Flower Power Full LP In the Garden of Eden or In the Garden of Life by Iron Butterfly

This is a story about “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”, a truly classic song, and the folklore around the mysterious meaning of the song. Simply put the words “In A Gadda Da Vida” were intended to be “In the Garden of Eden” however the true translation of “Vida” is “Life” putting the mistaken translation to “In the Garden of Life”. That is an important distinction that will accompany this story about the song’s true meaning. The In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida album has been certified multi-platinum, reportedly selling more than 30 million copies total. (Iron Butterfly was, in fact, the first-ever group to receive an RIAA platinum album award.) 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. According to legend, the group was so stoned when they recorded the track that they could neither pronounce the title "In the Garden of Eden" or end the track, so it rambles on for a full 17 minutes, which to some listeners sounds like eternity. But that's the essence of its appeal -- it's the epitome of heavy psychedelic excess, encapsulating the most indulgent tendencies of the era. Iron Butterfly never matched the warped excesses of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," either on their debut album of the same name or the rest of their catalog, yet they occasionally made some enjoyable fuzz guitar-driven psychedelia that works as a period piece. The five tracks that share space with their magnum opus on In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida qualify as good artifacts, and the entire record still stands as the group's definitive album, especially since this is the only place the full-length title track is available.

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The song was written by Doug Ingle the organist and part time vocalist of Iron Butterfly and released by the group in 1968. It is generally agreed that the song was meant to be “In the Garden of Eden”, but that when Ingle asked fellow bandmate Ron Bushy to write down the lyrics during a heavy drinking session, the words got crossed to “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” which stuck. Wikipedia reports that Ingle intended this to be a love song imaging Adam and Eve walking in the Garden of Eden.

A closer look at Daphnis and Chloe in the Garden of Eden Theodore Feder explores how a second-century pagan love story alludes to the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve. In this post, delve deeper into the story with passages from the pagan romance, their Biblical counterparts and images of artistic representations of the lovers and their idyllic garden.

Written around 200 A.D. by the Greco-Roman author Longus, Daphnis and Chloe is a pagan pastoral romance that echoes the Biblical story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Daphnis and Chloe are simple country-dwelling teenagers in love. They are the adopted children of pastoralists indentured to a far off Master. In a meadow where the couple often meet, there is an apple tree, completely bare except for one large and sweet apple hanging from the topmost twig. Daphnis climbs the tree and picks it for Chloe, to her dismay. Daphnis justifies himself, saying that if he did not pluck it, the apple would fall to the earth and be trampled by a beast or poisoned by a snake.

In spite of some variations, all the principal elements of the Genesis story of Adam and Eve are included in Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe. There are male and female counterparts, the tree and the fruit in the Edenic setting and even an ominous mention of a snake. It is likely that Longus knew some version of the Genesis story, whether by first or second hand. As Theodore Feder writes, Daphnis and Chloe is an example of how “stories of the Jews and early Christians were becoming part of the general cultural inventory of the time.” All text from Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe There stood an apple-tree, all picked, with neither fruit nor leaf remaining; bare were all its boughs; yet one apple still hung ripening atop the very topmost twig, an apple large and lovely, which by itself surpassed the sweet scent of its whole clan. He feared to go up there, the harvester, nor had he taken heed to reach it down—perhaps some power was guarding it, that apple fair, for a love-struck shepherd.

When Daphnis saw the apple, he made to go up and pluck it, and took no notice of Chloe when she tried to hold him back. Whereupon she, ignored, went angrily away to the sheep and goats; but Daphnis quickly clambered up the tree and succeeded in plucking the apple and bringing it down as a gift for Chloe, and made this speech to the wrathful girl:

‘O maiden,
this apple
the lovely Seasons of the Year brought forth
and a fair tree fed
beneath the mellowing Sun
and Chance preserved;
and, while I have eyes, I am not the one to leave it there
that it may fall to earth
for browsing beast to trample
or gliding snake to poison
or Time to ruin when it lies forlorn—
the cynosure,
the nonpareil.
This did Aphrodite win as a prize for beauty,
this do I give you as a prize of victory.
Like witnesses have you both:
Paris was a shepherd,
a goatherd am I.’
With these words he placed the apple in her bosom, and when he came close she kissed him, so that Daphnis was not sorry that he had risked climbing to such a height. For the kiss that he got was better than even a golden apple.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.”’ But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

True, they were weeping for fear of their master; but even a complete stranger would have wept, had he chanced on such a sight. They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

A Summary and Analysis of the Garden of Eden Story
According to Oscar Wilde, ‘The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations.’ But as with many stories from the Bible, there are many things we get wrong about that ‘man and woman in a garden’, Adam and Eve. Where was the Garden of Eden? And was Eden the name of the garden of merely the location of it? What did the serpent represent, and what was the forbidden fruit hanging from the Tree of Knowledge?

