Time to Kill (song)

"Tine to Kill"
German single cover
Single by The Band
from the album Stage Fright
B-side	"The Shape I'm In"
Released	October 1970
Format	45'
Recorded	May to June 1970 Bearsville Studios
Genre	Roots rock
Label	Capitol
Songwriter(s)	Robbie Robertson
Producer(s)	The Band

"Time to Kill" is a song written by Robbie Robertson that was first released by the Band on their 1970 album Stage Fright. It was also released as a single off the album, backed with the more famous "The Shape I'm In" and although it failed to reach the Top 40 in the United States it peaked at #13 in the Netherlands. It has also been featured on several Band compilation and live albums.

On the surface, the lyrics of "Time to Kill" extoll the joy of country life, which the Band members had enjoyed prior to becoming famous. Music critic Barney Hoskyns states that the song sounds like a "celebration of the 'mountain hideaway' to which they'd at last returned," and the lyrics explicitly reference the town Catskill in the Catskill Mountains, near where the Band recorded The Basement Tapes with Bob Dylan. The music is also happy and upbeat. Steve Millward described the song as "a catchy medium-pacer."Rolling Stone critic John Burks describes the music as having an old fashioned sound that a Kentucky moonshiner may have hummed to himself in the 1890s. Burks also describes Robertson's guitar intro to the song as sounding like 1956 rock 'n' roll and also sounding like "like tier of sound in motion."The Band FAQ author Peter Asron notes that the song has an unusual rhyming structure, in which rhymes do not occur at regular intervals and sometimes appear to be out of sync with the song's meter.

But the happy lyrics and music belie the song's irony. Hoskyns notes that the song may just as easy be expressing the group's fear about how the world has encroached on their bucolic lifestyle since their first two albums made them famous. Aaron states that the music and title are misleading and that the real theme of the song is the danger of having too much idle time on one's hands.Allmusic critic William Ruhlmann similarly states that the song's theme is the "pitfalls of fortune and fame."Something Else critic Nick DeRiso points out that around the time of the song's release the group in real life acted in accordance with the sentiments of the song, flying back to Woodstock by private plane when the opportunities arose during their concert tour. Burks notes that even the reference to Catskill may be a pun on a darker phrase "cats kill."