The Story Behind The Song Dream Theater’s Take The Time

One of the reasons many great songwriters encourage people to write songs about something they know, is because it’s natural to write from first hand experience. Progressive metal band Dream Theater have always put their personal struggles and victories in music. On their self-titled debut album, they had a song called Only A Matter Of Time, about how, according to drummer Mike Portnoy, record labels had “aspirations for the band and perceived us differently than we really were. Our viewpoint was ‘We knew it was only a matter of time that we’d have a chance, but we’d have to be patient and things would turn out our way.’”

Portnoy sees Take The Time as a continuation of Only A Matter Of Time, from the pages of the Dream Theater diary, 1989-1991 – a lesson about the realities of the music business, after the group had a parting of the ways with their original record company. One day, when the band were discussing their music business frustrations and writing some new material, Mike had a novel idea for developing the song at hand, “Let’s each write our own verses in a logical order.” Mike was responsible for the first verse, John Myung for the second one, Kevin for both choruses, and John Petrucci for the rest of the song.

Each verse not only showcases the band’s frustration, but also each member’s personality. For example Myung is a very reflective and quiet person to the point of seeming spacey, so he wrote a lot about feelings. Mike’s a big Public Enemy and Frank Zappa fan, so right before his verse he sampled lines from their records, and then had the vocals start with the words, “Just let me catch my breath!” Continues Mike, “Because we had no singer, deal, lawyer and even a rehearsal studio, I wrote ‘We gotta make a change – new voice, new law, new way.’ All in all each verse is a realization.”

Petrucci adds that the song’s actual title has a few different interpretations, one directed to radio that says, “Take the time – don’t play edits – play full versions of songs,” ‘cause Dream Theater songs are really long. “The chorus kind of sums up the band’s feelings. It’s like you’re fighting the way of the world, ‘cause everything’s coming down on you at one point. You feel like you almost have nothing... but you always have the music. Just take the time – the time to really make the right decisions. The one thing about this band is that everybody knew no matter what was going on, we knew something was going to come out of it. And it’s probably the strength of the music and how much fun we had, and that we’re friends that made the time we took together so worthwhile.”