Clearly there is much to unpack and analyse here. But before we get to the analysis, let’s briefly summarise the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Garden of Eden story: summary

On the sixth day of Creation, God created ‘man’ in the form of Adam, moulding him from ‘the dust of the ground’ (Genesis 2:7), breathing the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils. God then planted a garden ‘eastward in Eden’ (2:8), containing both the tree of life and ‘the tree of knowledge of good and evil’ (2:9).

Adam is tasked with keeping or maintaining the garden. God tells him he can freely eat of every tree in the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for to eat of that tree would be to die.

God then creates the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air and asks Adam to name them all. Then, while Adam is asleep, God takes one of Adam’s ribs and forms a woman from the flesh of the rib. God says that this is how human relationships will be: a man will ‘leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh’ (2:24). Adam and Eve are naked, but not ashamed of their nakedness (yet).

Nor is Eve named yet: Adam has somehow managed to name all of the beasts and fowls, but hasn’t bothered to give his wife a name yet. However, she will be named Eve shortly after this.

The serpent now enters the story, telling ‘the woman’ (i.e., Eve) that she and Adam will not die if they eat of the tree of knowledge, because they will then know what good and evil are and will be like gods. How could God possibly object to their knowing about good and evil? Eve is won over by this argument, seeing the fruit of the tree as delicious-looking and a gateway to wisdom, if eaten.

So she eats from the tree and gives Adam some of the fruit to eat too. Their eyes are immediately opened, and they are ashamed of their nakedness, and fashion fig leaves to make themselves ‘aprons’ to cover their nakedness. God appears walking in the garden, and Adam and Eve promptly hide themselves.

God calls for Adam. Adam tells God that he hid himself because he was naked. God asks Adam, who told him he was naked? Has Adam ‘eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?’ (3:11). Adam blames Eve for leading him astray, and Eve blames the serpent.

God finds the serpent and tells it that, as punishment for doing this, the snake will crawl upon its belly from now on, and eat dust for the rest of its life. As for Eve, she (and all woman descended from her) will have ‘sorrow’ or pain in childbirth, and Adam will rule over her as her husband. And because Adam listened to his wife and allowed himself to be led astray, he will eat the food of the ground and ‘the herb of the field’ (3:18).

And Adam and Eve will now be mortal, and will die, as God told them they would. Famously, God tells Adam, ‘for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return’ (3:19). It is at this point that Adam (belatedly) gets round to naming his wife, calling her Eve ‘because she was the mother of all living’ (3:20).

God clothes Adam and Eve and sends them out of the Garden of Eden, and guards the tree of life with angels (‘Cherubims’) and a flaming sword.

Garden of Eden story: analysis

The story of the Fall of Man – which Adam and Eve bring about when they eat of the forbidden fruit from ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ – is significant because it marks the beginning of Original Sin, which every human being was said to inherit from Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve live in blissful childlike innocence, as their lack of self-consciousness or shame around their nakedness demonstrates. Only once their eyes are opened, after they eat of the forbidden fruit, do they learn shame, and in doing so, displease God, who wished them to remain innocent.

Clearly there is a parallel here between a parent and his children, wishing to keep them safe from the harms and evils of the world. The Garden of Eden provides a safe haven for Adam and Eve, and God, like a watchful father, wishes to keep his children innocent. He doesn’t want them to grow up and learn what evil is.

But there comes a time when all of us have to grow up and lose our innocence. It is significant that Adam and Eve only have children once they have left the Garden of Eden behind (at the beginning of chapter 4 of Genesis, directly after their expulsion); it’s as if they can only fully embrace adulthood once they have had the blinkers removed from their eyes.

God, however, does not want his creation to have the same knowledge as he has: to have true knowledge of good and evil is to be a god, and God wants that role all for himself. Adam and Eve go against his divine commandment, disobeying him. Adam and Eve are guilty of giving into temptation, but perhaps more than that, the Genesis writer presents them as presumptuous, because they wish to know of good and evil, as God does.

Analyzed this way, then, the Adam and Eve story is a kind of origin-myth for the hardships of the flesh: women’s pain in childbirth, man’s back-breaking toil in the field, the wife’s subjection to her husband. But any God that allowed such things to afflict his people can’t be wholly good. The way the writers of the Genesis story solve this problem, of course, is by presenting a narrative in which God initially did shelter his creation from these hardships, until humankind showed itself untrustworthy and ill-deserving of relief from these travails. And that was it: it was pack your bags time, and don’t slam the garden gate on your way out.

But which tree did Adam and Eve eat from? There is an inconsistency in the Genesis narrative. God originally tells Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge (i.e., knowledge of good and evil), but every other tree is fine to eat from. However, this becomes the ‘tree of life’ at the end of the narrative. Is this another name for the tree of knowledge? That would explain things. Except that Genesis 2:9 presents them clearly as two distinct trees: ‘the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.’ At the end of chapter 3, they appear to have become one central tree. And it’s the tree of life that God wants to guard with the flaming sword.

