铁蝴蝶

Iron Butterfly is an American rock band formed in San Diego, California, in 1966. They are best known for the 1968 hit "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", providing a dramatic sound that led the way towards the development of hard rock and heavy metal music. Although their heyday was the late 1960s, the band has been reformed with various members with varying levels of success with no new recordings since 1975. Their second album, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968), remains a best-seller, and Iron Butterfly was the first group to receive an in-house platinum album award from Atlantic Records.

According to music critic Manish Agarwal of Time Out, "Iron Butterfly blended hard rock with ordinate, acid-friendly textures." Mark Deming of AllMusic stated that they were one of the first musical groups to fuse the two styles in this way, and described their sound as a "blend of trippy musical exploration and open-ended jams with a hard, distorted attack".

History

Formation and Heavy (1966–1968)

The band formed in 1966 in San Diego. The original members were Doug Ingle (vocals, organ, formerly of Jeri and the Jeritones and Palace Pages, Iron Butterfly's forerunner), Jack Pinney (drums), Greg Willis (bass), and Danny Weis (guitar, also of Palace Pages). The group were soon joined by vocalist and tambourine player Darryl DeLoach. DeLoach's parents’ garage served as the site for their almost nightly rehearsals.

Jerry Penrod replaced Willis after the band relocated to Los Angeles in the summer of 1966. Pinney eventually left to return to school. Bruce Morse then replaced Pinney until Ron Bushy (from a group called the Voxmen) joined when Morse left due to a family emergency. A booking at Bido Lito's club in Hollywood soon led to regular appearances at the Galaxy Club and the Whisky a Go Go.

In early 1968, after the band signed a deal with Atco Records, an Atlantic Records subsidiary, the band's debut album Heavy was released. The group was signed and managed by Atlantic's Charles Greene and Brian Stone, who were co-producers of Heavy. All but Ingle and Bushy left the band after completing the album in the late summer of 1967. The two remaining musicians, faced with the possibility of the record not being released, quickly found replacements in bassist Lee Dorman and 17-year-old guitarist Erik Brann (also known as "Erik Braunn" and "Erik Braun") and resumed touring. In a 1986 interview with IB's fan club fanzine, The Butterfly Net, Brann stated that Jeff Beck, Neil Young, and Michael Monarch (who would go on to join Steppenwolf) had also expressed interest in joining the group to replace Weis.

After Brann was chosen, Penrod and DeLoach, uncomfortable with Brann's young age and frustrated with the time it was taking him to learn the band's repertoire, left the group after Weis did. Weis and Penrod went on to form the group Rhinoceros. In 1970 DeLoach formed Flintwhistle along with Jerry Penrod and Erik Brann. They performed live for about a year before breaking up.

Success with In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and first breakup (1968–1971)

"In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", the 17-minute title track of Iron Butterfly's second album of the same name, became a top-30 hit (edited down to 2:52 minutes) in the United States. The single was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in December 1968 for shipments of 1 million units in the U.S. The album stayed on the Billboard charts for 140 weeks and has been certified 4× platinum by the RIAA for sales of 4 million copies in the U.S.