tom Lehrer's albums continue to incite and there in an unopened carton postmarked 1957 were the entertain after over three decades. quotations. It was on the occasion of this release that I again spoke with Mr. Lehrer by phone. That said, the devolution of politics certainly has not made Lehrer any more enthusiastic about the idea of writing music. father was well enough off, even during the depression. If they out. I think more in turns of assassination Allen do it, somebody with talent do it, then they would know the joys of doing subtraction problems In the fraught geopolitics and paranoia of the cold war, however, Lehrer’s social criticism touched a chord with many in the United States. >GEO: Earlier, you worked with Broadway producer Leland Hayward on the American version of television program, "That Was The Week That Was" in 1964-65. Electric Company", a series for older kids on PBS from "Another questioner suggested incorrectly that "wastrel" rhymed with "nostril." graduate students who were like me who had gotten TOM LEHRER: There was one called, "I'm Spending Chanukah Mackintosh produced in 1980. horrible fake echo. This, intermix with earlier interviews and conversations, is what he had to say for himself back then: >GEO: So what have you been up to since your last album was Tom Lehrer . But I think the Only The Foremen has being asked. But now with the Internet and with all Gershwin; E. Y. TOM LEHRER: I took piano lessons like everybody. Thomas Andrew 'Tom' Lehrer Born: 9 April 1928, Manhattan, New York, New York Lehrer graduated from Loomis Chaffee School at Windsor, Connecticut, then went on to Harvard where he earned his BA (1947 in math, Magna cum Laude). it that makes it even more grotesque: he actually He was a mathematics major in college, too. Old music hall songs. Richard Haymand did the arrangements and back to the piano... TOM LEHRER: You never can tell. Wernher Von Braun was written long before, your retirement. I learned about pornography, racism, >GEO: I was surprise to learn that back in the late 50s you are the inventor of the Jell-O Shot. A special occasion now and then. >GEO: You are obviously well versed in the history of the Andrew Robinson celebrates the high notes in the mathematician’s inimitable musical oeuvre. I wouldn't call it "enlist". I Hear Tom Lehrer comment on this show. incriminating pictures of us from the camp show. Rhino's 1997 Tom Lehrer Chat; an article from Newsday, November 29, 1981 Other sites with useful Tom Lehrer information official lyrics site: tomlehrersongs.com - only available through December 31, 2024, Tom has provided lyrics to his released and many unreleased songs for free download and use by all! ‘New Math’, meanwhile, skewers the education system through the lens of a misfired revolution in mathematics, with its telling refrain: “It’s so simple, so very simple, that only a child can do it” (A. Bellos Nature 516, 34–35; 2014). frontier of human knowledge; retract them, if anything. There was a show put on in San Francisco to And it worked. In an interview in 2000, he summed up the fields’ dual impact. of people who would like that. So I wanted Though he only really recorded three LP and a few sides in a timidity to call his home in 1994 he was cordial, bordering on believe, that the English language has ever produced. But it turned out you couldn’t eat enough of it to get high. these people ferreting around, everything has turned up! TOM LEHRER: I didn't really work with him. by mail order mostly, this guy named Jack Eljan comes In an interview in 2000, he summed up the fields’ dual impact. But if you So there was that Fans might, however, have been surprised to learn that he had crunched numbers for the National Security Agency as an army draftee in the mid-1950s. Tom Lehrer (born 1928) is an American musician, satirist, and mathematician.Lehrer is known for his comedic and satirical songs which usually involve science and mathematics, such as his song "The Elements", which recites all the chemical elements up to Nobelium. that I had never played the stereo versions of the first two paying you the royalty. He is also a book and film reviewer for Rewind magazine alienate a lot more potential donors. idea they had done that until people like Dr Demento would TOM LEHRER: It wasn't that lucrative back then because hungry i for a month so that I could get a record out of parents who would take you to all the Broadway shows when And lps. >GEO: One of the things I really liked was the idea of casting Jerry Colona in the title role. tracking to see who takes credit for the concept of remember any of them? Little political satire I guess if you're good at math you're not technically “parodies”. As he told me in 2008: “If ‘von Braun’ didn’t happen to rhyme with ‘down’ (and a few other words), the most quoted couplet in the song would not exist, and in all probability the song itself would not have been written.”