If, as Tom Lehrer professes, he really had devoted his life to “selling out,” then he would have eagerly accepted the many offers he has received over the years to return to the concert stage, appear on television or offer his musical take on some current event — say, the upcoming presidential race or Elian.
But as Lehrer sings in “Selling Out,” one of the precious few new songs included on a just-released anthology of his works, “What do you have when there’s nothing left to sell?”
Lehrer, perhaps the premier song satirist of his generation, has not released a new album since 1965 and has not appeared in solo concert since 1967. He still has his integrity, which is nice, as he observes in “Selling Out,” because “If you really have integrity, it means your price is very high.”
Despite the macabre title of the newly released 3-CD box set “The Remains of Tom Lehrer” — a title in tune with much of the Lehrer oeuvre — the esteemed satirist cum math teacher (not a professor — he never earned his Ph.D) is alive and well. He recently turned 72 and still teaches a course at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
He is surely the only educator who can also lay claim to being the second-most-requested artist (after “Weird Al” Yankovic) on “The Dr. Demento Radio Show.” (the good “Doctor,” a.k.a. Barry Hanson, wrote the set’s comprehensive liner notes).
Lehrer began writing songs to amuse himself and friends while attending Harvard, from which he graduated at the age of 18. The first tune, penned in 1945, was “Fight Fiercely, Harvard,” a mock football fight song that still, he marveled in a recent phone interview, is played at halftime at his alma mater.
In 1953, after compiling 12 songs, he went into a local recording studio and in 22 minutes, and for a $15 fee, taped them all. Then for a few more dollars, he had 400 copies pressed on 10-inch LPs, which he titled “Songs By Tom Lehrer.” He intended them for friends. “It never dawned on me that this was a commercial thing,” he said. “I assumed the disc jockeys wouldn’t play it.”
Students bought the album in droves, though, took it home on vacations and played it for their friends. Soon, orders began pouring in from all over the country and eventually sales totaled 370,000 copies. Lehrer’s career was launched.
New generations have discovered Lehrer’s music on radio shows such as “Demento” and Chicago’s own “Midnight Special” (Mike Nichols, who founded the program in 1953, was among the first to play Lehrer’s tunes).
Lehrer’s recorded canon amounts to only about 50 songs. Among his best known are “Pollution” (“You can use the latest toothpaste/Then rinse out your mouth with industrial waste”); “National Brotherhood Week” (“Step up and shake the hand/Of someone you can’t stand”), and the religiously incorrect “The Vatican Rag” (“Ave Maria/Gee, it’s good to see ya”).
“The Remains of Tom Lehrer,” produced by Warner Archive/Rhino Entertainment, includes “Songs By Tom Lehrer” and another self-produced album, “More of Tom Lehrer” (1959). A second disc contains two later albums “Tom Lehrer Revisited,” which features live performances, and “An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer.” Disc three holds Lehrer’s best-known album, “That Was the Year That Was” (1965), a collection of topical songs he wrote for the TV series “That Was the Week That Was,” and which, after 31 years, finally achieved Gold Record status.
This disc also includes three tracks recorded exclusively for the box set, “Selling Out,” “Trees” and a Hanukkah song to put Adam Sandler’s to shame, “(I’m Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica,” as well as the rarity, “That’s Mathematics,” which had been a “Dr. Demento” exclusive.
But the unearthed treasures of the set may be the five songs Lehrer created for the ’70s PBS children’s series “The Electric Company.”
“I have a real fondess for these songs,” Lehrer said. “I did them because they didn’t ask if I would write a funny song or a political song, but a song about vowel combinations or silent `e.’ What a challenge that was. I loved it.”
Lehrer said it is these ditties that seem to resonate more with younger fans. “Sometimes I’ve been at a party with students,” he said, “and they may or may not have heard of `Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,’ but when I play `Silent E,’ it’s as if I wrote `Silent Night.’ They are aghast because that’s what they grew up with and they didn’t know I wrote it.”
