Bruce Springsteen has written a lot of songs addressing issues that Americans face in the upcoming presidential election. “This Hard Land,” recorded for “Born in the USA” and released on his greatest hits album in 1995, is about discovering that the land of opportunity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. “American Skin (41 Shots),” which Springsteen first performed in 2000, is a proto-Black Lives Matter song addressing police brutality against people of color. “Shackled and Drawn,” from “Wrecking Ball,” confronts economic inequality. Springsteen once said he wrote the title track from “Magic” about how “what’s true can be made to seem like a lie and what’s a lie can be made to seem true,” which certainly seems resonant 13 years later. So does the entire “Nebraska” album.
One of his most reverberant songs, though, is also one of his quietest — at least in its original incarnation. “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” from Springsteen’s 1995 album of the same name, considers the economic forces that have prompted, or maybe forced, the poor and dispossessed to leave their homes and families with the hope, however faint, of finding opportunity elsewhere. The song takes its title from the protagonist in John Steinbeck’s Great Depression-era novel “The Grapes of Wrath,” published in 1939, but the themes Springsteen explores haven’t changed much in the intervening years.
He sings in a weary mumble about the desperation that accompanies hunger, homelessness, police brutality and oppression. Those same issues are plenty prevalent now, when 13.6 million Americans are out of work, 30 million are at risk of eviction, a global hunger crisis looms and protests against police brutality have been going strong since Minneapolis police killed George Floyd in May.
Though the Joad family in “The Grapes of Wrath” were white Oklahomans heading to California, “The Ghost of Tom Joad” has broader applications. Rage Against the Machine covered the song on their 2000 album “Renegades,” and Springsteen invited Rage guitarist Tom Morello to play on a reimagined version of the song on Springsteen’s 2013 album “High Hopes.” That version is decidedly louder, with Morello injecting a grim sneer into the verses he sings, and unleashing mayhem in the solo breaks.
As the Nov. 3 election approaches, the ghost of Tom Joad remains a restless spirit, haunting the tattered idea of American exceptionalism. If you haven’t already, remember to register to vote.