It is often assumed that the serpent in the Book of Genesis, that speaks to Eve and tempts her to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, is Satan in disguise. In fact, the Bible never mentions this, simply referring to the snake as ‘the serpent’. The idea that the serpent is the Devil first turns up in the Apocrypha, in the Wisdom of Solomon (2:24: ‘Nevertheless through envy of the devil came death into the world’). But in Genesis there is no reason to suggest he is evil incarnate: he is simply the subtlest of all creatures.

There’s also a strong suggestion that it had legs, like a lizard: at least, initially. This is because, owing to its role in leading Adam and Eve astray, God punishes it, according to Genesis 3:14, by declaring: ‘Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life’. This implies that the serpent, prior to this, did not crawl about on its belly, but had limbs. Viewed in this way, the fate of the serpent acts as a kind of Just-So Story explaining how the snake came to be without arms and legs.

The serpent in the Garden of Eden is also one of only two examples of talking animals in the Old Testament (the other being Balaam’s ass). This suggests the talking snake is possibly part of an earlier nature myth. It also has echoes of the serpent which steals the plant of immortality from Gilgamesh in that Sumerian legend (which also features a catastrophic Flood event). By contrast, the serpent steals immortality from Adam and Eve, whose time in paradise comes to an end after they eat of the forbidden fruit.

What does the Adam and Eve story represent?

Indeed, it’s possible to argue that the story of Adam and Eve represents, on one level, mankind’s shift from hunter-gatherers to agricultural communities: Adam, remember, must till the field after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden, leaving behind a life spent plucking fruit from trees (the forbidden tree excepted) and otherwise being untroubled by the need to work the land.

By the way, at no point is this forbidden fruit identified in the Book of Genesis. The identification of it as an apple is a much later invention. Genesis 2:16-17 simply states:

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

The idea that the forbidden fruit was an apple may have arisen, curiously enough, because of a misunderstanding of two similar words: the Latin mălum means ‘evil’ (as in malevolent, malign, and other related words), while the Latin mālum, from the Greek μῆλον, means ‘apple’.

What’s more, although the story of the Fall of Man is often viewed as a regrettable and damaging development, introducing as it does the concept of Original Sin, it can also be viewed as the first stage of mankind’s journey towards enlightenment and self-knowledge. God may not be happy with human beings acquiring such knowledge, but we all have to grow up and become less innocent – at least, many people (including many Christians) would argue.

Viewed in this light, the serpent – far from being Satan in ophidian form – is actually, as Kristin Swenson observes in her brilliantly informative A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible, ‘midwife of sorts to the humans’ passage from infantile innocence to the maturity of experience’.

Swenson also observes the symbolic role that serpents play in other ancient stories: in the Epic of Gilgamesh, a 4,000-year-old story which also features a Flood narrative, Gilgamesh attempts to seize a plant that might confer immortality, only for a snake to turn up and steal the plant away. The symbolism is arguably similar to that found in the Genesis story: the serpent, while elsewhere representing immortality (Ouroboros etc.), here acts as the agent making man realize that he, at least, is not meant to live forever.

Although Eden is now viewed as synonymous with the garden from the Book of Genesis, the garden was not the be-all and end-all of the limits of the land known as ‘Eden’. That would be like saying the Lake District is all of England, or Bordeaux is the same thing as the country of France. But where was Eden?

We are told in Genesis that Eden is ‘eastward’, i.e., east of Canaan, the area of the Middle East where the authors of the Genesis story would have lived. 2 Kings talks about the ‘children of Eden which were in Thelasar’ (19:12), on the Euphrates river, but the term ‘Eden’ may have been applied to a wider region.

Curiously, in the Sumerian language, eden means ‘plain’, and it’s quite possible that the story of the Garden of Eden – as with the Genesis account of Noah and the Flood – originated in earlier Sumerian myths, in this case charting the Sumerians’ emergence from the nearby hills down onto eden or ‘the plain’.

But by the time the earliest narratives began to be written down, the Sumerian civilization had had its day. As Isaac Asimov ponders in Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: The Old Testament by Isaac Asimov (September 19,1973), the tale of the paradisal world of the Garden of Eden could have been a reflection, at least in part, of the Sumerian longing for a vanished past: a paradise lost, if you like.

The song was written by Doug Ingle the organist and part time vocalist of Iron Butterfly and released by the group in 1968. It is generally agreed that the song was meant to be “In the Garden of Eden”, but that when Ingle asked fellow bandmate Ron Bushy to write down the lyrics during a heavy drinking session, the words got crossed to “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” which stuck. so its reports that Ingle intended this to be a love song imaging Adam and Eve walking in the Garden of Eden.

