Iron Butterfly

"Reverand Lovejoy: And now, please rise for our opening hymn, uh... "In the Garden of Eden," by I. Ron Butterfly. Homer Simpson: Hey, Marge, remember when we used to make out to this hymn?"

- The Simpsons "Bart Sells His Soul"

Iron Butterfly is a Psychedelic Rock band and early pioneers of Heavy Metal. They are well known for "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", the title track of their second album. The 17 minute long piece was epic, menacing and altogether awesome, and has since become a staple of numerous pop culture references thereafter. Oh yeah, and they did some other songs, too.

Iron Butterfly released six studio albums between 1968 and 1976, and two live albums.


 * Epic Rocking: "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", which is 17 minutes long. Some live versions of this song go on for even longer -- reaching over 19 minutes.
 * Mondegreen: The title of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" is a Ascended Mondegreen. It was originally supposed to be "In The Garden Of Eden" (meaning, Bart Simpson wasn't far off). Various stories about this have been reported, most commonly variances on "the singer was drunk".
 * Ominous Pipe Organ: "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", again.
 * One-Hit Wonder: "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", after it was edited into a 4-minute single.
 * Throw It In: "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". The take that was featured on the album went on so long because they were waiting for the producer to show up, and kept playing for 17 minutes. The producer decided that they didn't need to do another take.