14

Classical Gas

I’ve been working on this … idea for orchestrated rock and roll.

—MIKE POST

By 1967, network television, like the pop music charts, had begun to change. Slowly at first, perhaps, but a metamorphosis nonetheless. The social and cultural voices of a big segment of young America—the so-called New Left—were simply getting too loud to ignore.

Programming executives at the Big Three (ABC, CBS, and NBC) knew that continuing to offer up a steady diet of silly sitcoms about flying nuns, maladjusted hillbillies, and dim-witted secret agents could only last so long. With the country at war, rioting in the streets, and changing views on sex and drugs, those in their teens and twenties now wanted more. They hungered for television that would finally reflect their realities. And just as in radio, advertisers—the lifeblood of all three TV networks—wanted to reach as many young people as possible. Those under thirty, so the theory went, were the ones most easily swayed into buying more stuff.

Among the new TV entries that year was an innocent-sounding variety show called The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Starring the folk-singing comedy team of Tommy and Dickie Smothers—famous for their immortal sibling rivalry routine, “Mom Always Liked You Best”—the series premiered on CBS in February of 1967 (as a mid-season replacement) to instant ratings success and widespread acclaim. For its part, the network loved having a new Top 20 program that appealed to a more youthful demographic, one that could perhaps give the number one–rated Bonanza some real competition on Sunday nights for a change. CBS execs did not, however, love all the controversy that came with it.

Irreverent from the start, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour pointedly poked fun at just about every American institution possible, from church to government to motherhood. It was nothing like The Red Skelton Show or The Andy Williams Show, but that was all very much by design. That was the old way of doing things. Sly wit, with a decidedly left-leaning political bent, all couched within a highly entertaining, fast-paced presentation, was the new order of the day, giving the program a unique, almost subversive appeal, especially among the young.

Pete Seeger, a musician and ardent civil rights activist long blacklisted on network television, appeared during one taping, for example, singing a protest song called “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” sparking an immediate uproar among the censors. The lyrics, it seemed clear, presented a not-so-subtle allegory for President Johnson’s continued failure to end the war in Vietnam. A hot-button issue if there ever was one in an increasingly polarized country.

Further pushing the boundaries of the era’s broadcasting standards, the series also featured a regular segment called “Share a Little Tea with Goldie,” during which resident hippie Goldie O’Keefe (played by actress Leigh French) parodied afternoon advice shows for housewives, offering “helpful” household hints laced with double entendres about sex and drugs. At the time, the word “tea”—for those in the know—was counterculture code for marijuana. CBS never did catch on to that one.

All tame stuff by today’s standards, but a very big no-no in the mid-Sixties. Anti-war rhetoric and drug references, no matter how veiled, were a quick way to stir up the public and cause corporate advertisers to blanch. In other words, it made the Establishment react. Which, of course, was just what the Smothers Brothers had in mind.

Besides Tommy Smothers (the act’s driving force), one of the other main architects of this mixed bag of groundbreaking comedic anarchy was a mild-mannered folk musician and satirist named Mason Williams. Something of an eccentric balladeer, the Oklahoma-raised Williams, in addition to possessing an offbeat, well-honed sense of humor, was also an accomplished songwriter and classically influenced guitarist. The Kingston Trio, Glenn Yarbrough, and other prominent folk artists covered several of Williams’s compositions in the early Sixties.

Traveling in the same LA folkie circles, the Smothers Brothers soon became aware of Williams’s quirky comedy songs. Knocked out by what they heard, they decided to record several of his compositions for their Tour de Farce album, on which Williams also backed them up on twelve-string guitar and five-string banjo. The relationship flourished, with the brothers subsequently taking him on tour to play various instruments onstage behind their routines. And, as an added bonus, by virtue of watching the duo painstakingly work out their material in the dressing room before each night’s show (“Slow down here, Dick—don’t step on my line”), Williams quickly absorbed the delicate art of crafting first-rate comedy dialogue. Valuable lessons he would soon carry forward as the new head writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, where, among other things, Williams would eventually give future “Wild and Crazy Guy” Steve Martin his first entertainment industry job as a member of the writing staff.

As the red-hot show began its second season in the fall of 1967, an executive at Warner/Reprise Records—delighted to have had several of his label’s newest acts make breakthrough appearances on the weekly telecast (the First Edition, the Electric Prunes, and the Association among them)—asked Tommy if there was anything he could do for him. “Yes,” Smothers replied, “I think Mason would like to make a record.”

And with that, Mason Williams—a little-known folk musician who couldn’t seem to write any song lyrics that didn’t come out just plain funny—suddenly had a very serious recording contract on his hands with one of the most important record labels in the world. Now he just needed to find some people to help him finally make an album that would sell.

*   *   *

Having been around the music business for some time, Mason Williams knew he needed to come up with something special this time around. The new deal with Reprise was a real cherry, something to make the most of. Major labels liked hits; expected them, even. And Williams wanted one, too. His earlier folk albums, while well crafted, had found only niche markets and little or no radio airplay. Though he had at least a hundred songs—maybe closer to two hundred—sitting around in various stages of completion, none seemed quite right to help him make the transition from relative obscurity to the Top 40.

