In this album, he tackled well-meaning hypocrisy
in "National Brotherhood Week,"
which is about racism,
and the fact that this is meant to be dropped,
amazingly, for a period of one week.
That includes [the lyrics]
"Be nice to people who are inferior to you,
It's only for a week, so have no fear,
be grateful that it doesn't last all year."
Other songs on this album--
he championed free speech in "Smut,"
in particular, the freedom of pornography,
which included lyrics,
"When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.
I could tell you things about Peter Pan
and the Wizard of Oz,
there's a dirty old man!"
And included other topical subjects
such as pollution and nuclear proliferation,
which are still topical today.
He hasn't forgotten his academic roots.
In a song called "New Math,"
which he was quoted as saying,
"This attempt to revise the teaching of
mathematics in schools
was something of a threat in 1965,
but it subsequently passed through the curriculum,
not like a breath of fresh air,
but more like a kidney stone."
However, his most controversial song
perhaps his most controversial song ever,
was in response to the Catholic Church's attempts
to become more accessible
to the general public.
They had replaced part of the Latin mass with the vernacular,
and so this is a clip now
I don't know what show it's from,
but he does forget
the words at one point.
It would be rude of me to point that out.
Here's "The Vatican Rag."
[piano intro music]
First you get down on your knees,
fiddle with your rosaries,
bow your head with great respect and
genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.
Make-do whatever steps you want if
you have cleared them with the pontif,
everybody say his own "Kyrie Eleison"
doing the Vatican Rag.
Get in line in that processional,
step into that small confessional,
there's the guy who's got religion who'll
tell you if your sin's original.
If it is, try playing it safer,
drink the wine, and chew the wafer,
two, four, six, eight,
time to transubstantiate.
So get down upon your knees,
fiddle with your rosaries,
bow your head with great respect,
and genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!
Make a cross on your abdomen,
and when in Rome, do like a Roman,
Ave Maria, gee it's good to see ya,
Getting ecstatic, and sort of dramatic,
and doing the Vatican Rag!
[applause]
That was his most controversial song.
A teacher in New York
was fired for playing this to his students
as an example of satire.
Tom Lehrer found that hilarious.
Not particularly funny for the teacher,
although he was later reinstated.
But this album proved to be
Tom's breakthrough album.
Society was becoming less prudish at the time,
and these songs were already designed
for the general public.
So finally he was getting some air time.
In fact, when he performed at the Hungry Eye in San Francisco,
he proved to be the nighclub's biggest draw
in six years.
However, all of this was not enough to
persuade him to continue performing.
His last performance during his tour of Scandinavia.
He went on this tour
"because I got a trip out of it."
However, his last performance
was at the Volkener Centret in Copenhagen
on September 12, 1967.
Imagine that.
Imagine taking time out of your PhD
just to go to Denmark.
What a waste of time!
However, he never actually returned to his PhD.
He preferred teaching mathematics to researching mathematics, he decided, saying
"I kept saying to myself that if I ever get
this dissertation written,
I will never have to do any research again.
Then I realized that I must be telling myself something,
so I decided enough is enough."
I am familiar with that feeling myself.
He did write a couple of papers.
If you're interested, he co-authored
a couple of papers on statistics.
There they are.
But he did say again later,
slightly more succinctly,
"I wanted to be a graduate student
all my life,
and they wanted me to be a PhD.
The two goals were incompatible."
So he returned to teaching at Harvard,
and MIT, and he also took a position
at the University of California,
all the way on the West Coast, at Santa Cruz.
There's where he taught mathematics
and also he taught a course on musical theatre.
He would occasionally come out of retirement
to do a benefit for some political figure that he felt
was going to lose.
He didn't want to be responsible for helping anyone win.
But apart from that,
he continued teaching and returned to academia
as if nothing had happened in his life.
He was asked to write
some songs for a children's television workshop program,
called "The Electric Company."
This was a TV program to help children to read.
I'm going to play a clip from "The Electric Company."
This is a Tom Lehrer song,
It's not his best song.
I'm playing this simply for the novelty.
It features a young Hollywood star.
You got salads?
We got salads.
What kind of salads?
All kinds of salads.
We've got green salads,
sardine salads,
tangerine salads,
magazine salads.
Jelly bean salads,
blue jean salads,
and the special today,
gasoline salad!
Gasoline? Lady, you've got to be kidding!
No, sir, that is delicious.
Every 6,000 miles they change the oil on the dressing.
Forget about the gasoline. Maybe I'll just have a dessert.
Now surely you've got some simple dessert.
Lots.
You got ice cream?
We've got ice cream.
What kind of ice cream?
All kinds of ice cream.
We've got plum and rum and bubble gum.
We've got prune, balloon and macaroon.
We've got grape and ape and scotch tape.
We've got lime and grime and chocolate slime.
Sarsparilla!
Manzanilla!
Have a pilla!
And of course there's just plain old-fashioned gorilla.
What'll it be?
Let's forget about it, lady. I'll just trot on over here
to the laundromat, and have myself a bowl
of soap flakes.
That there is Rita Moreno,
she was Anita in "West Side Story,"
and with Morgan Freeman.
Now while Tom Lehrer was teaching mathematics,
he had been approached a few times about
turning his work into some sort of stage show.
But in 1980,
"Tom Foolery" opened in London.
So this was a revue of Tom Lehrer's songs.
And it was quite successful,
and it was performed all over the world.
Tom Lehrer said,
"It spread like herpes.
I like it because I don't have to
put much effort into promoting it.
You don't have to advertise herpes."
Now this was produced by a young British producer,
called Cameron Mackintosh.
There's Cameron Mackintosh with Tom Lehrer.
Cameron Mackintosh went on to produce the mega hits
"Cats" and "Les Misérables."
Tom is proud of saying that
"The combined profits of 'Tomfoolery' and 'Cats' made Cameron a rich man."
Tom Lehrer surprised everyone a few years later
when he performed at a royal gala in honour of Cameron Mackintosh.
It being a royal gala, he got to meet the Queen,
who went by, shook his hand, said "How do you do? What do you do?"
At a respectful distance, Prince Philip came along
and said "Thank you for performing 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.' It's a favorite of ours.
We used to play that all the time."
When asked what the Queen thought of it,
Princess Margaret said
"Oh, no, she thinks it's horrid.
She leaves the room when we put it on."
Now retired, Tom Lehrer spends his time
starting rumours that he's died
hoping that it will cut down on junk mail.
It hasn't.
He's never been married,
and he doesn't have any children.
He hasn't been married, doesn't have any children,
and he's a fan of musical theatre.
Yeah, well, his legacy is immeasurable.
However, Tom Lehrer himself is skeptical
on the importance of satire.
"It's not so much preaching to the converted," he said,
"but more like titillating the converted.
The only good it does is to show your friends that you think this is funny."
He's fond of quoting Peter Cook, who said when founding his establishment club
that the satirical venue was going to be modeled on
"those wonderful Berlin cabarets
which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler
and prevent the outbreak of the second world war."