“Classical Gas” is an instrumental musical piece composed and originally performed by American guitarist Mason Williams with instrumental backing by members of the Wrecking Crew. Originally released in 1968 on the album The Mason Williams Phonograph Record, it has been rerecorded and rereleased numerous times since by Williams. Originally named “Classical Gasoline”, the tune was envisioned to be “fuel” for the classical guitar repertoire. The title was later inadvertently shortened by a music copyist. Mike Post, later famous for television theme music, was a producer and arranger for the song. It was also the very first single that I purchased.
Williams was the head writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour at the time of the piece’s release and premiered the composition on the show. Williams performed it several times over several episodes. After the piece had reached the Top 10, Williams asked an experimental filmmaker named Dan McLaughlin to adjust a student video montage that he had created of classical art works using Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and edit it in time to “Classical Gas”, using the visual effect now known as kinestasis. The work, 3000 Years of Art, premiered in 1968 on an episode of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The song peaked at number two for two weeks in August that year and on the US Easy Listening chart, it went to number one for three weeks.
“Classical Gas” is sometimes erroneously thought to have been performed, or even composed, by Eric Clapton, because Clapton was the musical director of, and played much of the guitar music for, the feature film The Story of Us, in which Williams’ own recording of it from his album Handmade appeared.
Williams re-recorded “Classical Gas” as a solo guitar piece on his 1970 album Handmade. This version was re-released by Sony in 2003, after being featured in the film Cheaper by the Dozen, which starred Williams’ Smothers Brothers protégé, actor/comedian/musician Steve Martin. Williams’ original version of “Classical Gas” was also used on the soundtrack of the popular 2000 Australian movie The Dish.
In the mid-to-late 1970s and early 1980s Williams’ version of “Classical Gas” was used by television stations across the United States as their opening nes themes. News music company Telesound followed with an identically-named and quicker-tempo version of the song for television stations to use. In 1998, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) awarded Williams a special Citation of Achievement. The piece has logged over five million broadcast performances to become BMI’s all-time number-one instrumental composition for radio air play.