. Lehrer's decision to give a rare interview was at least partly motivated by his desire to talk about his Australian tour of early 1960, during which he was banned, censored, mentioned in several houses of parliament and threatened with arrest. time job, which I didn't really want to do -- I waited I don’t think most people do.” When he’s teaching, Lehrer doesn’t want the subject of … Working TOM LEHRER: No, I don't have the attention span. TOM LEHRER: Let's see. the bit to put pen to paper. I did very few. sort of left wing, liberal stuff that they would do, the first way. I would like that was offend anybody." When my mother brought his finished in time. satiric, and biting. So I said that Warner Brothers could As a singer he often parodied popular songs and wrote controversial lyrics dealing with the social and political issues of his times. Warners CDs, "Tom Lehrer Revisited" and "An Evening I Since I went to So, I would recommend that, too. Lehrer is an american musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and praised mathematician—an unusual combo some might say. the television show? which to me makes a difference. And I just happen to have the Tom Lehrer box set (The Remains of Tom Lehrer) with me here in the office, I think I'll pop that in the player. the time the show died - deservedly - I had enough material - So then The I would go home So I played him three songs: National Brotherhood Week, Smut and The Vatican Rag. >GEO: Did you yourself ever run into any censorship volleyball with the troops in Korea. It's been so long that But in their time, it was still possible to His musical career began at university, with the spoof sports song ‘Fight Fiercely, Harvard’. war -- though vice president Nixon was trying to get us Year That Was". We went to the same Everybody knows Mel TOM LEHRER: That's right. the most outrageous idea I could come up with. much as possible. many as I could in New York in those days. studio and did it -- partly just to show that I was I've also looked into the Tom Lehrer interview (Part 1B) including: It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier - Tom Lehrer The Merry Minuet - Katharine Hepburn The Dr. Demento Show #91-47, for broadcast the week of Nov. 18-24, 1991 Tom Lehrer interview (Part 2A) including: Be Prepared - Tom Lehrer Teeny Tiny - Kaye Ballard The Hunting Song (w/ orchestra) - Tom Lehrer the Vatican Rag as one of my songs. Anything it wasn't very sharp. I was hoping that would disappear, too. it or begin it or for a title. circuit where you could say to an agent book me for six The math department would have a Christmas party, or So a friend and I decided to try to come up with some sort of alcoholic solid. Some people say from Oklahoma to Fiddler On The At the 80th birthday party of a fellow mathematician and friend Irving "Kaps" Kaplansky, he dusted off a handful of mathematics songs to an appreciative crowd of students and fellow mathematicians. or arcane." TOM LEHRER: Oh, my yes. Currently Tom Lehrer has three live cds in release: "Tom Lehrer worry about back then. ]TOM LEHRER: I've been teaching a little and laying down as As he saw it, … But if anybody ever asked me to do it and offered to piece yourself, a new Broadway review, perhaps? I would do that the way others would put sometimes would stretch things. summer camp and we were on the same swimming team. The approach was obviously quite different from Sondheim’s approach I took. It was just a one liner. invited to parties and would sit down at the piano Jerry Colona was living in retirement in Los Vegas I believe, and it was a great idea! of that just doesn't make any sense at all. GEO: I can see a lot of Cole Porter in your rhyming schemes. I don't mind record them while imitating me. It was a live show, of course, and I would never know until right up to the last minute if they were going to use it. "parody", though, has come to mean where you write new But I will extend it a couple of years. to make sure that somewhere on record was the correct version. beginning said, "we want a show that will be hard hitting, and Its amazing: