About The Song
Jim Croce wrote this reflective song the night that he found out his wife, Ingrid, was pregnant. The couple had been married for five years, and Ingrid found out she was pregnant when she went to a fertility specialist. She recalls a mix of terror and delight in Jim’s reaction when she told him the news. The child was a boy named Adrian, who grew up to become the singer-songwriter A.J. Croce.
“Time In A Bottle” hit #1 in America 14 weeks after Croce was killed in a plane crash. Croce started touring after he completed his last album, I Got A Name. On September 30, 1973 a plane carrying Croce and five others crashed upon takeoff as he was leaving one college venue to another 70 miles away. No one survived the accident, and among those killed was Maury Muehleisen, who played guitar on Croce’s albums. Terry Cashman, who produced Croce, told us, “Jim and Maury got together and all of the sudden Jim started writing these great songs, and Maury came up with these really wonderful guitar parts – the two guitars were like an orchestra.”
“Time In A Bottle” entered the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the week ending December 1, 1973 and finally reached #1 for the week ending December 29, a little over three months after he died.
Video
Lyrics
If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day
‘Til eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you
If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I’d save every day like a treasure and then
Again, I would spend them with you
But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go
Through time with
If I had a box just for wishes
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
Except for the memory
Of how they were answered by you
But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go
Through time with