My first experience, like many of my generation, of Iron Butterfly is from the animated TV show The Simpsons. It was an episode that started with Bart, the troublemaking son in the family, changing the hymn for Sunday service to the song In the Garden of Eden or as it was released In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidda (the original was supposed to be called that but the singer was too drunk to remember the title when they recorded it) The whole town sing the whole 17 minutes before reverend Lovejoy realizes ‘this is Rock and/or Roll’ and finds out the 10-year-old sets up the prank and he ends up selling his soul for $10.
Unfortunately, unless you a die-hard fan of Iron Butterfly the late 1960s hit is the only song you know, it was the same for me until researching this article. The fact is that the band continued well into the 1970s. The only time they stopped was a hiatus from 1972 to 1974 and a member of the reformation of the band is who we are going to talk about today. Although the bass player Philip Taylor Kramer wasn’t with Iron Butterfly during their heyday, his story and demise is interesting. This week the Beat Marches On to 29th May 1999 when Philip Taylor Kramer’s remains are found.
As mentioned before Kramer’s involvement with Iron Butterfly was beyond its peak but was still significant. When the band reformed in 1974, not all original members wanted to be a part of it. Only guitarist Erik Brann and drummer Ron Bushy wanted to come back, so they had to find replacements for bass and keyboards. Bushy had already befriended Philip Taylor Kramer during the hiatus and asked him to join the group. Brann had a friend who could play keyboards called Howard Reitzes who agreed to join.
While in the band Kramer recorded two albums both released in 1975, ‘Scorching Beauty’ and ‘Sun and Steel’. They are not dubbed classics by the critics, mainly due to the band still stuck in the psychedelic phase of the late 1960s rather than the arena rock of the mid-1970s. The band toured for two years after the albums were released, but after they finished touring Kramer and Bushy left due to management problems.
The two stayed together in bands throughout the rest of the 1970s but in 1980 Kramer decided to go back to college and this is where the story gets interesting.
After graduating college and achieving a degree in Aerospace Engineering. Kramer spent the 1980s working for the Ministry of Defence (MOD) on the MX missile system. Then in 1990, he co-formed the company, Total Multimedia, (with Randy Jackson, brother of Michael) which pioneered video compression technology. The quick success of the first company led to the formation of a second company, Soft Video. By this point, he dropped his first name and went by Taylor Kramer
By the end of 1994 however, the companies weren’t doing so well. Kramer had to file for bankruptcy with both companies. The companies were reorganised and left him out. He was unemployed at home, and this is when he started to become erratic.
Kramer’s attitude would change at a moment’s notice. He could be sullen one minute and the next be exuberant. Taylor became spiritual even though he had never shown this before. Declaring statements of how God was the perfect scientist and how you need to be centred on family and friends when they visit.
Not much is known about the time between when Taylor Kramer disappeared and the remains were found. We know on February 12th, 1995, he was supposed to pick up his associate Greg Martini and his wife from LAX airport, he waited at the airport for around 25-30 mins and then left. This was strange as the flight the pair was on was landing at the airport just as he left.
While on the road Kramer made a series of phone calls to friends and family. He called his wife first and told her that he had to leave, then he phoned his close friend Bushy and said ‘I love you more than life itself’ He called his wife back and said ‘Whatever happens, I’ll be with you’
At around midnight Kramer called 911. He said that he wanted to kill himself and that OJ Simpson, who was midway through his infamous murder trial, was innocent. Reports from family at the time said the tech whizz was working on video evidence for the defence, which is why it’s mentioned. This is the last known interaction with anyone Kramer had.
In the two weeks leading up to his disappearance, Kramer’s family said that he was working non-stop. He was barely sleeping, working on something just called ‘the Equation’ which was a supposed way to transfer data faster than the speed of light. If the code was cracked it meant that Kramer had remastered the laws of physics.
The police searched the area around where Kramer was last seen but to no avail. The story was even aired on the cult series ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ and ‘America’s Most Wanted’ There were numerous sightings over the years the most significant being in a pawn shop in Los Angeles, but they were all loose ends.
The police stopped searching and put the case on the back burner until any new evidence came to light. The family hired private investigators to search for Kramer but nothing new was found. By all those involved, although a workaholic Taylor was a dedicated family man, was friendly with all the neighbours and didn’t have any known enemies.
Then four years later, on the fateful day of the 29th May 1999, some hikers found a wrecked green mini-van, the car that Kramer took off in. The car looked like it had fallen off a nearby cliff, and inside was what was left of Philip Taylor Kramer. Even though the head was separated from the torso the autopsy said it was probable suicide and blunt forced trauma is the likeliest cause of death.
The family didn’t agree with the suicide decision. They always knew Kramer as someone who was full of life and didn’t ever show any suicidal tendencies. His father, Ray, said in an interview that if Taylor called him about committing suicide that meant someone was after him. If he had developed the technology, he was working on then there would be a lot of companies/countries trying to get their hands on it.
Of course, the conspiracy theorists loved the story. They started conducting their own stories such as the US government taking him out, or a rival authority, he was abducted by Aliens. A physic proposed that he was with a native tribe that praised him like a god or, the most absurd one his consciousness was absorbed into a computer.
One working theory is that the excesses of his time in Iron Butterfly caught up with him. There isn’t any proof of this but being in a psychedelic band, a reputation does come with the lifestyle. He certainly wouldn’t be the first member of a band to lose his mind due to drugs.
At the time of writing the case is still open, the coroner couldn’t determine any confirmation of the cause of death. Unfortunately, it’s only one person who knows what happened that night Philip Taylor Kramer died and that is the victim himself. Everything else is speculation and if we ever find out what happened on this fateful night then at the very least his family and friends get some closure.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for six years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
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The websites used for research were:
The Bizarre Disappearance and Strange Death of Philip Taylor Kramer (mysteriousuniverse.org)
The Mysterious Death of Iron Butterfly’s Philip Taylor Kramer (ultimateclassicrock.com)
Also, podcasts by Ash Supernatural and a Lil’ Spooky Podcasts on the subject are available on YouTube and Podcatchers.
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