I’ll always be grateful to my Grade 7 teacher, Mr. (Tom) O’Hanley, for turning me and my classmates on to the brilliance of Tom Lehrer.
The New York City native passed away Saturday in Connecticut at 97. His earthly exit will get a fraction of the attention that came earlier this week with the death of Ozzy Osbourne and Hulk Hogan. Lehrer, a Harvard educated mathematician and teacher, would know the exact fraction, and be able to write a song about it.
His were not love songs. He created tunes about math and chemistry, making a song out of listing the periodic table in “The Elements”. Drafted into the US army in the late ’50s, he mocked war, generals and atomic bomb builders in songs such as, “Wernher von Braun.”
Back when we were more interested in whether Paul was dead (we scoured the back of Beatles albums for clues), the Lehrer song that tickled us at Our Lady of Peace Catholic school was “The Vatican Rag.” O’Hanley risked eternal damnation from our strap-happy principal, Sister Martha Ann, if she only knew he made us listen to lyrics like these:
Get in line in that processional
Step into that small confessional
There the guy who’s got religion’ll
Tell you if your sin’s original.
Lehrer knew original. The New York City native studied classical piano, switching as soon as he could to popular music. As a teenager he was writing show tunes. On the recording he made in the late ’50s,/early ’60s, he shows incredible range on the piano, charging into honky tonk one minute, Gilbert and Sullivan parodies the next. He had all the keyboard and lyrical dexterity of Billy Joel, with none of the wives.
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So what does Lehrer decide to do with his life? He becomes a math teacher.
Yes, there is math in music. Lehrer, however, never ditched his day job. His recording career was remarkably short, a flash of clarity and energy crammed between the Cold War and colour television. From 1953 through ’59, he released “Songs of Tom Lehrer” (recorded in a single session), “More of Tom Lehrer” and the concert collection, “An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer.” In 1965, his involvement as resident songwriter with the satirical NBC news series That Was the Week that Was begat another album, “That Was the Year That Was.”
In 1966, after his recordings caught on in The UK (far more robustly than in America), Lehrer served as a musical satirist on David Frost’s BBC series The Frost Report. He toured Denmark, Norway and Sweden in 1967 and was recorded in concert in Oslo. Lehrer wrote ten songs for the PBS children’s series The Electric Company in the early ’70s, including “Silent E.” By 1972 he pretty much retired from public performances. All that followed was a CD boxed set, “The Remains of Tom Lehrer,” which came out in 2000.
Over the past half century, he was discovered by a new audience on radio’s nationally syndicated Doctor Demento Show. There he was heard along with one of his fans and followers, Weird Al Yankovic. That sparked a new appreciation of his work, which led to Lehrer updating lyrics for the Cameron Mackintosh production “Tomfoolery,” a hit in London in 1980.
Even though he’d pretty much parked his act nearly 50 years ago, his influence continues to be felt. His early songs “Pollution” and “National Brotherhood Week” summed up generations of failure when it comes to saving the planet and achieving racial equality. “The Vatican Rag” was Lehrer’s early ’60s response to Vatican 2 but it preaches to Catholics, lapsed or otherwise, today.
The fact that many of Lehrer’s lyrics were just too bang on for the times helps them land even stronger in 2025. “Be Prepared,” a sly goof on the Boy Scouts, was way too suggestive for radio air play in the ’50s. His 1952 college hit, “I Got it from Agnes,” was downright bawdy and would have put him in a cell next to Lenny Bruce had it been heard of deciphered by that era’s Legion of Decency. Cloaked in his catchy piano tunes, Lehrer’s dark lyrical humour was so fearless he’d be a tremendous asset in the writing rooms of South Park or Stephen Colbert today.
Rapper 2 Chainz got the message. In 2012, he sampled Lehrer’s “The Old Dope Peddler.” This was 60 years after the musical math teacher recorded it. How cool was Lehrer about that? The eighty-something’s response to Mr. Chainz at the time: “As sole copyright owner of The Old Dope Peddler, I grant you motherfuckers permission to do this.”
In the last few years, Lehrer has transferred all the music and lyrics he had ever recorded into the public domain — an incredible gift of satire at a time when the world needs it most. Among his most ardent fans is Randy Newman, who called him “one of the great American songwriters.” Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen said Lehrer was one of the songwriters who influenced him the most.
Why did Lehrer stop making fun of the world? Years before the point became moot with Trump, Lehrer suggested the political landscape in America was simply beyond parody. He just didn’t know where to start in on, for example, George Bush. One of his darkest songs, “We’ll All Go Together When We Go,” summed up his cynicism about a political solution to nuclear genocide.
“There will be no more misery/When the world is our rotisserie/Yes we will all fry together when we fry.”
Lehrer beat that prediction and leaves behind a reminder that thoughts and ideas and math and science and humour and art may still be the best way out for the rest of us — perhaps if we all just, “genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!”
