Hot R.S. – Forbidden Fruit - The South African Rock Encyclopedia

The South African Rock Encyclopedia > Rock Legends > 1970s / 1980s / 2000s > Hot R.S. > Discography > Hot R.S. – Forbidden Fruit

Tracks

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (Act I) (Doug Ingle) (6:45)
The Garden of Eden (Denise Norwood) (4:57)
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (Act II) (Doug Ingle) (3:09)
Temptation (A. Freed/N.H. Brown) (6:22)
Adam’s Apple (K. Kruger) (9:08)
Snake Dance (K. Kruger) (5:22)

Produced by Kevin Kruger
Arranged by Dan Hill & Kevin Kruger
Engineer – Hennie Hartmann
Recorded and Mixed at RPM Studios

Spotify Errors

Track 1 on Spotify is listed as ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (Act I)’ though it is actually the complete ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ suite including ‘The Garden Of Eden’. Track 2, listed as ‘The Garden Of Eden’, is actually ‘Snake Dance’. This track is repeated again as track 5. I have created my own playlist for better listening and less confusion.
Brian Currin, December 2024

Release information

LP: 10 April 1978, RPM, RPM 1125
CD: 1997, Gallo, CDRED 605 J (as Forbidden Fruit and Other Delights and including Heads Or Tails)

Comments

“In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” is a cover of Iron Butterfly‘s classic metal anthem from 1968, blended with “Garden Of Eden” which was originally a US#12 for Joe Valino in 1956 and a UK#1 hit for Frankie Vaughan in 1957.

The band Disco Circus released their disco version of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” in 1978, blended with a different song titled “Garden Of Eden”. This one was composed by Keith Forsey and Mats Bjoerklund.

Disco Circus – In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida / Garden Of Eden

For the next album I suggested “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” by Iron Butterfly as the main track, and it became a play on “In the garden of Eden”. The cover of this album became the talking point because of the nudity. The male model is Jon Jon Park son of the famous body builder Reg Park who was a mentor to the now famous Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger. The album was also released all over the world but I don’t think it did anywhere near as well as House Of The Rising Sun.
Robin Mann, ex-RPM, from Marq Vas’s Southern African Music Collectibles

The initial sleeve featuring a naked couple was banned from shelves, replaced by a plain black sleeve. By then the original sleeve was “hot property” and had literally been flying off the shelves!
Marq Vas, Marq Vas’s Southern African Music Collectibles

On the cassette version, to create sides of equal length, “Snake Dance” was added to the end of Side 1. It was repeated at the end of Side 2 and titled “Snake Dance (Reprise)”.
Brian Currin

Hot R.S - Forbidden Fruit (Cassette, South Africa) Detail — *Hot R.S – Forbidden Fruit (Cassette, South Africa) Detail*

Review

by John Samson, June 2001

Listening to the disco music coming out of South Africa, one thing that immediately stands out is how it rocks. International disco classics tended to be somewhat lightweight, relying on the repetitive disco beat for character (e.g. ‘I Feel Love’ by Donna Summer) or were funk laden floor stompers like Hot Chocolate’s ‘You Sexy Thing’. Not that there was anything wrong with this. They are rightfully classics, they just don’t rock.

Like their contemporaries Buffalo, Hot R.S. created some memorable floorfillers with disco covers of rock classics. In the case of ‘Forbidden Fruit’, the centrepiece is a cover of Iron Butterfly’s 1968 classic ‘In a Gadda Da Vida’, a song that would rock even if Carike Keuzenkamp were to sing it (…then again, maybe not). Hot R.S.’s version fairly pounds along at a pace more furious than the original, with added Russian Cossack type chanting of “Hey!”, a stirring guitar contribution and an interlude for a bit of serious drum banging. This was destined to be a classic cover.

Side 1 of the album is essentially one long megamix, starting with ‘In a gadda…’ merging into ‘The Garden of Eden’ and flowing back into Act II of ‘In a gadda…’. It’s a practically seamless piece, although the middle track does tend to conform more to the international standards of disco music with a strong female vocal, standard disco beat and some brassy bits for good measure.

The opening track on side 2, ‘Temptation’, lives up to the expectations of the rather naughty cover featuring a naked man & woman sitting ‘inside’ an apple. The male vocals are somewhat seedy while the breathy female French vocals includes some heavy breathing that doesn’t quite rival Meg Ryan’s ‘When Harry met Sally’ faking, but is more convincing than the average German porn film.

The other two tracks on this side conform more to the normal rules of disco with ‘Adam’s Apple’ being a brassy, sassy somewhat funky number and ‘Snake Dance’ being pretty straightforward disco complete with girly ‘Na na na’ chorus backing the main strong male vocal.

All in all it is surely one of the greatest South African disco albums, for the most part rocking, but leaving space for some conventional vanilla disco tunes (Hagen-Dazs vanilla mind you).