A salute to Tom Lehrer
‘Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? / That’s not my department,’ says Wernher von Braun.
The songs of Tom Lehrer presented me, in my early teens, with my first exposure to the art of modern satire. He was some kind of genius, a Randy Newman with sharper teeth, achieving popularity in the 1950s and ’60s and then giving it all up to pursue his career as a teacher of mathematics at Harvard, MIT and elsewhere. In 2020 he announced that all his work was henceforward free from copyright considerations; anybody could do whatever they wanted with it.
He died the other day, aged 97, at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’ve read some good obituaries, particularly one in the Guardian by Francis Beckett, whose play Tom Lehrer Is Teaching Math and Doesn’t Want to Talk to You will be performed at the OSO Arts Centre in Barnes, south-west London, in November. But none of those I’ve seen mentioned the couplet at the top of this piece. It comes from his song “Wernher von Braun”, about the German scientist who helped create the V2 for Hitler before working on ballistic missiles for the US Army and rockets for NASA. These lines have stayed with me all my life, helping in a small but not insignificant way to form a view of the world.
thebluemoment.com 
Those words were in THE NEW YORK TIMES obituary. I’m not sure if you’ll be able to read this link but here it is.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/arts/music/tom-lehrer-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Zk8.iooy.i0S3WO5R2KRR&smid=url-share
RW. I’m pleased and surprised by your salute to Lehrer, one of my very favourite singer-songwriters, if one can describe him as such. No contemporary could manage that deceptive combination of lethal wordplay set to jolly music. Cole Porter, maybe. But where in Barnes is the OSO Arts Centre?
mw
I can’t think of many things which still make me laugh out loud after 60 years familiarity, but some of Lehrer’s songs achieve this. My favourite? – probably Vatican Rag, a satire of the rituals of the Roman Catholic church done in ragtime style. And I still cherish having seen him live in London in 1965.
The OSO Arts Centre has a Wiki page, from which you can link to its own website. Here’s the “Lehrer page”:-
https://osoarts.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/1173665593
He dug Randy.
Great piece Richard. Suggested follow up reading
“Blowback” by Christopher Simpson.
You are not alone in picking out those lines, Richard. Among the hundreds of Facebook tributes, that couplet is by far the most often mentioned. I believe that von Braun was alive when the piece was written. Lehrer was an immense part of so many people’s lives.
My two Lehrer LP’s, a UK 10” and an American 12” are still, nearly 70 years on, proudly sandwiched between Leadbelly and Barbara Lewis on the shelf, and even at 80+ some of the lyrics won’t leave my head, primarily “when he found what he had done, he pulled his eyes out one by one; the tragic end to a loyal son who loved his mother” (no accuracy guaranteed!!)
I liked the song about the boy scouts: “Don’t solicit for your sister it’s not nice/ unless you get a percentage of her price.”
The Old Dope Peddler
He gives all the kids free samples
Because he knows full well
That today’s young innocent faces
Will be tomorrow’s clientele
A nice tribute to a unique talent. I first got to know TL’s work as a regular visitor to Bunjie’s folk club, off the Charing Cross Road in the 70’s. The Saturday night resident singer, Nigel, would regularly play Masochism Tango and Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.