The provides the following story of why the altered title stuck “The title was supposed to be “In The Garden Of Eden.” Drummer Ron Bushy wrote it down as “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” because he couldn’t understand what vocalist Doug Ingle was singing. Their record company was OK with the title because it sounds exotic and Eastern spirituality was big at the time, with The Beatles going to India and The Rolling Stones experimenting with Indian instruments.”

The song’s meaning and story were passed to me a bit differently. Like other rock folklore this song’s story is fascinating and the alignment to the story I was told is eerie. The story they told me was that the song was about a married couple where the Wife was having an affair unbeknownst to her Husband. In order to get her Husband out of the picture, she laced one of his drinks with drugs and proceeded to bury him alive. The Husband then wakes up underground in a box (coffin) and the song details his struggle to escape and his eventual death. This may not be obvious if you simply listen to the song without the details, so let’s walk step-by-step through how this story aligns with the music.

Music is a feeling. It exults emotions and links those emotions to our memories. Music can take you back to another time and bring out all kinds of feelings. Songs certainly mean different things to different people. The folklore around In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, whether true or not, brings me back to my youth. As I am now a dad, I hope my kids look back on their youth and can tie songs to fun memories we have had. Hopefully my kids’ memories won’t be about a song reenacting a person being buried alive, but I guess it is what got me here! Originally published in 1968, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is the best known album by Psychedelic Rock group Iron Butterfly. The first album to ever go platinum, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is one of those albums nearly every every aging hippie either has, or used to have. For most of these people though, it probably hasn't been played in decades. Heavy on the distortion guitar and the electric organ, this album would be right at home in an old van with large amounts of ceremonial substances.

Aside from the title track, this album is for the most part forgettable. The songs are fairly simple pop melodies, with basic lyrics and instrumentation. There are a few points of brilliance, however, but all in all, the first five songs are lackluster. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, on the other hand, is consistently considered one of the greatest rock songs ever.

The title track is, simply put, a classic. Its seventeen minutes are one of the high points in the Psychedelic Rock movement; very few songs from that genre have the fame (or infamy) that In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida has. Like the rest of the album, the lyrics are fairly simplistic and minimal, but people don't listen to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida for the lyrics, they listen to it for the instrumental portion.

The instrumental portion is about as close to a symphonic piece as one gets in rock and roll. It contains one of the longest drum solos in Rock and Roll, similar in length to Led Zeppelin's Moby Dick; its guitar work has some incredibly artistic uses of distortion, and its organ portions are in many ways the best on the album. It all adds up to an incredibly well done piece of work which is, unfortunately, altered by most commercial plays of the song.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida was made in the days of AM Radio, and for some time, the limitations commercial AM radio placed on the song meant it wasn't able to be played. Informal rules and traditions limited the length of songs able to be played on AM stations, and because of this, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida was not able to be played on these stations. FM stations, which were run much more like todays typical college radio stations, did not have these limitations, and thus, were able to play the song. Thus, they saw a ratings jump due to the playing of this song. AM stations were hamstrung until a DJ out of Detroit was authorized by Atlantic Records to release a version with 14 minutes cut from the song. After this was done, AM stations were able to play the song, and capitalize on its success.

The song is still played today on classic rock stations, though is not a staple song on most stations' playlists. Its length still precludes it from being played too often; even FM radio has, for the most part, migrated to the short music sets which dominated AM radio. Thus, unless the station is running some special promotional gimmick, the shortened version is played.

In my opinion, this album is worth being added to anyone's record collection. Yes, the first five songs are great flower power movement and psychedelic mindless pop music, but the last song is simply psychedelic brilliant. This is one of many cases where it's well worth it to buy the album, as most Greatest Hits compilations have the bastardized short version.

When asked what the title of this song meant, the composer Doug Ingle responded, "It was an accident. A total accident." Ingle recalls that after the release of their first album 'Heavy' the band had gone through some membership changes and wasn't doing well financialy. "We pretty much counted on groupies for food." Ingle hadn't eaten in three days and had consumed a gallon of wine while composing a new track. Another band member, Ron Bushy, had heard the new track, but Ingle wouldn't tell him the title of it. "I didn't want to offend the Christian community or other religious philosophies." Bushy was getting upset with his reluctance and Ingles finally caved in and "Blurted it out under the influence," 'In the Garden of Eden.' The next day Bushy ran into Ingles and told him, "I really like that title, 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida'." Ingles recalls, "geez, that's not what I said."

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/mtopper/the_101_album_psychedelia_collection/

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https://rateyourmusic.com/list/mtopper/1967_psychedelic_albums/

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/mtopper/1968_psychedelic_albums/

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/mtopper/1969_psychedelic_albums/

Commentary in Bolded Black - The song opens with what sounds like a church organ kicking into the riff of the song which is then supported by the bass, drums and electric guitar.

