- by FJK
- The Guardian
- Issue #2163
Tom Lehrer Photo: Public Domain
Tom Lehrer died at the age of 97, on 26 July, which is both a good innings and a while ago for an obituary, but Lehrer never fitted in with conventional timelines. His peak popularity as a performer was in the 1960s, but this reviewer discovered him in the 1980s, long after Lehrer had retired from music and taken up mathematics again.
Lehrer wrote and performed funny, catchy and usually political songs, from inside the belly of the US beast. He studied at Harvard, worked at the National Security Agency and taught at MIT.
His songs were rich in black humour about the US throwing its’ weight around, and often poked fun at the USA’s self image:
First we got the bomb, but that was good
‘cause we like peace and motherhood
and asking, then answering
When someone makes a move
Of which we don’t approve
Who is it that always intervenes?
… send the Marines!
Not exclusively political, he also managed a funny song about the Table of Elements, and parodied self-righteous folk singers (“we all hate poverty, war and injustice/unlike the rest of you squares”). He also made fun of plays in which actors talked about being unable to communicate (“if people can’t communicate, they could at least shut up”).
When Lehrer toured Australia, one Guardian contributor remembers plainclothes police watching a show to make sure he didn’t perform “Be prepared,” a not very smutty song about the Boy Scout movement. Lehrer made fun of the coppers and sang his Oedipus Rex song (“he sure loved his mother”) saying they wouldn’t know what he was talking about. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, but he wasn’t arrested.
Lehrer had a few explanations for retiring and going back to teaching. He once said that policial satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger got a Nobel Peace Prize. Asked to write about US Presidents, he said he felt like a Pompeian being told to compose amusing odes about lava.
As the news about Lehrer’s death came out, I saw that Australian musical comedy guy Tim Minchin had yet again chided people who protest against Israeli genocide for not appreciating how “complicated” the situation was.
Suddenly I missed Tom Lehrer more.
