One of the bravest men from the cold war, almost a lone voice railing against the ridiculous hypocrisy of the time. Seriously underplaying the importance of his lyrics and the impact they had on the youth of the early 1960s. The highest level of intellectual comedy. Thankyou Tom Lehrer.
A high school teacher played "Pollution" in class back in the 1970s and I was in tears from laughter. When I finally found his albums I snapped them up and treasured them ever since. I was raised Catholic, so "The Vatican Rag" was especially relatable. Not only were the songs clever and catchy, but so was his banter. I especially liked his self-intro where he described his life's goal as "the attempt to prolong adolescence beyond all previous limits". For decades I wondered if he even had a face, since the albums never showed it. Thanks to RUclips, that personal goal has been fulfilled. One certainly can't call him prolific - one album per decade - but what he put on those albums is brilliant.
"Who knows? fifty years hence, Tom Lehrer's songs could be required listening in a college history course." We're getting close to that 50-year mark, and I'd LOVE to see that
@@emmarose4234 Well, this is not history, but I sang the "elements" song to the freshmen chemistry students when I was a grad student. The problem I ran into is this was at Berkeley where the heavier-than-uranium elements were first synthesized (that's why they have names like "Californium" and "Berkelium") and I was roundly criticized because some of the even-newer, "super-heavy" elements, whose atomic numbers are greater than 103, were not included. They had not yet been synthesized when Tom Lehrer was singing the song. And they are very unstable, radioactive with extremely short half-lives - the longest-lived one has half-life less than 15 minutes. So they - the "superheavy" elements - have never been produced in quantities sufficient to do anything with them other than detect them, unlike the trans-uranides, which you can actually use as reagents in experiments. The "super-heavy" ones are only blips on a detector, in real life.) Anyway, the kids booed me off the platform for not including them in the song.
@@ColonelFredPuntridge, wow. By the way, I read about a contestant in a local America’s Junior Miss competition (this was circa 2005) who sang “The Elements” for the talent competition. I was like “SQUEE!”
@@emmarose4234 Glenn Seaborg, the leader of the team which synthesized the trans-uranide elements, was still a professor emeritus at Berkeley when I was there. He was quite an old man. I once asked him if he had named plutonium after the mythical god of death, since plutonium is so toxic and so dangerous as a nuclear-weapons material. He said no, he and his team just said "after uranium must come neptunium, and then plutonium." They were thinking of the planets, not of the gods.
@@ColonelFredPuntridge, while we’re talking about Seaborg… I watched a RUclips video about a little kid who had cards with elements on them. He thought the seaborgium card (which had a picture of Glenn Seaborg) looked scary. But here’s the kicker: he and his mom pronounced it “suh-BOR-jee-um”.
I once went with a friend to a flute convention she wanted to attend. The flute players performed on a small outdoor stage underneath a canopy. There was a lull in the action--probably an intermission of some sort--and I began talking with the man seated next to me. For whatever reason I remarked, "What we need is some Tom Lehrer music." The man got excited and said that he was a piano player and that he knew all of Tom's songs by heart. I said that I knew all the words by heart. So we got up together, went to the piano, and put on an impromptu performance of Tom's songs with me on the vocals. My friend said she loved it!
I found Lehrer hilarious when I was a kid and barely understood the premise of half the songs let alone the references. His delivery and tone alone make him miles above many other comedians
Getting picky here, but Tom Lehrer is not a comedian--like the dreary late night wisecrackers---he s a wit in the same way that Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash are. When oyu add a concrt pianist and shake it with two parts vermouth, you get the Lehrer truth!
I often thought that David Letterman was basing his speaking style - his elocution and his use of changes in pitch to deliver punch-lines - on Tom Lehrer's.
Humor for people who could read and had some social conscious. Tom Lehrer never pandered to the lowest laugh. He had guts and the commitment to tell the truth. He was popular because so many people work harder trying to not be truthful.
31 and have been listening to him for 10 years or so. It’s incredible how funny and relevant much of his material still is today. He’s honestly among my favorite musicians full stop.
64. Heard TL's albums as a kid in the 60's and 70's. Helped in my learning about understanding of the world. His repartee between the songs was brilliant as well. I memorized a lot of it and still remember it to this day, although it has faded.
How lovely to hear this interview with my dear friend Tom Lehrer. Sadly, I don’t see him as often as I used to, but it was a great pleasure when he moved up to the rural village in Buckinghamshire where my husband and I lived and he came to live in our spare bedroom. What a joy it was to listen to him playing the piano and singing his witty, clever lyrics!
