Wealth & Money Quote by Greg Lake

Lake’s advice sounds like a backstage exhale after a tense soundcheck: stop performing “seriousness” and remember why you picked up an instrument in the first place. Coming from a prog-rock figure whose career sat at the crossroads of virtuosity, spectacle, and big industry stakes, the line “to thy own self be true” isn’t a lofty Shakespearean borrow so much as a practical survival tactic. In a world where your identity can get negotiated by labels, critics, bandmates, and the market, authenticity becomes less a vibe and more a boundary.

The subtext is a quiet indictment of how money distorts art’s emotional economy. Lake isn’t pretending commerce is irrelevant; he’s pointing to the way it colonizes judgment. When cash enters, everything hardens: risks start looking like liabilities, joy starts looking like inefficiency, and musicians begin treating their own instincts like a focus group. His small grammatical stumble (“To many people take it to seriously”) even reinforces the point: this isn’t polished philosophy, it’s lived irritation with an industry that sells polish.

“Relax; music is fun” lands like a corrective to the myth that seriousness equals quality. Lake’s intent isn’t anti-ambition; it’s anti-miserable. He’s arguing that play is not the opposite of craft but the engine of it, and that the most “professional” move might be protecting the part of yourself that can still be thrilled by sound, not just paid by it.