Music Blog, Sixties

The Iron Age

The Sicilian Storyteller

Written for Glyn’s Mixed Music Bag week #21 where we are asked to write
about a song by a group or solo singer beginning with the letter I or J.

There was a lot was happening in music in May of 1968 with people making headline news. Gary Puckett and the Union Gap came out with “Young Girl”. Janis Joplin went solo. The Throggs released “Love Is All Around” in the US. Jane Asher reported on a live TV interview that she was breaking up with her boyfriend, Paul McCartney. Hugh Masekela was at #1 on the U.S. singles chart with “Grazing In The Grass” and Cream started a four-week run at #1 on the album chart with Wheels On Fire.

A little further down the listings, the second album from a heavy-and-hard-rocking band out of San Diego, California entered the album chart for the first time – with a bullet at #117! Ok, not the highest of chart debuts, I admit, but some would say this now-legendary set of tunes became the first heavy metal album to hit the charts and opened the floodgates for many a longhaired, guitar-wielding group to blast us with some serious riffs and overlong guitar solos.

The band was Iron Butterfly and the album was called “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”, baby.

The track was recorded on May 27, 1968 at Ultrasonic Studios in Hempstead, Long Island, New York. The story goes that the recording which is heard on the album was meant to be a soundcheck for the engineer. However, the engineer had rolled the tape and when the rehearsal was completed, it was agreed that the performance was of sufficient quality that another take was not needed.

According to legend, the group members were so stoned when they recorded the track that they could neither pronounce the title “In the Garden of Eden” nor end the track, so it ended up filling the whole side of the album, coming in at a full 17 minutes of psychedelic rock.

However, another side of the recording story says that the drummer was listening to the track through headphones and could not clearly distinguish what the vocalist was singing. He wrote down the name according to what he heard and in the end they went with “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”.

I don’t know about you but I think the first explanation is much more interesting  .… and plausible! Well, either way, it didn’t matter. The album that contained the 17-minute title track went on to sell over four million copies in the US alone, with another one million shipped abroad. Not bad for a stoned jam in the afternoon.

The 2-minute, 52 second 45-rpm version of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” was Iron Butterfly’s only song to hit the top 40, reaching #30. The original “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” album has the distinction of being the first album to go Platinum in the US, when the Platinum Award was instituted in 1976. In 2009 the song was named the 24th greatest hard rock song of all time by VH1.

Here is Iron Butterfly with ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”.

Mixed Music Bag 2024 – week 21 – Icehouse

Big thanks to Glyn for hosting Mixed Music Bag every week.

Thanks for joining me today and spinning more tunes.

See you on the flip side. 😎

NAR©2024

All text, graphics and videos are copyright for The Sicilian Storyteller, The Elephant’s Trunk and The Rhythm Section and are not for use by anyone without permission. NAR©2017-present.

29 thoughts on “The Iron Age”

  1. Due to previous posts not surprised by you posting metal but surprised by the track a little. Only because, the track is so rarely a part of any discussion concerning metal of that era. As mentioned earlier, I didn’t know what to think of it when I first heard it. I so wanted to put it in category of Pink Floyd and their work of the time. I had just been introduced to Pipers and Relics, and they forever “changed” me. Teenagers everything is so damn important…smh. Finally, I came this conclusion

    Ladies and Gentlemen, Iron Butterfly. There their own thang!

    Great post, Nancy

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    1. Oh, my man! Couldn’t agree more!

      Psychedelic rock? Sure. Metal? I don’t think so. There’s no way IB could go toe to toe with Deep Purple or Led Zeppelin; it would be like listening to a garage band.

      Your definition is spot on: Their own thang!

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    1. Some of these songs, epically good or god-awful, are unforgettable. Plus, it was played repeatedly over the airwaves. It’s the kind of song like Free Bird or White Room that have become classics and will be around long after we’re gone. Music is such an incredible, undeniable force. ♡ 🎶

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  10. Boy does this one bring me back. My brother used to play this over and over, very loud (the boys’ room was next to mine), to the point I wanted to slip into his room and smash that little record. I never got around to it, just played Janis really loud to retaliate, then he switched to Born to be Wild, and that’s a whole other story.

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  11. Thanks for playing the shorter version! A school friend of mine had the album and insisted on playing it one evening when we were round at his. The record player was in his bedroom and by the end of the track we had all drifted down to the kitchen where his parents had the snacks!

    A Virgoan pedant comment: something is amiss with your list of other music from May 1968, as the ‘Throggs’ released Wild Thing in summer 1966, when it made #1 over there.

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    1. Haha! Funny comment about the long version at your friends house. We drifted off many a night to the long version, of that you can be sure!

      My bad and I was quasi aware of that when typing this thing. In my research I saw that Love Is All Around was released here in the US in 68 and Wild Thing in 66. I was surprised as I thought they came out at the same time. In a moment of brain freeze, I wrote the name of the wrong song. I’ll made the edit now. Thanks, Clive!

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      1. It was so incredibly dull! The single version was ok though.

        No worries, it just didn’t look right. I recently played Wild Thing for SLS so the date was still in my mind.

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