Style and influences }} Lehrer was mainly influenced by
musical theater. According to
Gerald Nachman's book
Seriously Funny, the
Broadway musical ''
Let's Face It!'' made an early and lasting impression on him. Lehrer's style consists of
parodying various forms of
popular song. For example, his appreciation of
list songs led him to write "
The Elements", which lists the
chemical elements to the tune of
Gilbert and Sullivan's "
Major-General's Song" from
The Pirates of Penzance. In author and
Boston University professor
Isaac Asimov's second autobiographical volume,
In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recounted seeing Lehrer perform in a
Boston nightclub on October 9, 1954. Lehrer sang a song about Jim getting it from Louise, and Sally from Jim, "... and after a while you gathered the 'it' was
venereal disease. Suddenly, as the combinations grew more grotesque, you realized he was satirizing every known
perversion without using a single naughty phrase. It was clearly unsingable outside a nightclub." Asimov also recalled a song that dealt with the
Boston subway system, making use of the stations leading into town from Harvard, observing that the local subject-matter rendered the song useless for general distribution. Lehrer subsequently granted Asimov permission to print the lyrics to "The Subway Song" in his book. "I haven't gone to nightclubs often," said Asimov, "but of all the times I have gone, it was on this occasion that I had by far the best time."
Recordings }} Lehrer was encouraged by the success of his performances, so he paid $15 () to record in a single one-hour session on January 22, 1953, at the
TransRadio studio on Boylston Street in Boston,
Songs by Tom Lehrer. The initial pressing was 400 copies. Radio stations would not air his songs because of his controversial subjects, so he sold the album on campus at Harvard for $3, , while "several stores near the Harvard campus sold it for $3.50, taking only a minimal markup as a kind of community service. Newsstands on campus sold it for the same price." After one summer, he started to receive mail orders from all parts of the country, as far away as San Francisco, after the
San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article on the record. Interest in his recordings spread by word of mouth. People played their records for friends, who then also wanted a copy. Lehrer recalled, "Lacking exposure in the media, my songs spread slowly. Like
herpes, rather than
ebola." The album included the macabre "I Hold Your Hand in Mine", the mildly risqué "Be Prepared", and "
Lobachevsky", regarding plagiarizing mathematicians. It became a
cult success by word of mouth, despite being self-published and without promotion. The limited distribution of the album led to a knock-off album by Jack "Enjal" (a pseudonym of Jack Nagel) being released in 1958 without Lehrer's approval, where some of the lyrics were mistranscribed. Lehrer embarked on a series of concert tours and recorded a second album in 1959. He released the second album in two versions: the songs were the same, but
More of Tom Lehrer was a studio recording and
An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer was recorded live in concert. In 2013, Lehrer recalled the studio session for "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park", which referred to the practice of controlling pigeons in Boston with
strychnine-treated corn:
Touring Lehrer had a breakthrough in the United Kingdom on December 4, 1957, when the
University of London awarded a
doctor of music degree
honoris causa to
Princess Margaret, and the public orator, Professor J. R. Sutherland, said it was "in the full knowledge that the Princess is a connoisseur of music and a performer of skill and distinction, her taste being catholic, ranging from Mozart to the
calypso and from opera to the songs of Miss
Beatrice Lillie and Tom Lehrer." This prompted significant interest in Lehrer's works and helped to secure distribution in Britain for his five-year-old debut album. It was there that his music achieved real sales popularity, as a result of the proliferation of university newspapers referring to the material, and inadvertently due to the
BBC, which in 1958 banned from broadcast 10 of the 12 songs on the album. By the end of the 1950s, Lehrer had sold 370,000 records. While in New Zealand, he penned lyrics critical of the
All Blacks' upcoming tour of Apartheid-era South Africa and Prime Minister
Walter Nash's stance on it. Lehrer's tours occurred during a time in which he was, he said, "banned, censored, mentioned in several houses of parliament and threatened with arrest." In particular, "Be Prepared" drew advance resistance in
Brisbane from the commissioner of police. He performed several songs in Australia that were still unreleased, including "The Masochism Tango."), American militarism ("Send the Marines"), and
nuclear proliferation ("Who's Next?" and "
