“Time Is on My Side” is a song written by Jerry Ragovoy (using the pseudonym “Norman Meade”). First recorded by Danish-American jazz trombonist Kai Winding and his orchestra in 1963. Session arranger Garry Sherman contacted friend and colleague Jerry Ragovoy, who wrote the title, melody and chorus. The session singers were Dee Dee Warwick, Dionne Warwick and Cissy Houston sang “time is on my side – you’ll come running back” in a gospel style over Winding’s trombone melody. Produced by Creed Taylor and engineered by Phil Ramone, the recording was released on the Verve label in October 1963. It received some radio coverage but did not chart.
In April 1964, Irma Thomas recorded an R&B cover of the song as the B-side for the single “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)”, released on Imperial Records. H.B. Barnum, the session director, suggested the song, and session singer Jimmy Norman wrote the lyrics during the recording. Thomas monologues during the song that her ex-lover, not she, will suffer for his bad behavior. Produced by Eddie Ray, Thomas’ version of “Time Is on My Side” provided the inspiration for the title of her 1996 greatest hits release Time Is on My Side.
Thomas’ song came to The Rolling Stones’ attention as they often bought U.S.-imported music from Soho shops. They first recorded the song in June 1964, within days of hearing it, at London’s Regent Sound studios. They used a briefer organ-only intro and guitars in place of horns to create a rock anthem song, with vocalist Mick Jagger imitating Thomas’ ad-libs. A second arrangement (more tightly arranged and featuring guitar in the intro), recorded in Chicago’s Chess studio in November 1964, was released in the UK in January 1965, on The Rolling Stones No. 2. This later rendition is the one that receives the most airplay and appears on most “best of” compilations. Both versions incorporate elements of Irma Thomas’s recording, including spoken-word interjections in the chorus, a monologue in the middle of the song, and distinctive lead guitar. The single peaked at No. 6 on the US Billboard to become the Rolling Stones’ first top ten hit in the US.
The song was part of the British Invasion, in which English covers of black American songs received more U.S. radio attention than the original. Thomas refused to sing her version after the Rolling Stones’ recording for multiple decades, telling interviewers that the band had not acknowledged her despite given support act slots to other singers like Tina Turner. In 1992, she began performing it again following a TV show appearance in which the host Bonnie Raitt introduced her as the original singer. In May 2024, during the Rolling Stones’ performance at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Jagger and Thomas performed the song as a duet, which was the first time the Rolling Stones had performed the song live since 1998.
“Time Is on My Side” has since been covered by artists such as Blondie, Wilson Pickett, the Pretty Things, Patti Smith, and the Moody Blues (in 1965 and on the 1985 re-release of The Magnificent Moodies). Pop singer and pianist Vanessa Carlton recorded a version for a Time Warner digital video recorders commercial, which also served as promotion for her second album, Harmonium (2004), and received heavy rotation on US television during early 2005. The newspaper Metroland reviewed her take on the song negatively, and wrote, “we tend to think time is most definitely not on her side — how else to explain the near-universal apathy to the release of her second album, Harmonium?” Harmonium was not re-issued to include the song.
