Doug Ingle, singer and organist of Iron Butterfly, dies at the age of 78

Doug Ingle, founding singer and organist of the late 1960s hard rock band Iron Butterfly and co-writer of the group’s hit “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” has died at the age of 78.

The singer’s son, Doug Ingle Jr., confirmed his father’s death on social media (via Blabbermouth): “It is with a heavy heart and great sadness that I announce the passing of my father, Doug Ingle. Dad passed away peacefully on (Friday) evening (May 24) surrounded by his family.” No cause of death was given.

Ingle was the last surviving member of Iron Butterfly’s “classic”, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida-Era: 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.

Of the four musicians in In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida Ingle was the only founding member of Iron Butterfly in San Diego in 1966. After several line-up changes, Iron Butterfly released the band’s debut album with Ingle and Bushy. Difficult in 1968; soon after its release, the other three members left the band 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”.

Release less than six months after Difficult and the change of the line-up, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is said to have sold 30 million copies worldwide, and a three-minute version of the title song – the title of which was based on Bushy’s mishearing of “In the Garden of Eden” – became a top-five hit on the Hot 100 and a classic rock classic.

“‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ was written as a slow country ballad, about a minute and a half long,” Bushy told It’s Psychedelic Baby magazine in 2020. “I came home late one night and Doug (Ingle) had drunk a whole liter of Red Mountain wine. I asked him what he had been doing while he was playing a slow ballad on his vox keyboard. It was hard to understand him because he was so drunk… so I wrote it on a napkin exactly how it sounded to me phonetically: ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.’ It was actually supposed to be ‘In the Garden of Eden.'”

The classic line-up quickly tried to capitalize on the success with 1969 ballwhich was mainly written by Ingle, but the album did not produce any hit singles. The singer stayed with Iron Butterfly for one more studio album, 1970’s metamorphosisbefore the band broke up in 1971, partly due to debts the band had accumulated through mismanagement.

When Bushy and Brann reunited Iron Butterfly in 1975, Ingle was not part of it, but he performed with some of the countless versions of Iron Butterfly that toured over the following decades, most recently in 1999.