Songfacts®:

• In the liner notes to the album, it states, "'Time Passes On' is dedicated to Lance and Dru and to all the lovers who have lost their keys to each other."
  
  Lance is the group's bass player, Lance Hoppen, and Dru was his girlfriend at the time.
• The song is about having the cherished memory of another person. It was written by their guitarist, John Hall, and his wife Johanna. "It's been used in many instances as a sort of ceremonial song, and I think it's one of the better things that we've ever done," John said in his Songfacts interview.
• The outro to the song lasts nearly a minute. John Hall told us, "Sometimes when the words run out and you can't say anything more and the lyric is over, you can play an instrumental chorus or two and say something emotionally through the instrument that you couldn't say with words."