Tom Lehrer, 1957. By then, a saint on college campuses
Given last week’s news of the death at the age of 97 of America’s most acerbic and creative musical satirist, I was curious as to whether Tom Lehrer had ever performed in New Haven, given that he was a product of Harvard, and taught mathematics there.
The answer, I discovered, was buried in the archives of the Yale Daily News. In its Friday, Dec. 12, 1958 issue, the paper carried articles and ads featuring many of that evening’s events.
For example, the new Yale chaplain, Reverend William Sloane Coffin, offered a lecture on the subject of dogmatism in religion (he was in favor of it, as years later he would be in favor of, and famously aid, the peace movement during the Vietnam War).
For lighter fare any moviegoer in town could head to the Loew’s Poli, at the corner of George and Church, to see William Holden in the romantic comedy, “The Moon is Blue,” though banned in many places (including Boston) because the dialogue contained words like “virgin,” “seduce,” and “mistress.”
But then there was this: Readers of the Yale Daily News found on the back page an odd display advertisement plugging the night’s Woolsey Hall concert.
The ad simply said “Tom Lehrer,” and where to buy tickets, and made no reference as to what sort of concert it would be, or any detail about the performer’s achievements. It didn’t need to. Almost every Yalie knew exactly who Lehrer was, as his satirical songs had become anthems on American campuses.
The 1950s had been seen as straight laced. But Lehrer sensed its undercurrents of complexity, absurdity, and inhumanity; in this, he presaged the protests of the next decade.
He had spent free Cambridge evenings writing words and music for songs meant to not only upset apple carts but to challenge conventional thinking and as commentary on societal norms that had become nonsensical.
And his fame had spread quickly even though by his 1958 appearance downtown he had released only one album, “Songs by Tom Lehrer,” albeit an LP that had to be re-released several times because it was selling out everywhere. (Others, such as the classic “An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer,” would come in 1959, and in the 1960s, “That Was the Year That Was,” with songs he’d written for the television show of the same name.)
I came to know the magic of his first album as a college freshman, albeit not at Harvard or Yale but what was known, satirically (and therefore suitably) as “Harvard on the Hocking River,” otherwise called Ohio University, in Athens. In the fall of 1961, “Songs by Tom Lehrer” helped turn me from a humble and shy young human into an unrepentant smartass.
Even the album’s promotional material, written by Lehrer, was unusual. Quoting a phantom music critic, it said, “Mr. Lehrer plays the piano acceptably,” and cited an imagined New York Times review, “Mr. Lehrer’s muse is not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste.”
This irreverence fed into a young mind like mine, already corrupted by Allan Sherman, Stanley Kubrick (“Dr. Strangelove”) and Mad magazine.
In that album, Lehrer took down the animal hunting practice: “I went out and shot the maximum the game laws would allow, two game wardens, seven hunters, and a purebred Guernsey cow.”
He glorified the Russian 19th century math wizard, Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, as the master of plagiarism. He also stuck it to the cutesy folk song genre with “Rickety-Tickety Tin” and to the racism of the American south in “I Wanna Go Back to Dixie.”
He also, apparently, hoped to return to Los Alamos, New Mexico. As a former employee of the Atomic Energy Commission, he was inspired to compose “The Wild West is Where I Want to Be.” This was a paean of a mischievous sort to the nuclear program and a forerunner to his later, “We Will All Go Together When We Go.” (“When the air becomes uranius, we will all go simultaneous…”)
As the years passed, I learned to play many of Lehrer’s songs on the piano, mostly from the songbook, “Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer (and Not Enough Drawings by Ronald Searle).”
However, after several decades of practice, I still stumble over the elements listed on the Periodic Table, to the tune of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General.”
In 1981, I rode Metro-North to Manhattan to see “Tomfoolery,” a show in Greenwich Village of Lehrer songs, though not performed by him. The stage lit like a burlesque show when the cast danced to the explosively irreverent “Vatican Rag,” which got Lehrer, who was Jewish, in hot water with many Catholics.
Not that he left Jews off the hook. Each December, I send around his orchestral recording of “(I’m Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica” to family and friends. Should you want to avail yourself of it, here it is.
And his generosity of spirit and purse became well known, writing songs gratis, including the clever “Silent E” for the PBS children’s show, “The Electric Company,” and later making all of his oeuvre available free to anyone who wants to perform it, publish it, or put it on stage, as the Yale Cabaret did in 1983. The Yale Daily News critic called the music “dated,” as if nuclear fears had become, and would stay, a thing of the ancient past, and would never have to abide by the Lehrer instruction:
Oh we will all burn together when we burn.
There’ll be no need to stand and wait your turn.
When we’re ready for the fallout,
And St. Peter calls us all out,
We’ll just drop our agendas and adjourn.
Throughout many years, The Harvard University Band has honored composer Lehrer at every home football game with the first song he ever wrote (in 1945). It was an alternative to college fight songs that are violent in nature. He thought it was time for something more genteel.
Hence, “Fight Fiercely, Harvard,” was the result.
My guess is that this November 22nd, the date of the 141st version of “The Game,” the band will bring its version of “Fight Fiercely Harvard,” to the Yale Bowl in honor of Professor Lehrer’s legacy. If so, we should all, Bulldog or Crimson, sing along in communion. Thus, memorize this, as there will be a quiz tomorrow:
Fight fiercely, Harvard
Fight, fight, fight
Demonstrate to them our skill
Albeit they possess the might
Nonetheless we have the will
How we shall celebrate our victory
We shall invite the whole team up for tea
(How jolly)
Hurl that spheroid down the field, and
Fight, fight, fight
Fight fiercely, Harvard
Fight, fight, fight
Impress them with our prowess, do
Oh, fellows, do not let the crimson down
Be of stout heart and true
Come on, chaps, fight for Harvard’s glorious name
Won’t it be peachy if we win the game
(Oh, goody)
Let’s try not to injure them, but
Fight, fight, fight
(Let’s not be rough, though)
Fight, fight, fight
(And do fight fiercely)
Fight, fight, fight
Should you want to hear Lehrer sing it, click on this.
And given Harvard’s continuing battle against the White House, and its implications for so many universities, including dear old Yale, we should all fight, fight, fight. And then celebrate our victory with a nice cup of tea laced with rum, (how jolly).