Michael Heatley: Tony Banks called a song like The Fountain of Salmacis an odyssey rather than a song, a story that went from A to B. Live, people weren’t necessarily sure where it was going to go and people weren’t necessarily sure where it ended up, as it could be a little different each night when they were playing it on stage. It’s interesting; it is a song that Tony Tyler of the New York Express honed in on because he called it ‘the kind of drama that is international’. ◊
THE COVER
The album’s sleeve was designed and illustrated by Paul Whitehead who had also designed the cover for Trespass and the band’s next album, Foxtrot. The cover depicts characters and scenes based on The Musical Box and Coxhill, the manor house with a croquet lawn, itself based on the Victorian home Gabriel grew up in. When the group originally saw Whitehead’s painting, they said it didn’t look old enough, so he varnished it with honey which made it look like it was an antique from the Nineteenth Century. When originally released, the cover shocked some people, because of the severed heads pictured on it. 23