-The story goes, that the Wife is asking her Husband to trust her and come with her which you will see in the opening lyrics. The Husband trusts his wife so he has no trepidation about taking the drink she provides which is laced with drugs. As he follows her, the drugs start to kick in and he begins to slip out of consciousness. Eventually, the Husband fully loses consciousness and the singer announces, “It’s Over”. The Husband slips into a dream state as the instrumental begins and his effort to escape starts shortly after. Enjoy!

Psychedelic Music in the Flower Power 1965 Thru 1969 Era

Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was a rock band based in San Francisco, California, who pioneered psychedelic rock. Formed in 1965, the group defined the San Francisco Sound and was the first from the Bay Area to achieve international commercial success. They were headliners at the three most famous American rock festivals of the 1960s—Monterey (1967), Woodstock (1969) and Altamont (1969)—and the first Isle of Wight Festival (1968) in England. Their 1967 break-out album Surrealistic Pillow ranks on the short list of the most significant recordings of the “Summer of Love”. Two songs from that album, “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit”, are among Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”

The “classic” lineup of Jefferson Airplane, from October 1966 to February 1970, was Marty Balin (vocals), Paul Kantner (guitar, vocals), Grace Slick (vocals), Jorma Kaukonen (lead guitar, vocals), Jack Casady (bass), and Spencer Dryden (drums). Marty Balin left the band in 1971. After 1972, Jefferson Airplane effectively split into two groups. Kaukonen and Casady moved on full time to their own band, Hot Tuna. Slick, Kantner, and the remaining members of Jefferson Airplane recruited new members and regrouped as Jefferson Starship in 1974, with Marty Balin eventually joining them. Jefferson Airplane was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. Ranging from quintet to septet, the band is known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, psychedelia, experimental music, modal jazz, country, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, and space rock, for live performances of lengthy instrumental jams, and for their devoted fan base, known as “Deadheads”. “Their music,” writes Lenny Kaye, “touches on ground that most other groups don’t even know exists.” These various influences were distilled into a diverse and psychedelic whole that made the Grateful Dead “the pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world”. The band was ranked 57th by Rolling Stone magazine in its The Greatest Artists of All Time issue. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 and a recording of their May 8, 1977 performance at Cornell University’s Barton Hall was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2012. The Grateful Dead have sold more than 35 million albums worldwide.

The Grateful Dead was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area amid the rise of the counterculture of the 1960s. The founding members were Jerry Garcia (lead guitar, vocals), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar, vocals), Ron “Pigpen” McKernan (keyboards, harmonica, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass, vocals), and Bill Kreutzmann (drums). Members of the Grateful Dead had played together in various San Francisco bands, including Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions and the Warlocks. Lesh was the last member to join the Warlocks before they became the Grateful Dead; he replaced Dana Morgan Jr., who had played bass for a few gigs. Drummer Mickey Hart and nonperforming lyricist Robert Hunter joined in 1967. With the exception of McKernan, who died in 1973, and Hart, who took time off from 1971 to 1974, the core of the band stayed together for its entire 30-year history. The other official members of the band are Tom Constanten (keyboards; 1968–1970), John Perry Barlow (nonperforming lyricist; 1971–1995), Keith Godchaux (keyboards; 1971–1979), Donna Godchaux (vocals; 1972–1979), Brent Mydland (keyboards, vocals; 1979–1990), and Vince Welnick (keyboards, vocals; 1990–1995). Pianist Bruce Hornsby was a touring member from 1990 to 1992, as well as a guest with the band on occasion before and after the tours.

After the death of Garcia in 1995, former members of the band, along with other musicians, toured as the Other Ones in 1998, 2000, and 2002, and the Dead in 2003, 2004, and 2009. In 2015, the four surviving core members marked the band’s 50th anniversary in a series of concerts that were billed as their last performances together. There have also been several spin-offs featuring one or more core members, such as Dead & Company, Furthur, the Rhythm Devils, Phil Lesh & Friends, RatDog, and Billy & the Kids.

Big Brother and the Holding Company (featuring Janis Joplin)
Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Jefferson Airplane. They are best known as the band that featured Janis Joplin as their lead singer. Their 1968 album Cheap Thrills is considered one of the masterpieces of the psychedelic sound of San Francisco; it reached number one on the Billboard charts.

Janis Joplin, was an American rock singer and songwriter. She was one of the biggest female rock stars of her era. After releasing three albums, she died of a heroin overdose at age 27. A fourth album, Pearl, was released in January 1971, just over three months after her death. It reached number one on the Billboard charts.

