Sleeping

About Sleeping

"Sleeping" is a song by The Band, first released on their 1970 album Stage Fright. It was also released as the B-side to the "Stage Fright" single. It was co-written by Robbie Robertson and Richard Manuel. This and “Just Another Whistle Stop” are the only two songs Manuel receives credit for on the album. Music critic Barney Hoskyns rates it as "one of Richard [Manuel's] liveliest performances" and "one of The Band's most intricate arrangements." The Band never featured the song on a live album. The song features Manuel on lead vocals and the piano, Rick Danko on backing vocals and bass, Levon Helm on drums, Robertson on electric guitar, and Garth Hudson on the Lowrey organ and accordion."Sleeping" uses a waltz time signature. Following the style of “King Harvest (Has Surely Come),” the song has no true chorus. Instead, the verses that are sung softly are given greater importance. However, Robertson's guitar solo comes in the middle of the song, rather than the end. Hoskyns rates this solo, played along with Hudson's "pitch-bending" organ, as "one of the most ecstatic passages on any Band record. Lyrically, the song is rather simple. According to music critic Nick DeRiso, the lyrics move from "a lament about 'the life we chose'" to "a confusingly lonesome period of guessing and searching." Using magnificent imagery, Manuel and Robertson dramatize how sleeping provides man with a necessary escape from the hustle of life. This motif can be traced back to “When You Awake,” another song co-written by Manuel and Robertson just a year earlier and released on the self-titled The Band album. The emotion of the song range between melancholy and "blissful escapism." Both DeRiso and Hoskyns see "Sleeping" as something of a sequel to the emotional mood from earlier Manuel-penned Band songs "In a Station" (from Music from Big Pink) and "Whispering Pines" (from The Band). The song is featured in a karaoke scene in Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom (2008), sung by Rinko Kikuchi. more »

Year:

1980

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For the life we chose in the evening we rose,
Just long enough to be lovers again.
And for nothing more, the world was too sore to live in.

Sad old ships, a morning eclipse,
I spent my whole life guessing,
Then I turned from the sun, and saw everyone searching.

The hoot owl and his song, will bring you along
Where else on earth would you wanna go?
We can leave all this hate, before it's too late
Why would we wanna come back at all?

Cobwebs on my pillow, I'm found in the willow,
I'd spend my whole life sleeping.
To be called by noon is to be called too soon today.

The storm is passed, there is peace at last,
I'll spend my whole life sleeping.
Now there's not a sound, no one to be found anywhere.

The shepherd and his sheep, will wind you to sleep,
Where else on earth would you wanna go?
To a land of wonder, when you go under,
Why would we want to come back at all?

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The Band

The Band were a Canadian-American roots rock group that originally consisted of Rick Danko (bass guitar, double bass, fiddle, trombone, vocals), Levon Helm (drums, mandolin, guitar, vocals), Garth Hudson (keyboard instruments, saxophones, trumpet), Richard Manuel (piano, drums, baritone saxophone, vocals) and Robbie Robertson (guitar, vocals). The members of the Band first came together as they joined rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins's backing group, The Hawks, one by one between 1958 and 1963. more »

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