Review: Iron Butterfly, “Fillmore East 1968”

Where were you 44 years ago today?  If you happened to be passing by 105 Second Avenue in New York City’s East Village, you would likely have seen a fantastic group of names displayed on the marquee at Bill Graham’s Fillmore East.  On Friday and Saturday, April 26 and 27, 1968, Iron Butterfly shared an explosive bill with Traffic and Blue Cheer.  The Fillmore East itself is now just a memory, of course.  Its exterior and entrance now welcomes you to a bank, and the storied auditorium has been demolished.  But the music recorded at the venue lives on.  Artists as diverse as The Allman Brothers Band, Laura Nyro, Miles Davis and The Mothers of Invention have all released live albums from the Fillmore East.  Recently, Rhino Handmade unveiled another live set from the legendary New York spot with Iron Butterfly’s Fillmore East 1968 (RHM2 526745, 2011).

The new release is culled from the band’s four sets on those two April evenings, three of which are presented in full.  (The Friday late show is incomplete due to tapes of two songs being unusable.)  “A gentleman by the name of Jimi Hendrix will be joining us on Friday night” is the first thing you hear from the Fillmore’s announcer before he introduces Iron Butterfly to the eerie strains of an organ.  We’ll hear variations on this pre-show announcement more than once over these two discs; there’s a definite feeling of déjà vu as the band runs through a tight set four times with some variations in each set.

The sets focus mainly on material from Iron Butterfly’s first album Heavy, and predate the official commercial release of the band’s most famous song, the sprawling “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”  In fact, it hadn’t been recorded yet at the time of these concerts, so there’s no recognition applause for the song.  One wonders, what did the audiences make of the epic song, hearing it for the first time?  Two versions of it are on Fillmore East, the band having saved it for the late shows.  One workout runs 17 minutes, similar to the running time of the studio original; the other take is a comparatively brisk 15 minutes!   Still perhaps the the apotheosis of psychedelic hard-rock excess, “In-A-Gadda” is introduced in the late Saturday set with “This is called ‘In Our Gadda Da Vida…which doesn’t mean a damn thing!”   In addition to the title track, two more songs were previewed from the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida album (“My Mirage,” “Are You Happy”).  “Her Favorite Style,” played at Saturday’s late show, wouldn’t arrive on vinyl until 1969’s Ball.

Iron Butterfly can boast one of the most frequently altered line-ups in rock history, with over 50 line-ups having played under the band’s name over the years.  Three of the group’s original five members departed after studio debut Heavy, so Fillmore East offers a chance to hear new members Lee Dorman (bass) and Erik Brann (guitar) joining Doug Ingle (organ/lead vocals) and Ron Bushy (drums) on songs from that album.  Though they hadn’t been playing together for very long, these four members were attuned to each other intimately.  This album makes for a stronger overall collection than the somewhat-maligned 1970 Live album from this same quartet (on which “In-A-Gadda” took up the entire second side!) recorded over a year later, in May 1969.

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