@@janegiegold8454 As I wrote on the Tom Lehrer Wisdom channel's republishing of We'll All Go Together When We Go, Lehrer actually called me in response to an ad I put in the Times for a summer sublet in NYC, which mentioned that it had a baby grand piano. I imagine he was doing something here. It was the late 60s or early 70s (It's hard to remember exactly when). Nearly dropping the phone, I told him he wouldn't want my sublet. He came to have a look anyway, shook my hand and agreed with me. I seem to be the only person on RUclips legitimately saying they met him in person. I intend to get my own bit of Lehrer-related fame while we're both alive to confirm it, not that he would remember me. . I'll certainly never forget him or the experience.
I only knew a few of his songs, but those lyrics have stuck in my head for DECADES. Werner Von Braun, National Brotherhood Week, the Vatican Rag, and Pollution. Still funny after all these years!
Boy, it's amazing how much NPR has changed since 1979. That stiff, wooden interviewer sounded like an earnest undergraduate at a college radio station (and I write this as a big fan of NPR then and now, it's just striking how much their production values have evolved).
I prefer the older style, maybe because I associate it with fewer advertisements (regardless of what they're called). The Reagan Mob's trimming most of their C.P.B. funding was two years in the future. More to the point, I can't see valuing slickness and high production values comes at the expence of everything else.
A very short interview padded with a lot of bits and pieces of Lehrer's records. Still, better than nothing. He's still alive at 92, perhaps he would consider another NPR interview.
When I first heard the name Tom Lehrer (I think someone was referencing The Vatican Rag), I assumed he must be related to Jim Lehrer (the PBS NewsHour guy). Then, to make a long story short, I fell hard for Tom. I want to name a future son Thomas Andrew after him, but I have a very close relative with the name Thomas Andrew (the last name isn’t Lehrer), and people will assume I named him after said relative.
Thanks----How's that for typical? When businessmen smelled money moving via TL's first self-promoted record, they called him for a deal---until they heard the songs, which sent them running for the door back into selling tame and empty horseshit.
Until Reprise Records came along and made a deal with TL for the release of That Was The Year That Was. Part of the deal was Reprise took over distribution of his self-promoted earlier albums. TL re-recorded the Songs By Tom Lehrer tracks for Reprise release. For the CD reissue, Reprise substituted the same songs recorded live for the Tom Lehrer Revisited album with bonus tracks TL recorded for The Electric Company.
We had this in social studies in the seventies . it was perochial school so the teacher would run to grab the stylus off the record before we heard anything we might mention in front of the parents or the clergy. The censorship was really a lesson we were learning. We took a vote and promised to mum. He relented. Thanks Steven M. We learned much from your tireless efforts with TL.
I listened to his albums so much at the Univ of Michigan, I remember all the lyrics now at 72yo. (Btw Tom; there’s nothing sophomoric in your musical work.)
Does, by any chance, someone know why 'National Brotherhood Week' is credited to the Brothers Gibb? I assume it is based on one of their works but, not being familiar with their oeuvre, do not recognize on which.
Wow! Lehrer smacked you in the forehead with that, AND YOU DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE! Maybe try actually LISTENING to the piece before making BONEHEADED comments like "antifa in a nutshell". In case you're interested, ALL of Tom Lehrer's songs are available on line. Listening to them might do you a world of good.
@@overl0ad_x762 Their only reason to exist is to think that they are on the right side of history, maybe when everything comes crashing down, he will understand your point, but then it will be to late
![GUILTY GEAR -STRIVE- Season Pass 4 Playable Character #1 [Queen Dizzy] Trailer](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/nXDsAgYXXv4/mqdefault.jpg)
One of the bravest men from the cold war, almost a lone voice railing against the ridiculous hypocrisy of the time. Seriously underplaying the importance of his lyrics and the impact they had on the youth of the early 1960s. The highest level of intellectual comedy. Thankyou Tom Lehrer.
100%
A high school teacher played "Pollution" in class back in the 1970s and I was in tears from laughter. When I finally found his albums I snapped them up and treasured them ever since. I was raised Catholic, so "The Vatican Rag" was especially relatable. Not only were the songs clever and catchy, but so was his banter. I especially liked his self-intro where he described his life's goal as "the attempt to prolong adolescence beyond all previous limits". For decades I wondered if he even had a face, since the albums never showed it. Thanks to RUclips, that personal goal has been fulfilled. One certainly can't call him prolific - one album per decade - but what he put on those albums is brilliant.
"Who knows? fifty years hence, Tom Lehrer's songs could be required listening in a college history course."
We're getting close to that 50-year mark, and I'd LOVE to see that
Anyone got any stories?
