How Did 'Time Is On Our Side' Become the Definitive Stones Archive?

Before the band had a real website, there was Ian. A British fan who started “Time Is On Our Side” in the mid-’90s, back when you had to manually type setlists from bootleg tapes and smudged ticket stubs. It didn’t try to be a news site — it just obsessively tracked what was true: the lyrics, the setlists, the tour history.

What made it stick was purity of purpose. No ads, no hot takes, just a database that grew fan-first. While official sites came and went with redesigns, Ian’s project kept adding every gig from 1962 onward, correcting lyric mishears, and cross-referencing sources. It became the reference that journalists, collectors, and even the band’s management used. No official effort ever matched its scope — because no official effort had a fan’s patience for the deep cuts.