Despite missing Woodstock, the group was a regular fixture at other big pop festivals of the late sixties, including Newport Pop Festival, Miami Pop Festival, Denver Pop Festival, Atlantic City Pop Festival and New Orleans Pop Festival.
The next album, Ball (January 1969), reached number three on the charts and went gold, but more lineup changes followed, as Erik Brann departed after a final show with the band in San Diego on December 15, 1969, frustrated by the band's unwillingness to move in a harder rock direction.
In August 1970, with Brann gone, Iron Butterfly released their fourth studio album, Metamorphosis, with two new members, guitarist/vocalist Mike Pinera (whose Blues Image had opened for the Butterfly's Vida tour) and guitarist Larry "Rhino" Reinhardt (from the Allman Brothers Band forerunner Second Coming). Both Pinera and Rhino, who joined after Brann departed, had already been secretly rehearsing with the Butterfly from September 1969 on after Brann had voiced his objections in continuing. The album managed to get into the top 20.
But Doug Ingle, not totally on board with the new guitar-oriented blues and soul direction of the music and wanting to get off the road, announced his intention to leave the group while they were on tour with Yes in Europe in January/February 1971. Without an organist for the first time in their history, the remaining four members (with Bushy eventually being replaced on the record by a session drummer, at the producer's prompting) cut the 45 rpm single, "Silly Sally". Putting forth a horn-based sound more characteristic of groups like Blood Sweat and Tears, the single failed to chart and proved to be their last recording (before their mid-70s reformation).
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