Steve Winwood had already had hits with the Spencer Davis Group and with Traffic's first album, but this title track from the group's follow-up is a career highlight, even though it wasn't even released as a single. The idea for the song first came about about when drummer Jim Capaldi was sketching out ideas for an album cover for the first album that had a Stature of Liberty-like figure and a short poem he composed, but he lost interest. The band found the poem and took over from there. "Jim flaked out and Chris [Wood] and I stayed up all night and we got the thing together," Steve Winwood said.