Time Waits For No One

When I was a kid I thought that this song was just a cliche, with the constant refrain of the chorus: time waits for no man, rolling through my head. I never gave it much thought or appreciation until I began listening to the stones religously again. Wow. What a mistake to state the obvious.

Star crossed in pleasure the stream flows on by. As were sated in leisure, we watch it fly. Wow. F+ing wow. I can almost see someone younger not able to truly appreciate or grasp time or the good things in life, that when we are in our youth we're just taking it all for granted and watching it go by like the stream, not realizing that we are in the stream and that it has a beginning and an end.

But the best line:

Men, they build towers to their passing yes, to their fame everlasting. Here he comes chopping and reaping, hear him laugh at their cheating.

I see the egyptian pyramids and greek acropolis and hear the god of time's blade cutting it all down bit by bit as he is laughing. Laughing at how they tried to cheat him, how they tried to cheat time. For isn't time just a different shade of life and death?

this song is so much more than just the chorus. I am almost convinced it was written purposefully with so many choruses to lull the casual listener, and hide the deeper meaning. Its brilliant, and nothing like the tripe on the radio today. Songs about bling and cars and women, all about blowing up and how great they are... don't you hear that? Here he comes chopping and reaping, laughing at their cheating!!!

A lyric at the height of Jagger's creativity, and one of the strongest and most haunting moments in the Stones' work. The beautiful guitar was the inspiration of Mick Taylor, who actually left the band after it would not let him be included as a co-songwriter with Jagger-Richards for having so marked the song in all its specialness as a result of his guitar contributions. This is likely why it is never played live - only Mick Taylor can play it. This is a song about all the things that don't last - our beauty, our homes that meant to much to us while we lived in them, the fame so many work hard to achieve, and even each and every passing moment. All we really have is each other and our moments to relish the miracle of creation: "hours are like diamonds" if we would only realize this wealth in each passing moment and not squander this treasure as we seek trivial things of passing, relative, but not inherent or lasting value. In my view the greatest song of the Stones, and one of the greatest songs in rock.

do the best you can with the time you're given. you don't know when you're gonna bite the big one!!

I always thought that Mick sang "I can tear down a building, or destroy a woman's face..." This made me really overanalyze the entire song and this is the first time i've ever looked up the lyrics so i am somewhat thankful it's not about what I interpreted it to be about

Why wasn't it played live? Because it's actually Mick Taylor's masterpiece to which he received little credit - and rumor has it, part of the reason he left the band.

Coming out of "Rocky Mountain High," I see that the first sentence here is a shooting star. Sated in leisure, we wast time, when hours are like diamonds. Cat Stevens: "Lets all start livin' for the one that's going to last." "All you money won'[t another minute buy," (Kansas). Incidentally, what a joke to think ill of Jaggar /Richards: look what fun he makes even of cheating, the injustices humans do upon the argument that one must. Drink in your summer, gather your corn, the dreams of the night will vanish by dawn, "indeed we are such stuff as dreams are made on." And fame? The very ground of fame in our generations we seek to benefit and save by our legacy, even as the Stones do for us here, will be rolled up like a scroll! Indeed, and "Leave not a rack behind." But "hours are like diamonds." We cannot but underestimate the value of the gift of the fact that we are here at all to begin. Hence, loss for which some are angry at God, is just less of the gift we never appreciated, as when our love was there.

read that they never played this live, and that's too bad; damn fine song.

After all the time that past it could be nice to listen to it live, with Mick Taylor