'The Guy Who Taught Us Math...'

You hear all kinds of things about Tom Lehrer. In prep school, where everybody who has a brother at Harvard also has his record, you hear about how he got kicked out for criticizing the Administration. Some people will tell you he's a Communist, others think he was a professor of some prominence who was too much of a light-hearted roue to stay within the academic confines of Cambridge.

In "real life," Tom Lehrer is a fairly tall, modest man who looks about twenty-five, and is mild-mannered enough to bring home to Mother. His apartment on Sparks St. is not arty, just a little crowded. Books and records are stacked around the room and on the mantelpiece stands bric-a-brac suggestive of his work: a rubber "dead hand" (I Hold Your Hand in Mine), a skeleton, a model of the "World Tree" in which he has stuck a dustmop, and a flowery piece of crockery labeled "Opium" (The Old Dope Peddler). He has a much pleasanter voice than his record would suggest.

"I don't know where people get this idea I'm so sinister," says Lehrer. "They have this idea I'm a lot older than I am--that could be the record jacket, of course--or 'He's not at all the way he sounds.' It's not that I'm that raffish. Perfectly nice people joke this way."

"This rumor that I was kicked out of Harvard is something I don't mind fostering. It adds to my "legend" or glamour--what have you. Actually, my last year in the graduate school coincided with work on my record and it was getting so that I could do little else. The math department and I agreed there was no point going on under this kind of strain so I didn't register the next fall. But I do hope to finish off my thesis eventually."

"The record came out six years ago. I had been singing at dances and parties and I would ask for a show of hands to see how many people would buy a record if I made one. I figured two hundred and fifty copies would be plenty, but other people heard the record, looked up the address I have on the back, and wanted to buy one. The stores in the Square were willing to sell them ("a public service" they called it) and it just snow-balled. Last year it was in the list of top ten L.P.'s in England for a while, and now it's getting started in Australia, I understand. I don't expect it to get much further since its appeal is limited to an English-speaking audience."

Lehrer's "career" branched out from a pleasant habit of writing songs for people. 'In the old days," when it was for a roommate or a guy at dinner, I'd write hundreds of songs," Lehrer says. "Now that it's my living, I've stopped doing it. Then, if it was a lousy song, nobody cared. But when I started singing for money, it was a matter of deleting songs rather than adding them. I only write songs I can use professionally now, the other ideas are generally too personal or too offensive to use on the stage. By offensive, I don't mean dirty--people have this idea I write dirty songs--but some of this stuff just wouldn't go over with an audience."

As it is, Lehrer has his relations with his audience pretty well figure dout. "I don't feel the 'waves of love' they tell you an entertainer is supposed to feel. The hardest thing is to make it look as if you're enjoying it," he says. "It's so mechanical now, I find my mind wanders and I get lost in the middle of a song."

"My stuff appeals to a certain minority audience--educated, intelectual people, I suppose--and if they're not there, the performance that night gets a poor response. That's why I prefer concerts to night clubs. When somebody is willing to lay out money for tickets to hear me, I know they're interested. Almost anybody is likely to wander into a night club, though, and they may not be in tune with my 'great artistry'."

"Yes, I get sick of singing the same songs over and over and that's why I want to quit. Two more years ought to do it as far as singing goes. As for writing and recording, that's another thing--I can do that in my spare time. I'd like to go back to teaching, though. I invested a lot of time in my Ph.D. and I want to finish my thesis. The whole point of this singing is to make up the economic difference between a job in industry and a teaching salary."

"In the meantime, it's a great life. I don't use an alarm clock any more, work when I feel like it. In the past year I had fourteen weeks of night club work and fifteen or twenty concerts. As for the rest of the time, the record business is still mine and I've got to arrange all these engagements myself--I don't have an agent. My program is worked out now so that I can do a whole show myself--about twenty-six songs."

"I make it a rule not to sing my own songs at parties any more," Lehrer said, a little ruefully. "The party turns into a request session and it's no fun for me. It's my business now and I don't like to be asked to work in my spare time. It's like inviting a plumber to dinner and then asking him to fix the john before he leaves."

"A publicity picture? The nice thing about them is that they don't look like me. If you had just seen the picture and then saw me on the street, you wouldn't recognize me. That's the whole point."