Tom Lehrer, best known for his satirical songs in the 1950s and 60s, has died at the age of 97.
The singer died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as confirmed by his friend, David Herder to The New York Times.
The singer was a popular satirist in his early career and the inspiration behind other satirists, including Weird Al Yankovic.
Lehrer was a Harvard-trained mathematician and had teaching posts at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of California.
He had success in the music industry but spent much of his life pursuing a life in academia, never quitting his original role as a mathematician and just taking sabbaticals when needed.
In 1960, he stopped performing, before returning in 1965, and then leaving the industry for good in 1967.
In 2000, he spoke to the New York Times about his enduring success: ‘When I made that first record, it was just to sell around Harvard.
‘It never dawned on me that all these years later, well, I wrote ‘Fight Fiercely, Harvard’ in 1945 and the band plays it at half-times now, 55 years later.’
He added that despite his success, he was never interested in fame.
”I don’t feel the need for anonymous affection,’ he said. ‘If they buy my records, I love that. But I don’t think I need people in the dark applauding. It’s nice to be reassured once in a while, but a real performer has to do it over and over again. I can’t understand the Yul Brynner phenomenon, “The King and I” night after night.’
‘I’m not interested in promoting myself, or revealing to total strangers anything about me. That’s not my job.
‘I read some of these things with people who will tell you all about their abortions, and their affairs and their divorces and their nervous breakdowns and their parents, and why are they doing that? And I’m sure if you asked them how much money they made last year, they’d tell you it’s none of your business.’
The singer was best known for his songs The Masochism Tango, Send the Marines, and The Hunting Song.
In Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, he detailed the birds’ appetite for ‘peanuts coated with cyanide’ and in I Hold Your Hand in Mine, he sang about necrophilia, and in I Got It From Agnes, he spoke about catching a venereal disease.
His tune, The Elements, was a list of the chemical elements set to the tune of I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General from The Pirates of Penzance and popularised in The Big Bang Theory.
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