In 1967, Joplin rose to fame during an appearance at Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the Kozmic Blues Band and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the Woodstock festival and the Festival Express train tour. Five singles by Joplin went into the Billboard Hot 100, including a cover of the song “Me and Bobby McGee”, which reached number 1 in March 1971. Her most popular songs include her cover versions of “Piece of My Heart”, “Cry Baby”, “Down on Me”, “Ball ‘n’ Chain”, and “Summertime”; and her original song “Mercedes Benz”, her final recording.

Joplin, highly respected for her charismatic performing ability, was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.

Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix was an American rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as “arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music”.

Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at the age of 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and trained as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division; he was granted an honorable discharge the following year. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, and began playing gigs on the Chitlin’ Circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers’ backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965. He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after being discovered by Linda Keith, who in turn interested bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals in becoming his first manager. Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: “Hey Joe”, “Purple Haze”, and “The Wind Cries Mary”. He achieved fame in the U.S. after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the U.S.; it was Hendrix’s most commercially successful release and his first and only number one album. The world’s highest-paid performer, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 before his accidental death from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970, at the age of 27.

Hendrix was inspired musically by American rock and roll and electric blues. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and was instrumental in utilizing the previously undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He helped to popularize the use of a wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock, and was the first artist to use stereophonic phasing effects in music recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: “Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began.”

Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield was an American rock band active from 1966 to 1968 containing Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and Richie Furay, which released three albums, and several singles including “For What It’s Worth”. The band combined elements of folk and country music with British invasion and psychedelia influences, and, along with the Byrds, were part of the early development of the folk rock genre.

With a name taken from a brand of steamroller, Buffalo Springfield formed in Los Angeles in 1966 with Stills (guitar, keyboards, vocals), Dewey Martin (drums, vocals), Bruce Palmer (electric bass), Furay (guitar, vocals), and Young (guitar, harmonica, piano, vocals). The band signed to Atlantic Records in 1966 and released their debut single “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” – a regional hit in Los Angeles. The following January, the group released the protest song they were most known for, “For What It’s Worth”. Their second album, Buffalo Springfield Again, marked their progression to psychedelia and hard rock.

After various drug-related arrests and line-up changes, the group broke up in 1968. Stephen Stills went on to form the folk rock supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash with David Crosby of the Byrds and Graham Nash of the Hollies. Neil Young had launched his successful solo career and reunited with Stills in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in 1969. Furay, along with Jim Messina, went on to form the country-rock band Poco. Buffalo Springfield was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997

Moby Grape
Moby Grape is an American rock group from the 1960s, known for having all five members contribute to singing and songwriting and that collectively merged elements of folk music, blues, country, and jazz, together with rock and psychedelic music. They were one of the few groups of which all members were lead vocalists. The group continues to perform occasionally.

1966–1967

The group was formed in late 1966 in San Francisco, at the instigation of Skip Spence and Matthew Katz. Both had been previously associated with Jefferson Airplane, Spence as the band’s first drummer, playing on their first album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, and Katz as the band’s manager, but both had been dismissed by the group. Katz encouraged Spence to form a band similar to Jefferson Airplane, with varied songwriting and vocal work by several group members, and with Katz as the manager. According to band member Peter Lewis, “Matthew (Katz) brought the spirit of conflict into the band. He didn’t want it to be an equal partnership. He wanted it all.”

The band name, judicially determined to have been chosen by Bob Mosley and Spence, came from the punch line of the joke “What’s purple and swims?”. Lead guitarist Jerry Miller and drummer Don Stevenson (both formerly of The Frantics, originally based in Seattle) joined guitarist (and son of actress Loretta Young) Peter Lewis (of The Cornells), bassist Bob Mosley (of The Misfits, based in San Diego), and Spence, now on guitar instead of drums. Jerry Miller and Don Stevenson had moved The Frantics from Seattle to San Francisco after a 1965 meeting with Jerry Garcia, then playing with The Warlocks at a bar in Belmont, California. Garcia encouraged them to move to San Francisco. Once The Frantics were settled in San Francisco, Mosley joined the band.

While Jerry Miller was the principal lead guitarist, all three guitarists played lead at various points, often playing off against each other, in a guitar form associated with Moby Grape as “crosstalk”. The other major three-guitar band at the time was Buffalo Springfield. Moby Grape’s music has been described by Geoffrey Parr as follows: “No rock and roll group has been able to use a guitar trio as effectively as Moby Grape did on Moby Grape. Spence played a distinctive rhythm guitar that really sticks out throughout the album. Lewis, meanwhile, was a very good guitar player overall and was excellent at finger picking, as is evident in several songs. And then there is Miller, “The way they crafted their parts and played together on Moby Grape is like nothing else I’ve ever heard in my life. The guitars are like a collage of sound that makes perfect sense.”

