Lay Your Hands On Me v I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

LYHOM studio version for me and the live version of I"ll sleep when I'm dead with the covers. So live it would be I'll sleep when I'm dead, but in general LYHOM.

None thank you!

I´ve always considered I´ll Sleep When I´m Dead and Why Aren´t You Dead to be quite similar. Maybe they were written back to back or they could even be two variations of one basic idea for a song.

It´s just that Sleep was an anthemic song about BJ on tour and fitted well in the live set. Why Aren´t You Dead, on the other hand, didn´t bring anything new to the formula. So they didn´t use the latter.

Still, I wish Why Aren´t You Dead was on KTF. It´s a far better song. A bit crafted but nonetheless a great song. Sleep is its weaker twin sister.

Am I making any sense at all?

I agree wholeheartedly. In terms of studio versions, LYHOM is absolutely killer, whereas Sleep is a decent rock song that IMO sort of gets lost among the rest of the fantastic first seven songs on KTF.

Live it's a different story though. I know I've said it a million times here, but again, LYHOM doesn't come off brilliantly live because Jon has never managed to capture the feeling of it properly, not even (according to the Milton Keynes gig from youtube) in 1989. Plus the keyboard is mixed too high while the guitar is mixed too low. Sleep comes across reasonably well live, it's got a very engaging rhythm, or to steal the old phrase "it's got a beat and you can dance to it". It's nothing overly special by itself though

So, in conclusion, I'd say neither of them are fantastic by themselves live, but Sleep edges it with the covers, just like most other people have been saying

LYHOM, no doubt about it.

However, if Lay Your Hands didn't have a long into I dunno. Actually, I'd probably still pick Lay Your Hands.

I love the LYHON studio version. In live I don't like it too much due to the backing vocals and being played a little slow. So.... I prefer Sleep!

I prefer 'Lay your hands on me'. It's better live too..