1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 122. Iron Butterfly – In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968)

 

I knew the title track from a lengthy sequence in Michael Mann’s film Manhunter, an adaptation of Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon featuring Brian Cox as Hannibal Lecter and several years before Silence of the Lambs. The killer, Frances Dolarhyde, is besieged by FBI agents and there’s a long shoot-out with a version of the track In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida going on in the background. Not as long as the track In-A-Gadda-Da-Veda itself, which is another 17 minute monster, with a drum solo in the middle that goes on for longer than many songs. It’s good though.

I have a feeling that we’ll keep seeing the 10-20 minute monster tracks for while now, probably at least into the mid-Eighties. Provided they don’t get padded out too much with prog-rock noise-noodling, I don’t mind them once in a while.

Soundwise, Iron Butterfly are a little like a mid-way between The Doors (largely due to lead singer and writer Doug Ingle’s organ playing) and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Quite a hard-edged Californian psychedelia sound, straddling hard rock and prog-rock territory. I wouldn’t say that any of the other (shorter) tracks really stand out amid all of the other late Sixties stuff, but they’re all pretty good in and of themselves and I think were I not sprinting through these albums, I’d probably linger for a bit.