Excerpt from MB autobiography:

 "The prospect of working in a TV studio gave rise to the idea that the timing was right for me to seize the opportunity to make the new piece and my next solo album one and the same, so that the TV transmission would be a perfect publicity moment for the album, and vice versa. CBS would release the album. CBS and the ABC thought it was a great idea and I came up with a whole story about a futuristic world where love had long since been genetically eradicated, and our hero (me) was a genetic throwback who falls in love with a girl and is sent to an emotional decontamination centre called Zero Zero.

 These ideas were conveyed to the ABC and CBS by telex from midway between Hawaii and Fiji. It was all agreed.  I began the composition, mapping out the duration and drawing in the number of sections so that I had a visual plan of the story. When I wasn’t composing, I was sketching and designing the set, costumes and some animated sequences for the show.

 I sat at my piano in the music saloon (bolted, as it was, to the bulkhead so as not to be thrown around in heavy weather) and got on with writing the score, to be recorded on arrival. We were making our Pacific crossing over a period of seven weeks (plus a two week stop-off in Fiji). That gave me what I most need when I write – a deadline. It gave me the excitement of knowing my piece would be recorded by one of the world’s great Symphony Orchestras in only a few weeks’ time. I would have to get it finished in time."