In The Garden Of Eden (1968)

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is a psych anthem from Iron Butterfly, more or less bridging the gap between psych rock and heavy metal. Some would say it's the best song from Iron Butterfly, ever, myself included. But what makes it unique in my eyes is the number of different edits that were released over the years. 

It's no secret that the song took up an entire side of their album of the same name, since one side of a 12" LP will hold about 18 minutes of music. Being a little more than 17 minutes long, it had to be cut down in order to get it out to record stations and be sold as a single. It was reduced to 2 minutes and 52 seconds. Yes, 2:53 out of 17:05. This became the initial standard 7" 45 and was released worldwide. Somewhere along the way, France, Germany, and the Netherlands got fed up and decided to add 17 seconds of music back in, releasing a 3:10 version. Take that, America! But then the European countries declared war on on each other. A 4:14 version was released by the Netherlands, a full 1 minute and 4 seconds, and soon this became standard across the continent. Then came the 4:50 vocal only version (36 seconds), I think from Germany, but I could be wrong, and then France followed with instrumental only version at 5:12 (an additional 22). I imagine it was a recording engineer who figured that a 45 could record slightly more than 4 and a half minutes of music, depending on things like bass, etc., and they decided to stretch the vinyl to the limit. Finally, the voice of reason spoke, and Spain released a Super 45 of the entire song. It was a 12" recording at 45 rpm, split in two parts, 8:53 on side 1, and 8:12 on side 2 (restoring a total of 11 minutes and 3 seconds). You know, because with a 12" record at 45 rpm, you can only squeeze about 12 minutes per side and it doesn't make any sense to record it in 33 and a third.  Did I mention the 19 minute live version? Just enjoy the damn song.