Only Time Will Tell

Ross promised himself as a songwriter to keep it clean and to avoid
being too political.  This is as close to political as he gets.  My
take on the song is that it's not a "tree hugger" song in any real
sense.  The song doesn't tell you how to live so much as it lets you
overhear a conversation between a wise old shaman and a younger brave.

The shaman is teaching the youngster how to live in harmony with
Nature, and wonders if everything will be as beautiful for generations
yet to come.  It's a poignant look at the precarious state of our
natural wonders, true to the tradition that Man is irrevocably
connected to Nature.

One particular moment stands out for me, with regard to this song.
Early one morning I was travelling to Santa Fe, and Only Time Will
Tell came on as I entered the San Felipe Indian reservation just north
of Algodones, NM.  I had always agreed on principle that nature is a
wondrous thing, worth preserving, but hearing Only Time Will Tell
while gazing at the breathtaking New Mexico landscape really drove the
point home.

This is the first song Ross and I recorded together, and it was done
very differently from the way we would later work.  Our routine came
to be that he would play the song free-form, and we would build the
arrangement around it.  With this song, though, I was out to win
Ross's confidence as a producer.  I had no idea if he would even allow
me to record his stuff.  So I put together a sequence with drums and
synth parts, then added a bass track, so all he would have to do is
sing and play to complete the mix.  I really wanted to "gift wrap" the
whole process, to sell him on the idea.  He loved it, and we even
ended up keeping the original sequence and bass track.

Didja notice the way the bass plays off of Ross's playing rhythmically
throughout the song, particularly at the start of the chorus?  Notice
also the subliminal electric guitar behind the second chorus.  Okay,
so it's not that subtle but it's certainly not right up front.  I was
going for a guitar sound not unlike the lead guitar in The Ballad of
the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, by Gordon Lightfoot.