All band members wrote songs and sang lead and backup vocals for their debut album Moby Grape (1967). Mosley, Lewis, and Spence generally wrote alone, while Miller and Stevenson generally wrote together. In a marketing stunt, Columbia Records immediately released five singles at once, and the band was perceived as being over-hyped. This was during a period in which mainstream record labels were giving previously unheard-of levels of promotion to what was then considered counter-cultural music genres. Nonetheless, the record was critically acclaimed and fairly successful commercially, with The Move covering the album’s “Hey Grandma” (a Miller-Stevenson composition) on their eponymous first album. More recently, “Hey Grandma” was included in the soundtrack to the 2005 Sean Penn-Nicole Kidman film, The Interpreter, as well as being covered in 2009 by the Black Crowes, on Warpaint Live. Spence’s “Omaha” was the only one of the five singles to chart, reaching number 88 in 1967. Miller-Stevenson’s “8:05” became a country rock standard (covered by Robert Plant, Guy Burlage, and others).

One of Moby Grape’s earliest major onstage performances was the Mantra-Rock Dance—a musical event held on January 29, 1967 at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. At the event Moby Grape performed along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Grateful Dead, and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, donating proceeds to the temple. The group appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival on Saturday, June 17, 1967.

Iron Butterfly
Iron Butterfly is an American rock band best known for the 1968 hit “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”, providing a dramatic sound that led the way towards the development of hard rock and heavy metal music.

Formed in San Diego, California, among band members who used to be “arch enemies”, their heyday was the late 1960s, but the band has been reincarnated with various members with varying levels of success, with no new recordings since 1975.

The band’s seminal 1968 album In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is among the world’s 40 best-selling albums, selling more than 30 million copies. Iron Butterfly is also notable for being the first group to receive an RIAA platinum award.

Strawberry Alarm Clock
Strawberry Alarm Clock is a psychedelic rock band formed in 1967 in Los Angeles best known for their 1967 hit single “Incense and Peppermints”.

Strawberry Alarm Clock, who have been also categorized as acid rock, psychedelic pop and sunshine pop, charted five songs including two Top 40 hits

Country Joe and the Fish
Country Joe and the Fish was an American psychedelic rock band formed in Berkeley, California, in 1965. The band was among the influential groups in the San Francisco music scene during the mid- to late 1960s. Much of the band’s music was written by founding members Country Joe McDonald and Barry “The Fish” Melton, with lyrics pointedly addressing issues of importance to the counterculture, such as anti-war protests, free love, and recreational drug use. Through a combination of psychedelia and electronic music, the band’s sound was marked by innovative guitar melodies and distorted organ-driven instrumentals which were significant to the development of acid rock.

The band self-produced two EPs that drew attention on the underground circuit before signing to Vanguard Records in 1966. Their debut album, Electric Music for the Mind and Body, followed in 1967. It contained their only nationally charting single, “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine”, and their most experimental arrangements. Their second album, I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die, was released in late 1967; its title track, with its dark humor and satire, became their signature tune and is among the era’s most recognizable protest songs. Further success followed, including McDonald’s appearance at Woodstock, but the group’s lineup underwent changes until its disbandment in 1970. Members of the band continue in the music industry as solo recording artists and sporadically reconvene.

Cream
Cream were a 1960s British rock power trio consisting of drummer Ginger Baker, guitarist/singer Eric Clapton and bassist/singer Jack Bruce. The group’s third album, Wheels of Fire (1968), was the world’s first platinum-selling double album. The band is widely regarded as the world’s first successful supergroup. In their career, they sold more than 15 million copies of their albums worldwide. Their music included songs based on traditional blues such as “Crossroads” and “Spoonful”, and modern blues such as “Born Under a Bad Sign”, as well as more current material such as “Strange Brew”, “Tales of Brave Ulysses” and “Toad”.

The band’s biggest hits were “I Feel Free” (UK number 11), “Sunshine of Your Love” (US number 5), “White Room” (US number 6), “Crossroads” (US number 28), and “Badge” (UK number 18).

The band made a significant impact on the popular music of the time, and, along with Jimi Hendrix and other notable guitarists and bands, popularised the use of the wah-wah pedal. They provided a heavy yet technically proficient musical theme that foreshadowed and influenced the emergence of British bands such as Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. They also had an impact on American southern rock groups the Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The band’s live performances influenced progressive rock acts such as Rush.

The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

Creedence Clearwater Revival
Creedence Clearwater Revival: An American rock band active in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The band consisted of lead vocalist, lead guitarist, and primary songwriter John Fogerty, his brother rhythm guitarist Tom Fogerty, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford. Their musical style encompassed the roots rock, swamp rock, and blues rock genres. Despite their San Francisco Bay Area origins, they played in a Southern rock style, with lyrics about bayous, catfish, the Mississippi River, and other popular elements of Southern United States iconography, as well as political and socially-conscious lyrics about topics including the Vietnam War. The band performed at 1969’s famed Woodstock Festival.