Noodling around one day on his favorite old acoustic guitar, a vintage Stella he had once purchased from a friend for the princely sum of thirteen dollars, Williams stumbled across a lick that particularly jumped out at him. Building on it, he began to expand an intricate, classical-style finger-picking progression into the semblance of what he thought just might make a catchy song. At least, he figured, it might help him stand out during parties when people passed around the guitar. Girls liked that.

Living at the time with Tommy Smothers in an apartment on Kings Road in West Hollywood (both men were recently divorced), Williams continued to practice the embryonic tune over and over at home while Smothers offered feedback along the way. As it took shape, it became clear that the piece of music had unusual potential. “You’ve got to record that,” Tommy said.

With the mid-November recording date for Mason Williams’s new album drawing near, Ken Kragen, the Smothers Brothers’ co-manager (who, with partner Ken Fritz, also managed Williams), put in a call to a hot young producer he had recently worked with named Mike Post. Originally, by trade, a Wrecking Crew third-stringer on guitar, the twenty-four-year-old Post had a natural ear for song structure, with a special knack for creating just the right production values and arrangements. Most recently he had produced the Kragen/Fritz-managed First Edition’s debut album (featuring a young Kenny Rogers), whose intensely psychedelic “Just Dropped In (to See What Condition My Condition Was In)”—featuring Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer on double drums—would soon become the surprise hit of 1968. And Post came complete with the imprimatur of none other than Frank Sinatra’s mega-hit-making producer Jimmy Bowen, who was Post’s boss at Amos Productions. That endorsement alone carried its weight in gold. If the kid’s good enough for the guy who put the Chairman of the Board back on the top of the charts, well then …

After exchanging a few quick pleasantries, Ken Kragen got down to business.

“We love what you did for us with the First Edition,” he told Post. “Now, one of our other acts, Mason Williams, also just signed a record deal with Warner/Reprise. And the guy is a genius. Would you be interested in producing him?”

Minutes later Kragen had his man.

A couple of weeks down the line, as Mason Williams and Mike Post sat across from each other over at United Recorders, the newly hired, supremely confident young producer had but one question on his mind.

Williams had just run through the instrumental song he’d been working on—now called “Classical Gasoline”—and Post liked it. He also thought he knew a way to really bring it to life. Maybe even make a hit out of it. But first he wanted to assess the guitarist’s vision for the tune. Being a fellow musician, Post knew all too well about the need to tread lightly when it came to someone else’s artistic handiwork.

“So, Mason, how do you see this song going?” Post gently inquired.

“Piano, bass, drums, and guitar, I guess.”

“Well,” Post continued, “I’ve been working on this thing, this idea for orchestrated rock and roll. I think it might really work on your song.”

Williams seemed skeptical but game.

“Uh, okay, if you think so. We could try it.”

Soon, however, any hesitancy Mason Williams may have felt about someone tinkering with his prized guitar composition had changed into nothing short of unbridled admiration. Mike Post, the young producer he’d never even heard of a few weeks before, simply took hold of the now retitled “Classical Gas” and lit the whole damn thing on fire.

Realizing that the song needed a middle section or “bridge” in order to provide the listener with a respite from the repetitive (and signature) melody, Post drew inspiration from his love for the work of the late German composer Richard Wagner, something he grew up listening to on the family record player. Taking the notion one step further, he decided to write the score for a rare instrument Wagner had invented back in the 1800s known as a tuben horn, something like a cross between a tuba and a trumpet. Its unique timbre came closest to resembling that of a French horn. Certainly not a sound found on contemporary pop radio in the 1960s. But to Post, that was exactly the point. It was different.

On November 14, 1967—the same day that the Monkees released their fourth album (Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.) and The New York Times’ Howard Taubman wrote a presciently positive review of a little-known Off-Broadway play called Hair—key Wrecking Crew members, including Jim Gordon (drums), Mike Deasy (guitar), Larry Knechtel (piano), Al Casey (guitar), and Gary Coleman (percussion), took their places in United’s oversized Studio A, along with a couple of dozen string and horn players.

After a quick read-through of the charts written by Post and his co-arranger Al Capps (who had previously arranged “Woman, Woman” for the Union Gap), the musicians, to a man, could tell that this was not going to be the usual three-chord rock-and-roll date. No sir, not with those sophisticated passages it wasn’t. Coleman, for one, heard several of the guys commenting on how the arrangement was “more involved” than usual. The ubiquitous Larry Knechtel, one of two pianists hired for the date, could feel the electricity in the air.

