One album made this band famous and has obscured the other five ever since. The useful thing to know about Iron Butterfly is that there is no such thing as a classic line-up: across six albums, exactly one grouping appears on two records in a row.

The short version

Iron Butterfly formed in San Diego in 1966 and moved to Los Angeles. Their second album, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, reached number 4 in the United States, topped the Billboard year-end chart for 1969 and is certified four times platinum. Ball, the record after it, charted higher still at number 3. The group broke up in 1971, reformed in 1974 with two of the four members from the famous albums, and made two more records for MCA in 1975 before winding down in 1977.

San Diego, then Los Angeles, then four changes of line-up

Only two of the five people who made the first album played on the second. Greg Willis and Jack Pinney were in the first grouping; Jerry Penrod replaced Willis on bass, Bruce Morse then Ron Bushy replaced Pinney on drums, and Danny Weis and Darryl DeLoach filled out the line-up that recorded Heavy in 1967. Penrod, Weis and DeLoach were all gone by the time that record reached the shops in January 1968. Erik Brann took the guitar chair and Lee Dorman the bass; nobody replaced DeLoach, so the five-piece became a quartet, and that is the group everyone pictures — but it made only two albums, and Brann left in December 1969, replaced by two guitarists at once.

One organ, one riff and seventeen minutes

What the band are known for is one seventeen-minute piece filling the second side of their second album. It is usually described as a sequence of solo features rather than as a composition that develops, and it includes a drum solo, which is the part people argue about. The organ is the other identifying thing: Doug Ingle plays a Vox Continental, and until 1970 the band never carried a second guitarist for it to share the harmonic work with. The edited single version of the famous track runs two minutes fifty-two, reached number 30 and was certified gold in its own right.

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The album that charted highest is not the one you think

The counterintuitive fact worth knowing is that Ball, released seven months after the famous album, reached number 3 on the Billboard 200 — one place higher — and went gold within two months. It is nine short songs with no extended piece on it at all. It is also the only Iron Butterfly album made by the same four people as the record before it. Heavy, meanwhile, went gold on the back of a chart peak of only 78. Nothing about this band’s commercial history runs the way the reputation suggests.

The 1974 reformation, with two of the four

The group stopped in May 1971. In 1974 a promoter approached Erik Brann about reviving the name; he brought Ron Bushy back and the two of them recruited Philip Taylor Kramer and Howard Reitzes, signing to MCA. Doug Ingle and Lee Dorman were not part of it. Scorching Beauty came out in January 1975 and Sun and Steel in October, with Bill DeMartines replacing Reitzes between the two. Scorching Beauty reached 138 in the United States and Sun and Steel missed the American chart altogether. The grouping wound down in 1977, and that is where this section of the story ends.

Album by album

Six albums between 1968 and 1975, made by five different line-ups. Tap any title for its guide.

Who is actually on which record

Ron Bushy is the only person who plays on all six of these albums. Doug Ingle is on the first four and neither of the last two. Erik Brann, credited Braunn on the MCA records, is absent from Heavy and from Metamorphosis but present on the other four. Lee Dorman is on only three. Danny Weis, Jerry Penrod and Darryl DeLoach appear on Heavy alone; Mike Pinera and Larry Reinhardt on Metamorphosis alone; Howard Reitzes on Scorching Beauty alone and Bill DeMartines on Sun and Steel alone. Any sentence beginning with the words the classic line-up is going to be wrong.

Where to start

Start with In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968), because nothing else here makes sense without it. Then Ball (1969), which charted higher, is tighter, and is the album this band’s reputation has served worst. Then Heavy (1968), the debut, the only record featuring Danny Weis, Jerry Penrod and Darryl DeLoach, which sounds like a garage band rather than a psychedelic one.

Why they still matter

Iron Butterfly matter for one record and are worth hearing for three. The famous piece took something that a handful of American bands had tried — filling a whole side with one thing and letting it run — and sold it to four million people, and a great deal of what followed in heavy rock and progressive rock takes that permission for granted. The rest of the catalogue is a different and more interesting story: a band who changed personnel constantly, wrote much better short songs than anyone gives them credit for, and never once repeated the thing that made them famous.

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