I think Greg Lake was somewhat of an enigmatic lyricist. He quite often wove disparate and sometimes abstract imagery into a song to create or augment a feeling. I remember when he was asked about 'Closer to Believing' in an interview and the answer he gave was that some songs take so long to write the actual meaning changes over the course of its writing. Greg quite often wrote lyrics with an uncredited co-author (his most regular being Peter Sinfield - both credited and uncredited) or would slightly re-write a collaborator's lyrics in order to get a co-author credit. I'm not disparaging Greg through these comments - plenty of songwriters do it (Paul Simon for one) - but I'm trying to illustrate that it may not have been as simple as what inspired Greg to write this song, but there may have been a few influences.
I think Greg Lake was somewhat of an enigmatic lyricist. He quite often wove disparate and sometimes abstract imagery into a song to create or augment a feeling. I remember when he was asked about 'Closer to Believing' in an interview and the answer he gave was that some songs take so long to write the actual meaning changes over the course of its writing. Greg quite often wrote lyrics with an uncredited co-author (his most regular being Peter Sinfield - both credited and uncredited) or would slightly re-write a collaborator's lyrics in order to get a co-author credit. I'm not disparaging Greg through these comments - plenty of songwriters do it (Paul Simon for one) - but I'm trying to illustrate that it may not have been as simple as what inspired Greg to write this song, but there may have been a few influences.