@@emmarose4234 Well, this is not history, but I sang the "elements" song to the freshmen chemistry students when I was a grad student. The problem I ran into is this was at Berkeley where the heavier-than-uranium elements were first synthesized (that's why they have names like "Californium" and "Berkelium") and I was roundly criticized because some of the even-newer, "super-heavy" elements, whose atomic numbers are greater than 103, were not included. They had not yet been synthesized when Tom Lehrer was singing the song. And they are very unstable, radioactive with extremely short half-lives - the longest-lived one has half-life less than 15 minutes. So they - the "superheavy" elements - have never been produced in quantities sufficient to do anything with them other than detect them, unlike the trans-uranides, which you can actually use as reagents in experiments. The "super-heavy" ones are only blips on a detector, in real life.) Anyway, the kids booed me off the platform for not including them in the song.
@@ColonelFredPuntridge, wow.
By the way, I read about a contestant in a local America’s Junior Miss competition (this was circa 2005) who sang “The Elements” for the talent competition. I was like “SQUEE!”
@@emmarose4234 Glenn Seaborg, the leader of the team which synthesized the trans-uranide elements, was still a professor emeritus at Berkeley when I was there. He was quite an old man. I once asked him if he had named plutonium after the mythical god of death, since plutonium is so toxic and so dangerous as a nuclear-weapons material. He said no, he and his team just said "after uranium must come neptunium, and then plutonium." They were thinking of the planets, not of the gods.
@@ColonelFredPuntridge, while we’re talking about Seaborg…
I watched a RUclips video about a little kid who had cards with elements on them. He thought the seaborgium card (which had a picture of Glenn Seaborg) looked scary. But here’s the kicker: he and his mom pronounced it “suh-BOR-jee-um”.
I once went with a friend to a flute convention she wanted to attend. The flute players performed on a small outdoor stage underneath a canopy. There was a lull in the action--probably an intermission of some sort--and I began talking with the man seated next to me. For whatever reason I remarked, "What we need is some Tom Lehrer music." The man got excited and said that he was a piano player and that he knew all of Tom's songs by heart. I said that I knew all the words by heart. So we got up together, went to the piano, and put on an impromptu performance of Tom's songs with me on the vocals. My friend said she loved it!
I found Lehrer hilarious when I was a kid and barely understood the premise of half the songs let alone the references. His delivery and tone alone make him miles above many other comedians
Getting picky here, but Tom Lehrer is not a comedian--like the dreary late night wisecrackers---he s a wit in the same way that Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash are. When oyu add a concrt pianist and shake it with two parts vermouth, you get the Lehrer truth!
I often thought that David Letterman was basing his speaking style - his elocution and his use of changes in pitch to deliver punch-lines - on Tom Lehrer's.
Humor for people who could read and had some social conscious. Tom Lehrer never pandered to the lowest laugh. He had guts and the commitment to tell the truth. He was popular because so many people work harder trying to not be truthful.
I heard this interview many years. Thank you for posting this.
Thanks for this. I used to listen to him when I was a kid. I hope he is not forgotten
Not among Dr. Demento Show fans.
21 here. I listen to him regularly and give him high praise to any curious souls.
31 and have been listening to him for 10 years or so. It’s incredible how funny and relevant much of his material still is today. He’s honestly among my favorite musicians full stop.
64. Heard TL's albums as a kid in the 60's and 70's. Helped in my learning about understanding of the world. His repartee between the songs was brilliant as well. I memorized a lot of it and still remember it to this day, although it has faded.
Timeless, Bitingly witty, intelligent.
How lovely to hear this interview with my dear friend Tom Lehrer. Sadly, I don’t see him as often as I used to, but it was a great pleasure when he moved up to the rural village in Buckinghamshire where my husband and I lived and he came to live in our spare bedroom. What a joy it was to listen to him playing the piano and singing his witty, clever lyrics!
You're full of shit.
@@janegiegold8454 As I wrote on the Tom Lehrer Wisdom channel's republishing of We'll All Go Together When We Go, Lehrer actually called me in response to an ad I put in the Times for a summer sublet in NYC, which mentioned that it had a baby grand piano. I imagine he was doing something here. It was the late 60s or early 70s (It's hard to remember exactly when). Nearly dropping the phone, I told him he wouldn't want my sublet. He came to have a look anyway, shook my hand and agreed with me. I seem to be the only person on RUclips legitimately saying they met him in person. I intend to get my own bit of Lehrer-related fame while we're both alive to confirm it, not that he would remember me. . I'll certainly never forget him or the experience.
He doesn’t still live in Cambridge?
