Time Has Come Today

This psychedelic soul classic was written by two of the four Chambers brothers, Joe and Willie. Joe wrote most of the lyric after sitting in on a class at UCLA with Timothy Leary and taking LSD. Willie put the music together and contributed the line, "My soul has been psychedelicized."

This song spoke to the younger generation that was fighting for civil rights, social justice and an end to the Vietnam War. The lyrics are somewhat ambiguous, but the constant repetition of the word "Time!" makes it clear that the song is a call to action.

The Chambers Brothers were from Mississippi and started out as a gospel act. They wrote this song after relocating to Los Angeles, where they rented a two story house. In a Songfacts interview with Willie Chambers, he explained: "I was down in the dining room area with an acoustic guitar and I was playing that music over and over and over. I kind of got hooked on that line in that melody, but I didn't have any words. And Joe, at that same time, he was upstairs in his room writing the lyrics to 'Time Has Come Today.' He could hear what I was doing down there, and it interrupted his writing. He came to the top of the stairs and said, 'What's that you're playing?' I said, 'I don't know, this riff just came to me and I'm just playing it.' He said, 'You got lyrics to that?' 'No, I don't have lyrics yet.' 'Man, I was just up there in my room writing and everything I'm writing, the music is going with what I'm writing. At the same time I'm writing it and you're down here playing it. Well, bring your guitar down.' We had a basement in the house and we had a rehearsal studio down there. So, he and I went down in the basement and he started singing these lyrics. And man, the music and the lyrics were made for each other."