Doug Ingle 5/2024 (78), was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on September 9, 1945. His father Lloyd, a church organist and accountant, introduced him to music at an early age. The Ingles moved within three months of his birth to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and later, when he was 11, the family moved to San Diego, CA.
With the timing right in the mid-sixties and California becoming the hotbed for love-ins and psychedelic rock, Ingle formed the original line up for Iron Butterfly with Ron Bushy on drums. As soon as Iron Butterfly formed, they moved to Hollywood Hills and started an excruciating practice and performing schedule.
Of the four musicians in the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida lineup, Ingle was the only one who was a founding member, having formed Iron Butterfly in San Diego in 1966. After a handful of lineup changes, a five-piece Iron Butterfly including Ingle and Bushy put out the band’s debut Heavy in 1968; soon after release, the other three members left and were replaced by Brann and Dornan, resulting in the lineup that would create the 17-minute psych-rock epic “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” Released less than six months after Heavy and the lineup shuffle, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida would sell a reported 30 million copies worldwide, and a three-minute version of the title track — whose title was based on Bushy’s mishearing of “In the Garden of Eden” — became a Top 5 hit on the Hot 100 and a classic rock staple.
“‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ was written as a slow country ballad, about one-and-a-half minutes long,” Bushy told It’s Psychedelic Baby magazine in 2020. “I came home late one night and Doug [Ingle] had been drinking a whole gallon of Red Mountain wine. I asked him what he had done, while he has been playing a slow ballad on his Vox keyboard. It was hard to understand him because he was so drunk … so I wrote it down on a napkin exactly how it sounded phonetically to me: ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.’ It was supposed to be ‘In the Garden of Eden.’”
“In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” spent 140 weeks on the Billboard album chart, peaking at No. 4, and was said to have sold some 32 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. In the 1990s a 7 minute recording was re-released.
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 truncheonlike guitar riff and haunting aura that called to mind a rock ’n’ roll “Dies Irae,” the song is considered a progenitor of heavy metal and encapsulated Mr. 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. There have been varying origin stories regarding its mysterious title, with its overtones of Eastern mysticism. Adding to the legend of the song was that it was essentially an in-studio soundcheck that became the final 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 Mr. Bushy.
“After 17 minutes and five seconds I ended the tape,” Mr. 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.”
The classic lineup quickly attempted to capitalize on the success with 1969’s Ball, which was primarily written by Ingle, but the album failed to yield any hit singles. The singer remained with Iron Butterfly for one more studio album, 1970’s Metamorphosis, before the band broke up in 1971, in part due to debts the band incurred from the mismanagement. Also, while Iron Butterfly was touring in Europe with Yes in early 1971, Doug Ingle announced his intention to leave the group. He had grown tired of endless touring and wasn’t totally on board with the band’s new guitar-oriented blues and soul direction.
Bottom line is, we had given over complete power of attorney to our management. We were children among men basically, which is not uncommon for young rock personalities. At any rate, their whole mindset was sell ’em while they’re hot, because they viewed us as more of a flash in the pan than a long term solution. We weren’t individual stars. We were a group. They figured it was a short-lived experience at best; therefore, we better sell ’em while things’re hot. We would come home thinking we were gonna finally realize our 2 week vacation, only to find out that we had to leave in another 3 days for another month and a half or two and if we didn’t, the buyers would sue us. I backed out in ’71. I was just burned out. That’s where the problem with Ahmet came, because the Butterfly still owed Ahmet one additional original album and I just walked away from the whole thing.
When Bushy and Brann reunited Iron Butterfly in 1975, Ingle did not take part, though he did perform with some of the countless iterations of Iron Butterfly that toured over the ensuing decades, including most recently in 1999.
At his career zenith, Mr. 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), and 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.”
When the band first broke up in 1971, Doug Ingle went on to manage a recreational vehicle park and work as a house painter. He was eventually forced to sell his 600 acre 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. 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.
On occasion, he re-emerged for Iron Butterfly reunion tours. Before a concert in 1996, he 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 continued with the new Iron Butterfly until 1999 after which it got quiet again.
Doug Ingle, who died on May 24, 2024 at age 78, was the last surviving member of Iron Butterfly’s “classic,” In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida-era lineup: Guitarist Erik Brann died in 2003 at the age of 52, bassist Lee Dornan died in 2012 at the age of 70, and drummer Ron Bushy died in 2021 at the age of 79.
