Songfacts®:

• 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 fountain is located near the ancient Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, and it is now a tourist attraction located in present-day Bodrum, Turkey. Although excellent to drink, in classical times, it was thought to have the effect of making men effeminate and soft.
  
  According to Ovid's Metamorphoses, a naiad nymph called Salmacis fell in love with Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite. When he bathed in her fountain, she embraced him and prayed to the gods to be united with him forever. The gods heard her prayer and merged their bodies together, transforming Hermaphroditus into an androgynous being. Hermaphroditus then cursed the Salmacis fountain, so that any man who drank or bathed in its water would also become androgynous.