band and their management convinced Lake to stay, and he went on to contribute to the track and most of the other songs on the album including the lyrics, for which he used the artwork as inspiration. Although Lake thought the opening was "too demonstrative" for the sake of being clever, he did not want to split the group over such an issue and got into the album as recording went on. The band could only work out "Tarkus" during the January 1971 studio sessions, so they booked further time at Adivsion in February to work on side two, for which they had no material prepared. Songs Side one Side one is occupied by the 20-minute title track which has seven sections. It was written by Emerson, with Lake credited for "Battlefield" and contributions to "Stones of Years" and "Mass". It is a conceptual piece in which its narrative remains ambiguous and open to interpretation, but the artwork depicts the Tarkus character in the form of an armadillo tank hybrid who is born and loses a fight with a manticore, which concludes with the appearance of an aquatic version of Tarkus named Aquatarkus. Lake said the song is about "the futility of conflict, expressed in this context in terms of soldiers and war — but it's broader than that. The words are about revolution, the revolution that's gone, that has happened. Where has it got anybody? Nowhere." He added that the songs concern "the hypocrisy of it all" and the closing march "a joke". Emerson wrote the first musical ideas for "Tarkus" from a 10/8 rhythm that Palmer had played on his practice drum pad backstage at a gig. He composed the entire piece in six days on his upright piano at his London apartment, and wrote the score on manuscript. After the band rehearsed it for six days, they put it to tape; Emerson said once Lake and Palmer had mastered the 5/4 and 10/8 rhythms, "everything else flowed." Emerson transposed "a fleeting run of one bar" from the Allegro of Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 to bridge a transition between two parts of "Eruption". The section is played in a 5/4 time signature which was a "frustrating" meter for Lake to play. Emerson wanted the "Aquatarkus" section to have a sound that resembled a snorkel tube as he was into scuba diving at the time, so he