Songfacts®:

• "I've Been Waiting For You" is lyrically tender but musically driven. The chorus, which builds in intensity to the line, "For such a long time ago," mimics the emotional restraint forced upon Young in the song. He's been waiting for this woman "for a long time now," and the need's been building up volcanically within him.
• The most interesting line in the song is the opener, "I've been waiting for a woman to save my life." The level of desperation revealed by those words frames the rest of the song. This is no ordinary crush or pining. Young is in a desperate emotional place and looking for something to save him.
• It's particularly interesting to listen to this song with "The Loner" in mind. "The Loner" appears two tracks before this song, and in some ways it can be seen as a continuing story of a desperate figure on the outskirts of society and possibly sanity. "The Loner" has been pretty clearly revealed as Young himself, which suggests "I've Been Waiting for You" may be similarly autobiographical and representative of that period in Young's life.
• In 2002, David Bowie released a version of this song on his album Heathen. It featured Dave Grohl on guitar and hit #11 in the Canadian charts.
  
  Bowie had previously performed the song while touring with/as Tin Machine, an act he headed from 1988 to 1992.