Doug Ingle, the lead singer and organist of Iron Butterfly, the San Diego-bred band that turned a purportedly misheard lyric into “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” the 17-minute magnum opus that propelled acid-rock into the outer reaches of excess in the late 1960s, died May 24. He was 78.
His death was confirmed in a social media post by his son, Doug Ingle Jr. The post did not say where he died or specify a cause.
“Dad ed away peacefully this evening in the presence of family,” Ingle Jr. posted on May 24. “Thank You Dad for being a father, teacher and friend. Cherished loving memories I will carry the rest of my days moving forward in this journey of life. Love you Dad.”
The elder Ingle was the last surviving member of the classic lineup of Iron Butterfly, the pioneering hard-rock act he helped found in 1966. The band released its first three albums within a year, starting with “Heavy” in early 1968, and, after a lineup shuffle, cemented its place in rock lore with its second album, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” released that July.
“In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” spent 140 weeks on the national Billboard album chart, peaking at No. 4, and was said to have sold some 30 million copies worldwide. A radio version of the title song, whittled to under three minutes, made it to No. 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
But it was the full-length album version — taking up the entire second side of the LP in all of its messy glory — that became a signature song of the tie-dye era. With its truncheon-like guitar riff, swirling organ lines, the song is considered a progenitor of heavy metal and encapsulated Ingle’s ambition at the time.
“I want us to become known as leaders of hard-rock music,” Ingle, then 22, said in a 1968 interview with The Globe and Mail newspaper of Canada. “Trend setters and creators, rather than imitators.”
A psychedelic dirge but also a love song, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” captured a 1960s spirit of yin-yang duality — much like the band’s name itself. Its success earned Iron Butterfly a performance slot at 1969’s Woodstock festival. But when the band’s agent made a last-minute demand for a helicopter to fly Iron Butterfly’s to the festival, the group was dropped from the bill.
In 2010, Iron Butterfly received the Country Dick Montana Lifetime Achievement Award at the San Diego Music Awards from then-San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, a longtime fan. He also introduced the band as it took the stage for its 1994 Adams Avenue Street Fair performance.
“I still listen to Iron Butterfly. I have a pair of drumsticks the band autographed for me and an autographed copy of ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’,” Sanders said in a 2010 San Diego Union-Tribune interview.
“It was so different than anything else I’d heard,” he continued. “It was a (key) part of the culture; I had just started college and (‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’) was the anthem at the time, in some ways. It was so intricate … it was an amazing piece of work.”
There have been varying origin stories regarding “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’s” mysterious title, with its overtones of Eastern mysticism.
“The original song was a country ballad,” Iron Butterfly bassist Lee Dormant recalled in a 1999 San Diego Union-Tribune interview.
“Doug wrote the initial lyrics. He’d been up a day and a half and he was drinking red wine. Ron and I came home at 2 a.m. from our job selling pizzas and Doug played us a little of the song. He said it was called ‘In the Garden of Eden,’ but his speech was so slurred that we wrote it down, phonetically, as ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.’ “
Adding to the legend of the song was that it was essentially an in-studio soundcheck that became the final recorded version.
Don Casale, an engineer at the session, had asked the band to run through the song so he could set the recording levels, but he hit “record” as the band meandered through a sprawling free jam featuring solos by the guitarist Erik Braunn, fills by the bassist Lee Dorman and a two-and-a-half-minute drum solo by Bushy.
“After 17 minutes and five seconds I ended the tape,” Casale recalled in a 2020 interview with The Rochester Voice, a New Hampshire newspaper. “I then called down to the band and said, ‘Guys, come on up and listen to this.’ They loved it.”
While the song is an enduring artifact of its times, its legacy remains complicated.
“With its endless, droning minor-key riff and mumbled vocals, ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ is arguably the most notorious song of the acid-rock era,” Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote on the website Allmusic.com. He noted that the song rambles on for what “to some listeners sounds like eternity.” But, he added, “that’s the essence of its appeal — it’s the epitome of heavy psychedelic excess, encapsulating the most indulgent tendencies of the era.”
Douglas Lloyd Ingle was born on Sept. 9, 1945, in Omaha and grew up in San Diego. As a child, he developed a taste for music from his father, Lloyd Ingle, a church organist.
San Diego roots
Iron Butterfly first took flight in 1966, when former of the San Diego bands The Palace Pages, The Voxmen and The Prophets ed forces before moving to Los Angeles. The original lineup featured singer/keyboardist Ingle, bassist Jerry Penrod, lead singer Darryl DeLoach, guitarist Danny Weis and drummer Jack Pinney.
DeLoach quit soon after the release of the band’s 1968 debut album, “Heavy.” He was followed by Weis and Penrod, who left to form their own group, Rhinoceros. It was then that bassist Lee Dorman, a St. Louis native, ed, along with Boston-born guitarist Erik Braunn, and it was this four-man lineup that recorded “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”
At his career zenith, Ingle performed with Iron Butterfly at hallowed venues like the Hollywood Bowl and the Fillmore East in New York (with Led Zeppelin as an opening act). He made enough money to buy multiple properties, including a 600-acre ranch.
The third Iron Butterfly album, “Ball” (1969), rose to No. 3 on the Billboard chart, followed by two albums — “Iron Butterfly Live” and “Metamorphosis” — that both made the Top 20 in 1970. But by that point, Mr. Ingle said, he had grown weary of life as a rock star.
“When I did autograph sessions, I’d shake hands with people and I just didn’t feel anything,” he said in a 1996 interview with The San Antonio Express-News of Texas. “I lost track of why I was doing music in the first place.”
The band broke up in 1971, and Ingle went on to manage a recreational vehicle park and work as a house painter. He was eventually forced to sell his ranch and other properties to pay off debts to the Internal Revenue Service.
He also remained occupied on the domestic front, marrying three times and raising six children and three stepchildren. Information on his survivors was not immediately available.
While Ingle remained in the shadows for decades, his most famous song did not. Over the years, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” popped up in various places — as a gag on “The Simpsons,” on the soundtracks of the films “Manhunter”(1986) and “Less Than Zero” (1987), sampled by the rapper Nas. In 2006, Fidelity Investments used the song in TV commercials that posed the question: “Is your IRA blooming?”
On occasion, Ingle re-emerged for Iron Butterfly reunion tours, including in 1994 when the band performed at that year’s Adams Avenue Street Fair.
“Doug hasn’t played with us since 1988, when we got together for a 40th-anniversary party for Atlantic Records,” bassist Dorman said in a 1994 Union-Tribune interview. “Getting him back in the band solidifies the band and sort of validates it, because he was the lead singer.”
Before a concert in 1996, Ingle told The Express-News: “Some people see the Jurassic rockers and say they’re burned out on playing. I’m burned out on not playing. Of course, a 25-year break helped.”
Ingle offered a more detailed explanation in a 1995 Los Angeles Times interview. He retired from performing in 1999.
“I was a child among men,” Ingle told the Los Angeles Times of his initial Iron Butterfly tenure.
“I was dealing with people who were competent but not necessarily (working) in my interest. I took the luxury of playing ostrich. I didn’t involve myself at the business level at all. I just went out and performed. It was, ‘Isn’t life great?’ Then everything crashed down. I still maintain life is great, but now I base it on something (real) rather than wishful thinking.”
Union-Tribune music critic George Varga contributed to this report.
Williams writes for The New York Times.
