Steve Hackett - The Fountain of Salmacis (Live at The Royal Albert Hall)

Steve Hackett explained how this song came about: “We were rehearsing one night about six months after I joined. Tony (Banks) started playing something on his own, which he said was part of a previous number that they’d done. He incorporated the mellotron into the song and I started putting a harp-like effect on to it, which was a very subtle way of playing guitar, but it gave it spark. The whole thing developed into The Fountain Of Salmacis.“’ “The guitar solo at the end was, I think, a breakthrough at the time,“ he continued. “Previously we’d had both chords that sounded very orchestral, which I loved; but suddenly there was a solo over the top of that.“ The Mellotron Mark II played by Banks on this song had been purchased by the band from King Crimson. Salmacis was a fountain, located near the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. In classical times, it had: “the slanderous repute, for what reason I do not know, of making effeminate all who drink from it. It seems that the effeminacy of man is laid to the charge of the air or of the water; yet it is not these, but rather riches and wanton living, that are the cause of effeminacy.“