As the engineer called from the booth, “Roll tape, take one,” Williams counted off “one-two-three-four,” and began alternately strumming and finger-picking the song’s delicate and doleful—almost unassuming—intro on his Cordova classical guitar (a recent gift from Tommy Smothers). The beautifully stylized piece sounded a bit like the work of famed Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, with perhaps even a dash of the great Andrés Segovia thrown in for good measure. But it all came packaged within Williams’s distinctive playing pattern and provided no hint whatsoever as to the power and majesty about to follow. With his trademark sense of humor intact, the poker-faced comedy writer clearly liked to play his sonic cards close to the vest.

But the second the drums, bass, piano, and other guitars—the Wrecking Crew rhythm section—joined in a sense of urgency leaped forward. The ruse was now up; this song was going places.

A few bars further came the strings, bold and striking—building, building. Just as Post had envisioned. Back and forth they cajoled and seduced, begging the listener with all their sweetness and might to travel along toward an inevitable, crashing crescendo. The ultimate payoff came swiftly in a monumental moment of pure aural euphoria, with the song’s soaring signature riff repeating over and over: dee-dee-dee dee dee dee.

And that wasn’t nearly the end of it. When the battery of tuben horns finally burst forth during the bridge, it was lights-out, like the second coming of the Boston Pops Orchestra from the Charles River Esplanade on the Fourth of July. The song simply exploded, but in a different, wholly unexpected direction, abruptly changing keys from E-flat up to A minor in the process, something Post referred to as “storm-trooper modulation.”

As the sweat-soaked production eventually began to wind its way down with an equally delicate acoustic guitar outro, Mike Post knew he had a hit on his hands. Top 40, here we come. The horn and string arrangements he had co-written and produced had taken a pretty guitar piece and turned it into an absolute monster, an epic. And it didn’t hurt, either, that the inspired, in-the-pocket drumming performance by his childhood pal Jim Gordon had maybe been Gordon’s best work yet. In fact, all the musicians present—from the Wrecking Crew regulars on down to the violinists, cellists, and tuben-horn guys—had played a major part in creating a masterpiece.

Making his way out of the control booth, an obviously pleased Post headed straight for Williams. Time to get some feedback from the composer himself.

“What’d you think, Mason?”

In the understatement of the day, the low-key Williams turned to Post and said what everybody else in the room was already thinking.

“Jeez, man, that was something.”

*   *   *

After hearing the exciting news about Mason Williams’s big studio triumph on “Classical Gas,” Tommy Smothers very much wanted to check out the new record for himself. He felt a strong sense of pride in the song and in his close friend, having been there every step of the way—from cradle to lathe, so to speak.

Stopping by United’s Studio A, where Post and his engineers were busy working on the final mastering and acetate cutting, Smothers poked his head in the door. He had been around enough during the preproduction phase that everybody was used to seeing the now-famous TV star in their midst.

“Hey, guys, mind if I give the playback a listen?”

Post, understandably proud of his musical achievement, was happy to oblige. He promptly asked his engineer to cue up “Classical Gas” on the reel-to-reel tape deck. This would be the first actual test of its appeal on an outside set of ears, piquing everyone’s curiosity.

But as the recording began to play through the control booth’s state-of-the art monitors—particularly as it moved into the bridge section, Mike Post’s shining moment—it gradually became clear that something was amiss: Smothers didn’t seem to be digging the tune at all.

When the roughly three-minute playback finished, the room fell quiet, thick with anticipation. What had gone wrong?

Smothers finally broke the silence. “That’s the most overarranged piece of shit I’ve ever heard in my life,” he declared. “Mason’s song has been obliterated.”

For a self-admitted “cocky little guitar player” like Mike Post, who, when scared, came on the strongest, those were fighting words. Pure and simple. Nobody was going to walk into the middle of one of his productions and talk to him that way. Nobody.

Young, ego-driven, and not afraid to speak his mind—especially about something that he believed in so strongly—Post immediately wheeled on a surprised Smothers and said, “Get the fuck out of my studio.”

And Smothers did.

But, within twenty-four hours, something miraculous happened: Tommy Smothers completely changed his mind. And was big enough to admit it. After talking things over with Williams, Smothers had decided that the over-the-top production really was the right way to go. It had just been an initial shock to the system, that’s all. He told Post as much, with both men quickly putting the brief flare-up behind them. The important thing now, they all agreed, was to get the song some much-needed exposure.

With the Smothers Brothers graciously allowing Mason Williams to perform “Classical Gas” several times on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour over the next few months, it finally began to catch on with the public. Just as season two of the increasingly controversial show came to a close in June of ’68, the record finally slid into the upper reaches of the Hot 100. Seven weeks later, “Classical Gas” had blown by virtually all comers on its way to number two, held off from the top spot only by the Doors’ “Hello, I Love You.”

But the momentum didn’t stop there. “Classical Gas” would soon go on to win three Grammy Awards, two for Williams and one for Post. And, because of the massive amount of airplay the song continuously received, even after falling off the charts, it would eventually become nothing less than the most played instrumental in the history of American radio. Not bad for a homegrown acoustic guitar riff initially written in humble hopes of attracting some female attention at parties—but recorded with a little help, of course, from the Wrecking Crew.