After four years of chart-topping success, the group disbanded acrimoniously in late 1972. Tom Fogerty had officially left the previous year, and his brother John was at odds with the remaining members over matters of business and artistic control, all of which resulted in subsequent lawsuits between the former bandmates. Fogerty’s ongoing disagreements with Saul Zaentz, owner of their label Fantasy Records, created further protracted court battles. As a result, John Fogerty refused to perform with the two-other surviving former members at CCR’s 1993 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Donovan
Donovan is a Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist. He developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music (notably calypso). He has lived in Scotland, Hertfordshire (England), London and California, and, since at least 2008, in County Cork, Ireland, with his family. Emerging from the British folk scene, Donovan reached fame in the United Kingdom in early 1965 with live performances on the pop TV series Ready Steady Go!.
Having signed with Pye Records in 1965, he recorded singles and two albums in the folk vein, after which he signed to CBS/Epic Records in the US – the first signing by the company’s new vice-president Clive Davis – and became more successful internationally. He began a long and successful collaboration with leading British independent record producer Mickie Most, scoring multiple hit singles and albums in the UK, US, and other countries.

His most successful singles were the early UK hits “Catch the Wind”, “Colours” and “Universal Soldier” in 1965. In September 1966 “Sunshine Superman” topped America’s Billboard Hot 100 chart for one week and went to number two in Britain, followed by “Mellow Yellow” at US No.2 in December 1966, then 1968’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” in the Top 5 in both countries, then “Atlantis”, which reached US No.7 in May 1969.

He became a friend of pop musicians including Joan Baez, Brian Jones and The Beatles. He taught John Lennon a finger-picking guitar style in 1968 that Lennon employed in “Dear Prudence,” “Julia,” “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” and other songs. Donovan’s commercial fortunes waned after parting with Most in 1969, and he left the industry for a time.

Donovan continued to perform and record sporadically in the 1970s and 1980s. His musical style and hippie image were scorned by critics, especially after punk rock. His performing and recording became sporadic until a revival in the 1990s with the emergence of Britain’s rave scene. He recorded the 1996 album Sutras with producer Rick Rubin and in 2004 made a new album, Beat Cafe. Donovan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2014.

The Doors
The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore. The band got its name, at Morrison’s suggestion from the title of Aldous Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception, which itself was a reference to a quote made by William Blake, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” They were unique and among the most controversial and influential rock acts of the 1960s, mostly because of Morrison’s lyrics and charismatic but unpredictable stage persona. After Morrison’s death in 1971 at age 27, the remaining members continued as a trio until disbanding in 1973.

Signing with Elektra Records in 1966, the Doors released eight albums between 1967 and 1971. All but one hit the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 and went platinum or better. Their self-titled debut album (1967) was their first in a series of Top 10 albums in the United States, followed by Strange Days (also 1967), Waiting for the Sun (1968), The Soft Parade (1969), Morrison Hotel (1970), Absolutely Live (1970) and L.A. Woman (1971), with 20 Gold, 14 Platinum, 5 Multi-Platinum and 1 Diamond album awards in the United States alone. By the end of 1971, it was reported that the Doors had sold 4,190,457 albums domestically and 7,750,642 singles. The band had three million-selling singles in the U.S. with “Light My Fire”, “Hello, I Love You” and “Touch Me”. After Morrison’s death in 1971, the surviving trio released two albums Other Voices and Full Circle with Manzarek and Krieger sharing lead vocals. The three members also collaborated on the spoken word recording of Morrison’s An American Prayer in 1978 and on the “Orange County Suite” for a 1997 boxed set. Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore reunited in 2000 for an episode of VH1’s “Storytellers” and subsequently recorded Stoned Immaculate: The Music of The Doors with a variety of vocalists.

Although the Doors’ active career ended in 1973, their popularity has persisted. According to the RIAA, they have sold 33 million certified units in the US and over 100 million records worldwide, making them one of the best-selling bands of all time. The Doors have been listed as one of the greatest artists of all time by many magazines, including Rolling Stone, which ranked them 41st on its list of the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”. The Doors were the first American band to accumulate eight consecutive gold and platinum LP’s.

Crosby, Stills, and Nash (Young)
Crosby, Stills, and Nash was a folk rock supergroup made up of American singer-songwriters David Crosby and Stephen Stills and English singer-songwriter Graham Nash. They were known as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY) when joined by Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young, who was an occasional fourth member.

They were noted for their intricate vocal harmonies, often tumultuous interpersonal relationships, political activism, and lasting influence on US music and culture. Crosby, Stills & Nash were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and all three members were also inducted for their work in other groups (Crosby for the Byrds, Stills for Buffalo Springfield and Nash for the Hollies). Neil Young has also been inducted as a solo artist and as a member of Buffalo Springfield.

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