The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

That was back when people gave intricate music a chance.  I don't want to get into fan wars about today's music, but one thing is undeniably the case......it's structurally simple.  Dumbly so.  

Not quite a decade after Chuck's hit, Toto would tack an instrumental jazz tune, Don't Stop Me Now, on to their Fahrenheit album.  Miles Davis happened to be down the hall in another studio, and when taking a break, he wandered into the next studio to see what was happening, as musicians tend to do.  From the engineering room he heard them running down the song and walked in and told them he felt like he could improv a cool trumpet line over it that would sound good.  Realizing that when Miles Davis walks up to you and asks to appear on your song, the only reasonable response is "Yes sir," they proceeded to record it and let him do his thing, and that's what you hear.  I want to say it was nominated for a Grammy for jazz recording, but it didn't win.  Point being, people now probably wouldn't accept a rock/pop band putting a jazz number on their album, and if they did, it wouldn't have any traction.  

In a gadda da vida

Great story behind this tune

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 vocalist Doug Ingle was slurring the lyrics while drunk. The mysterious title is one of the great legends in rock. You might think it has a deep, mystical meaning, but it's really a translation error. 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.

When he wrote the song, Doug Ingle didn't intend for it to be over 17 minutes long, but that's how it played out when the band recorded it at what they thought was merely a soundcheck to test levels for engineer Don Casale while they waited for producer Jim Hilton to arrive. Casale, though, kept tape rolling, and the band got in a groove. After the rehearsal was completed they agreed that the performance - filled with mistakes but also with raw energy - was of sufficient quality that another take wasn't needed.

This was the first hit song that could be classified as "heavy metal." The phrase was introduced that year in the Steppenwolf song "Born To Be Wild." Iron Butterfly would have performed this at Woodstock, but they didn't make it because they were stuck at the airport.The band's original guitar player quit before this was recorded. He was replaced by Eric Braun, who had only played the guitar for three months.

And now ya know the rest of the story