Tom Lehrer
Tom Lehrer
Thomas Andrew "Tom" Lehreris an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater. He is best known for the pithy, humorous songs he recorded in the 1950s and '60s...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSongwriter
Date of Birth9 April 1928
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
people records would-be
The people who came to hear me perform or to buy my records were not the type who would be offended. But I gather that there were other people who were offended.
religious people catholic
Well I wasn't really attacking the religious beliefs, I was attacking the formality of the rituals of the Catholic church; however, people took it wrongly.
thinking hard
Everything is so weird in politics that it's very hard to be funny about it, I think.
song style tunes
I'm not an original composer. The tunes are not stolen from other tunes necessarily except in a few cases, but they're in the style of songs that I grew up with.
song jobs writing
I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that's not exactly a full-time job. It wasn't that I was writing and writing and writing and quit.
mean laughing people
Comedy is very important, yes. For one thing, it keeps you sane. But it's not really a conversion. I mean, it's marginally a conversion, because if people tune in or go to a nightclub or even watch television, and hear that a lot of other people are laughing at something you thought was not funny, at least it'll force you to reconsider.
stars buying-something looks
If I see a movie star in the department store buying something, I'll kind of sidle up and see what they're saying, what they look like, how they sound. That's an invasion of privacy.
people matter flesh
People would go anywhere to see a famous person in the flesh, no matter what they do.
song thinking want
Once you've heard the joke, it's not funny anymore, but it's the way it's told. And I think that's the same with the music: The reason some of my songs have lasted longer is there's a lot of stuff packed in there. You want to hear them more than once.
people television stuff
I would do nightclubs and concerts - particularly concerts, which is mostly what I did - and only people who already agreed with me would show up. People weren't going to come and inadvertently turn on their television set and find this offensive stuff coming out.
song rap writing
If you asked me to write a rock song or a rap song, I couldn't do it because they're not in my fingers.
proud example literacy
I'm very proud of myself on my, whatever the literacy is, I'm pretentious, totally pretentious. I like to say 'hmm', for example.
jail expression censorship
And although I'm all for freedom of expression and against censorship, there are certain things I'm not willing to go to jail for.
thumbs use counting
Counting in octal is just likst counting in decimal--if you don't use your thumbs.