MLF Lullaby"). He also wrote a song satirizing rocket scientist
Wernher von Braun, who worked for
Nazi Germany before working for the United States. Lehrer did not appear on TW3; vocalist
Nancy Ames performed his songs (to Lehrer's chagrin), The show was transmitted live, and he pre-recorded all his segments at one performance. Lehrer was not featured in every edition, but his songs featured in an appropriate part of each show. At least two of these songs were not included on any of his LPs: a reworking of
Noël Coward's "That is the End of the News" (with some new lyrics) and a comic explanation of how Britain might adapt to the
coming of decimal currency. Lehrer's record deal with
Reprise Records for
That Was The Year That Was also gave Reprise distribution rights for his earlier recordings, because Lehrer wanted to
wind up his own record imprint. Lehrer toured Sweden, Norway, and Denmark in 1967; his concert in Oslo was recorded for Danish television and subsequently released on DVD some 40 years later. He performed as a prominent international guest at the
Studenterforeningen (student association) in Copenhagen, which was televised, and he commented on stage that he might be America's "revenge for
Victor Borge". He performed original songs in a
Dodge automobile industrial film distributed primarily to automobile dealers and shown at promotional events in 1967, set in a fictional American wild west town and titled ''The Dodge Rebellion Theatre presents Ballads For '67
. He attempted to adapt Sweeney Todd'' as a Broadway musical, working with
Joe Raposo, to star
Jerry Colonna. They started a few songs but, as Lehrer noted, "Nothing ever came of it, and of course twenty years later
Stephen Sondheim beat me to the punch."
Departure from the music scene }} Although Lehrer was "a hero of the
anti-nuclear,
civil rights left", he disliked the aesthetics of the
counterculture of the 1960s and largely stopped performing in the United States as the movement gained momentum. although he also wrote ten songs for the educational children's television show
The Electric Company. His last public performance for many years took place in 1972, on a fundraising tour for the
anti-Vietnam War Democratic U.S. presidential candidate
George McGovern. Yet at different times he gave other explanations for quitting. In 1973, he had said that "
political satire became obsolete when
Henry Kissinger was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize." In 1981, at a New York performance of
Tomfoolery, he told
The New York Times, "The Vietnam War is what changed it. Everybody got earnest. My purpose was to make people laugh and not applaud. If the audience applauds they’re just showing they agree with me. But that’s not humor. So I dropped out just in time." Lehrer's musical career was relatively brief. He once mentioned that he performed a mere 109 shows and wrote 37 songs over 20 years. Nevertheless, he developed a cult following in subsequent decades.
Revivals and reissues Lehrer's music became a staple of
The Doctor Demento Show when it began national syndication in 1977. In 1980,
Cameron Mackintosh produced
Tomfoolery, a revue of Lehrer's songs that was a hit on the London stage. Lehrer was not initially involved with the show, but he was pleased with it; he eventually gave the stage production his full support and updated several of his lyrics for the show.
Tomfoolery contained 27 songs and led to more than 200 productions, Lehrer made a rare TV appearance on
BBC's
Parkinson show in conjunction with the
Tomfoolery premiere in 1980 at the
Criterion Theatre in London, where he sang "I Got It from Agnes". There were
Tomfoolery performances in San Francisco about 1982 and in 2018–19.
Tomfoolery was performed at the
Arena Stage Theater in Washington, DC, in 1982. In 1993, he wrote "That's Mathematics" for the closing credits to a
Mathematical Sciences Research Institute video celebrating the proof of
Fermat's Last Theorem. On June 7 and 8, 1998, Lehrer performed in public for the first time in 18 years at the
Lyceum Theatre, London, as part of the show
Hey, Mr. Producer! celebrating the career of Cameron Mackintosh, who had produced
Tomfoolery. The June 8 show was his only performance before Queen
Elizabeth II. Lehrer sang "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" and an updated version of the nuclear proliferation song "Who's Next?". In 2000, Lehrer commented that he doubted his songs had any real effect on those not already critical of the establishment: "I don't think this kind of thing has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted ... I'm fond of quoting
Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin
Kabaretts of the 1930s, which did so much to stop the rise of
Hitler and prevent the
Second World War." Lehrer said, jokingly, of his musical career: "If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while." == Later life and death ==