Good stuff. Tom Lehrer is one of our best social commentators, and wonderfullly musical to boot. Necessary knowledge.
I only knew a few of his songs, but those lyrics have stuck in my head for DECADES. Werner Von Braun, National Brotherhood Week, the Vatican Rag, and Pollution. Still funny after all these years!
David Dodge, his wife Elva and daughter Kendal memorized all the words to Tom Lehrer songs and sang them heartily.
"It's a bit like Shakespeare." Oh, yes.
Boy, it's amazing how much NPR has changed since 1979. That stiff, wooden interviewer sounded like an earnest undergraduate at a college radio station (and I write this as a big fan of NPR then and now, it's just striking how much their production values have evolved).
Today they're nothing more than a propaganda machine for the Reich. The Herrenvolk's channel.
@Disposable Email There's no honest Marxist-Leninst.
NPR (and yourself probably) is Marxist-Leninist-Hitlerite. It's all one and the same.
Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down?
@@GBCR
I suppose you subscribe to that fount of all knowledge, Fox News?
I prefer the older style, maybe because I associate it with fewer advertisements (regardless of what they're called). The Reagan Mob's trimming most of their C.P.B. funding was two years in the future.
More to the point, I can't see valuing slickness and high production values comes at the expence of everything else.
LOVE TOM LEHRER!!!
I would also like to thank you for sharing this!
I love Tom Lehrer, if only there was an address I could write to so that he'd know.
A quick Google search reveals an address from 2012... might be worth trying.
A very short interview padded with a lot of bits and pieces of Lehrer's records. Still, better than nothing. He's still alive at 92, perhaps he would consider another NPR interview.
Most likely the Republicans will de-fund NPR before he dies. Perhaps he can write a song about that.
95
@@thehasbeenhotel Yes, 92 + 3 = 95. I wrote that 3 years ago. Glad he's still alive though.
i know i was js reminding you he's now 95 and still alive!! :D@@roderickfemm8799
When I first heard the name Tom Lehrer (I think someone was referencing The Vatican Rag), I assumed he must be related to Jim Lehrer (the PBS NewsHour guy).
Then, to make a long story short, I fell hard for Tom.
I want to name a future son Thomas Andrew after him, but I have a very close relative with the name Thomas Andrew (the last name isn’t Lehrer), and people will assume I named him after said relative.
Thanks----How's that for typical? When businessmen smelled money moving via TL's first self-promoted record, they called him for a deal---until they heard the songs, which sent them running for the door back into selling tame and empty horseshit.
Until Reprise Records came along and made a deal with TL for the release of That Was The Year That Was. Part of the deal was Reprise took over distribution of his self-promoted earlier albums. TL re-recorded the Songs By Tom Lehrer tracks for Reprise release. For the CD reissue, Reprise substituted the same songs recorded live for the Tom Lehrer Revisited album with bonus tracks TL recorded for The Electric Company.
We had this in social studies in the seventies . it was perochial school so the teacher would run to grab the stylus off the record before we heard anything we might mention in front of the parents or the clergy.
The censorship was really a lesson we were learning.
We took a vote and promised to mum. He relented. Thanks Steven M. We learned much from your tireless efforts with TL.
I listened to his albums so much at the Univ of Michigan, I remember all the lyrics now at 72yo. (Btw Tom; there’s nothing sophomoric in your musical work.)
Does, by any chance, someone know why 'National Brotherhood Week' is credited to the Brothers Gibb? I assume it is based on one of their works but, not being familiar with their oeuvre, do not recognize on which.
Did he really pronounce "Lehrer" as "Layer"?
Yes, unfortunately.
B
C
@@Insert_channel_here D?
@@timotejbernat462 E.
F
G!
As in, gee, Tom Lehrer was so handsome back then, and probably still is at 93.
3:16
thats right lehrer.. antifa in a nutshell
Wow! Lehrer smacked you in the forehead with that, AND YOU DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE! Maybe try actually LISTENING to the piece before making BONEHEADED comments like "antifa in a nutshell".
In case you're interested, ALL of Tom Lehrer's songs are available on line. Listening to them might do you a world of good.
@@johndemeritt3460 maybe you should consider that for yourself? Satire comedy wouldnt work well with you
I'd be willing to bet that I've been a fan of Tom Lehrer's work longer than you've been on this Earth. No, satirical songs don't miss me at all.
@@johndemeritt3460 hating people who don’t love others, using fascism against fascists; you really don’t see a connection here?
@@overl0ad_x762 Their only reason to exist is to think that they are on the right side of history, maybe when everything comes crashing down, he will understand your point, but then it will be to late