A Look at Classical Gas
Jul 20th, 2007 by Guitar MX Admin
Classical Gas is considered by many to be one of the greatest guitar instrumentals ever written. The piece was written by Mason Williams, who at the time was a writer for ‘The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour’. The song was written to be ‘fuel’ for the classical guitar, and was first called Classical Gasonline. It was released in 1968 on the album ‘The Mason Williams Phonograph Record‘, which sold over a million copies. Even if you’re not familiar with the song, you will probably recognize it. Here is a video of Mason Williams playing the song.
Guitar MX takes a further look at this great instrumental piece:
- The song is tricky to learn. If you want to give it a try, here’s the tablature.
- If you need some further assistance, there are some great lessons on YouTube by instructor Mike Herberts. In his video lessons, Mike goes through the instrumental piece-by-piece, and explains it along the way. There are several parts of this video series. Click to view Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5, Part 6 and any remaining parts will be coming soon, so watch for it.
- Think you can learn it in less than a week? What if you had the right motivation? This kid nailed it in less than a week after being challenged by his teacher. The motivating factor? No homework…ever.
- A portion of the song was played by Lisa Simpson on an episode ‘The Simpsons’.
- Contrary to Internet mythology, Eric Clapton has never released a version of the song.
There is an official web site dedicated to this instrumental, check it out here.