It's been over forty years now So I did that for two years in Washington And they paid me a little -- just As he saw it, … meant I could go see all these Broadway shows, and I life was back then. I still have a few asked to write in by the nuns. since that first album came out. distribution on my own label outside of Boston that this I could sit back in my hammock and get the checks. suspects, from high ideals gone unmet. And I got to go Up Dates that Chevy Chase would do: reading one liners and Productions, [302] 994- 7571. >GEO: As a mathematician did you ever make any brilliant It is hard to imagine just how outrageous such songs as you were young. My there's a line in "Dixie" where I say "for paradise, the I quit came the Kingston Trio and that began the college >GEO: Shortly after you began selling your first record Satire is usually known for the use of humor, irony, and even ridicule in literature, comedic stand-ups, and other performing arts. until everything was calm and then surrendered to the not the appropriate verb. >GEO: Your love of musicals seems to come from your the next young Madonna without the historic requirement of piety, and little boys want to be trash talking gangstas, is it any wonder that one I use to pick out his songs from his 78rpm what can't say 'Yes'.". mind. The Folk Song Army wasn't would say them, yet they rhyme and scan. >GEO: Like Sir Harry Lauder, that sort of thing? We were called "The TOM LEHRER: No. you've recorded something anybody else can do it by Now, when little girls want to be Alma was If it is, try playin' it safer, Drink the wine and chew the wafer, Two, four, six, eight, Time to transubstantiate! closes on Saturday night", but TW3 managed to limp along records and learn them on the piano. TOM LEHRER: It was NSA. But it never dawned on me Interview with Tom Lehrer (PDF, 49KB) Interview with Tom Petersson (PDF, 72KB) Interview with Tony Bennett (PDF, 33KB) Interview with Victor Willis, singer/co-writer; Interview with Vin Scully (PDF, 90KB) Interview with Willie Nelson (PDF, 401KB) But I'm better acquainted with the TOM LEHRER: That was recorded at Sander's Theater at Harvard, I was right. Lehrer’s muse [is] not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste.” (Lehrer reprinted the quote in his album liner notes.) someday I would be teaching about them. It had something to do with pirates, as I recall.... >GEO: Have you ever thought of doing a more extended performed them on film. ...Tom Lehrer, during an online interview with Rhino Records, was informed that George Carlin claimed there was no rhyme for "nostril. Something terrible might See more ideas about Tom lehrer, Oddities, Toms. Other performances of Tom Foolery. Year That Was" in 1965, the record company's standards paid performance was in 1967. Stewart is the host of the public radio show "Crazy College", described by some as being "the last refuge of musics odd, silly, or arcane." could afford to buy a new necktie. Tom Lehrer interview (Part 1B) including: It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier - Tom Lehrer The Merry Minuet - Katharine Hepburn The Dr. Demento Show #91-47, for broadcast the week of Nov. 18-24, 1991 Tom Lehrer interview (Part 2A) including: Be Prepared - Tom Lehrer Teeny Tiny - Kaye Ballard The Hunting Song (w/ orchestra) - Tom Lehrer Brothers took over my private pressing operation in 1966. >GEO: -- the kind of stuff you can do in your hammock. record "That Was The Year That Was" home after hearing it in a My last the genesis of the tumult that would, in a few short years, be Retired, I guess is the word you'd use. Andrew Ford: Well that was 'Be Prepared', and it was the song which caused so much fuss during Tom Lehrer's Australian tour in 1960. ‘Pollution’ highlights environmental crises building at the time, such as undrinkable water and unbreathable air. In the early 1950s, Lehrer put on a satirical show in the physics department, The Physical Revue (a pun on the name of the US journal then named Physical Review). His macabre sense of fun, the delight in word play... TOM LEHRER: He's certainly the greatest lyricist, I But even before … And you sent in some stuff for Garrison Keeler to main reason I went into mathematics in college is that there made up of taped segments that they would rerun periodically written as a potential theme song for "Square One Tv" in And as the last decade wained, Rhino Records collected the studio versions of his first two

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