“Poisoning Pigeons,” by the way, is the most requested Lehrer song on the “Dr. Demento” show. “People keep sending me news clippings whenever there’s a pigeon poisoning, of which there are quite a few,” he said.
Lehrer once explained his art by saying that he delights in taking various popular song forms to their logical (and illogical) extremes “to arrive at almost anything, from the ridiculous to the obscene, or as they say in New York, `sophisticated.'”
He has subverted icons of Americana. In “My Old Hometown,” he waxes nostalgic about “the little girl next door” who “sure looked sweet in her first evening gown,” and who charges now “for what she used to give for free.” His “A Christmas Carol” doesn’t exactly ring with “It’s a Wonderful Life” sentiment: “Angels we have heard on high/Tell us to go out and buy!”
Then there are the twisted and macabre love songs, such as “The Masochism Tango” and “I Hold Your Hand in Mine,” which, yes, is to be taken literally.
“I wasn’t really trying to be sick,” Lehrer said. “There was a category called `sick humor’ in the 1960s. I was linked with Lenny Bruce and other people, but that wasn’t really appropriate. But that’s probably the second easiest way, after sex, to get a cheap laugh, because it’s sort of forbidden and naughty, but not as naughty as sex. I tried to avoid sexual references because I didn’t want to be put in the `Party Records’ bin with Rusty Warren.”
Nor does Lehrer consider himself as a cynic. “I think of myself more as a skeptic,” he said. “A cynic thinks that everything sucks, and a skeptic says, `Maybe it does, but let me check it out.'”
Lehrer anticipated the “going too far” humor of Baby Boomer comedians. But, Lehrer observed, going too far in those days was not really going very far. Nowadays, when you can say anything, going too far isn’t funny. It’s just vulgar, as opposed to being deft. Wit has died and mere irreverence has replaced it.”
And while “The Remains of Tom Lehrer” reminds us of what we’re missing, Lehrer isn’t moved to resume his performing career. Nor is he inspired to write new topical songs. Where Elvis Costello once sang, “I used to be disgusted, but now I’m just amused,” Lehrer used to be amused, but now, he says, he’s not just disgusted, he’s angry.
Besides, though some contain dated references, Lehrer’s songs are still relevant because of the issues they address. “I really believe that nothing is worth making fun of unless it is worth taking seriously,” he said. The real subject of the song “Wernher Von Braun,” for example, was not so much the former Nazi rocket scientist whose “political allegiance is one of expedience,” but the hypocrisy of Americans who accepted him as long as he was on our side.
A coda: Years later, Lehrer learned that Von Braun’s daughter was applying to college and during the interview unwittingly echoed the song’s chilling final line when she said that her father was presently learning Chinese. “The dean of admissions,” Lehrer said, “who knew my songs, practically fell off his chair.”
Lehrer does not believe his songs changed the world. He agrees that he was preaching to the converted. “Not even preaching,” he amends, “but titillating the converted. Preaching implies that you’re giving them the message they hadn’t already gotten. I never expected people to say, `Oh, I used to think war was good, but now that I hear your songs, I realize it’s bad.'”
In his brief performing career, Lehrer performed only 15 nightclub engagements and 104 solo concerts. He performed in Chicago at Orchestra Hall, but never at the legendary Mr. Kelly’s nightclub. He wears this like a badge of honor. “Oscar Marienthal, who was in charge of the booking, took me to Mr. Kelly’s to convince me to play there,” he recalled. “Anita O’Day was singing. It was during the dinner show. Not only was the owner not shutting up [the audience members] who were making noise, but he was talking to me over them so he could be heard over the noise of the patrons. And I said, `I’m never going to work here.’ It gave me great pleasure, as he kept increasing his offer, to say no.”
The box set, Lehrer said, “is beyond my wildest dreams. I’ve compared it to looking at your baby pictures. You say, `Oh, what a cute baby.’ I’m very pleased. I don’t say that every note or word is perfect, but there’s nothing I’m ashamed of. That’s the highest compliment I can pay myself.”
