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Sunsets And Goodness: “Classical Gas” by Mason Williams


Lena thinks it may have been Zuma Beach, which she and her family visited many times in her youth, although circumstances make it more likely to have been Santa Monica Beach. In any case, one evening in 1968, her father – and therefore my father-in-law – was indulging in his habit of taking photographs of the sunset. Since this was an age before selfies, he was approached by another gentleman on the same beach who asked whether he wouldn’t mind taking some pictures of him and his young child. Not only did my father-in-law oblige, but he also offered to get the film developed and send both film and photographs back to this gentleman. Names and addresses were exchanged, and Lena's father was as good as his word.

Lena’s father thought no more about the matter at the time; although he watched The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on TV, he was not particularly concerned about “keeping up” with trends or people. But having told his work colleagues the gentleman’s name, they were astonished: “You spoke to Mason Williams?”

Yes, Mason Williams was that gentleman, and like “MacArthur Park,” his signature record was more or less a product of Lena’s backyard, the Los Angeles that she would have known in her infancy. Williams was actually from Abilene, Texas, and was raised in Oregon and Oklahoma before eventually coming to California. His early career was spent on the folk circuit and he released many records, blending folk music with his comedic poetry, before taking the job as head writer for the then revolutionary Smothers Brothers show. He was so struck by one aspiring young writer that not only did he take him on, but he also sometimes paid the man out of his own pocket. That young protégé of his was named Steve Martin.

I have no idea why The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour never aired on British television but it sounds as though it was a lot of fun to make as well as to watch. Williams was put in charge of both comedy and music for the programme – one of his early songs for the show, “Cinderella Rockefella,” became an international hit in 1968 for Esther and Abi Ofarim. Later in 1967 he set about putting together another album of music, entitled The Mason Williams Phonograph Record. He named one of its most striking tracks “Classical Gasoline” – the intention being that the work should add new “fuel” to the classical guitar repertoire. But a music copyist mistakenly abbreviated the “Gasoline” to “Gas” – hence in 1968 the piece became accidentally fashionable.

The third instrumental to appear in the story this week, “Classical Gas” acts as a sort of dialogue between Williams’ guitar and orchestra with rhythm section – a different division of the Wrecking Crew from “MacArthur Park” was in attendance. Bearing influences of folk and flamenco as well as classical and pop, “Classical Gas” comes across as though it were an unused or lost backing track from the Forever Changes sessions – one constantly expects Arthur Lee to appear and free-associate over its surface.

Much of the dramatic impact of “Classical Gas” is owed to the brilliant arrangement by a young musician named Mike Post; when you come to the middle-eight, you already hear a prophecy of Post’s subsequent, and phenomenally successful, career as a television theme composer. The clip you see at the head of this piece – taken directly from the Smothers Brothers show – was one I remember seeing as a child, in black and white, on Top Of The Pops (for the record also went top ten in Britain; in America, it won three Grammys, and was kept off number one only by a different manifestation of late sixties Los Angeles – The Doors).

But the record’s melancholy symmetry now makes me think of the Los Angeles of 1968, of how this was where my wife grew up, and how sunsets – however long and sorrowful – are always succeeded by a new sunrise.

Date Record Made Number Two: 3 August 1968
Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 2
Record At Number One: “Hello, I Love You” by The Doors
UK Chart Position: 8
Other Information: Although the success of “Classical Gas” was never replicated, Williams continued a successful dual career in music and comedy writing; a dozen years later, he was, for a time, head writer for Saturday Night Live.

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