3x404 on the older links.

Fantasy & fable, studio work, no poetry.

Magic Carpet Ride: The Autobiography of John Kay and Steppenwolf has a chapter on the song, the gist of which can be found here:

With royalties from Steppenwolf's first album, lead singer John Kay bought one of these sweet sound systems. When they were working on their second album, bass player Rushton Moreve came up with a groove for a new song and inserted the line "I like my job, I like my baby" as a placeholder. Kay took the demo home to work on the lyrics. In a Songfacts interview with Kay, he explained what happened next:

“I popped the cassette into the player, and out of these rather large speakers came this track. And what popped into my head was, 'I like to dream... right between the sound machine.' The 'sound machine' being that stereo system. I wrote the lyrics and melody in 20 minutes, went and overdubbed the vocal, and then we did some more work on the track with instrument overdubs and the like, and 'Magic Carpet Ride' evolved from that.”

As the book & blog go on to explain, magic carpets and lamps are taken from that Western pop culture fantasy staple Arabian Nights.