Product Description

THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD isn't a rock and roll record. Named for the protagonist of John Steinbeck's Depression-era novel THE GRAPES OF WRATH (Springsteen cites John Ford's film version in the booklet) and performed largely on an acoustic guitar with the occasional support of an Appalachian mountain fiddle and pedal steel guitar, it's part folk album, part protest record, part short-story collection.
It'll inevitably be compared to NEBRASKA, the similarly stark song-cycle Springsteen foisted on an unsuspecting world in 1982. Yet TOM JOAD is more of an arranged album, with careful guitar arpeggios supported by an eerie bed of sustained synthesizer chords (played by E Street Band veteran Danny Federici and Springsteen) and a few full-band folk arrangements. It's also more of an explicit statement. Whereas the characters in NEBRASKA were lost souls wreaking havoc on the highways and backroads of the badlands, those on TOM JOAD are a mix of working-class Americans and immigrants running across (or into) the country in search of a pot of gold that isn't there. The characters are modern, but the stories are as old as the Great Depression that Steinbeck chronicled--Springsteen's message being that after all these years we're still knee-deep in it.
There are some familiar Springsteen vignettes--the conflicted friendship of two border guards in "The Line", the family line of steelworkers in "Youngstown"--but the characters themselves are new, and the clearness of their anger is almost radical. Pondering the corporate bosses who built a steel plant in Youngstown, used up the local resources, then walked away, the narrator's father says, "Them big boys did what Hitler couldn't do". Springsteen does offer the working class a chance at redemption. "Galveston Bay" brings togethera Vietnamese fisherman, a disgruntled Vietnam vet and the Ku Klux Klan; by the time it's over, two Klansmen are dead and the American vet has learned, if not to overcome his prejudice, to at least live and work side by side with his Vietnamese compatriot. It may be a not-so-veiled lesson for the flag-waving patriots who misinterpreted Springsteen's anthem "Born In The U.S.A".

Track Listing

1. Ghost Of Tom Joad
2. Straight Time
3. Highway 29
4. Youngstown
5. Sinola Cowboys
6. Line
7. Balbo Park
8. Dry Lightning
9. New Timer
10. Across The Border
11. Galveston Bay
12. Best Was Never Enough

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2933 in Music
• Released on: 2000-01-10
• Number of discs: 1

From Amazon.com
Bruce Springsteen followed his muse on this haunting 1995 release. Perhaps that's why it barely made a dent in the marketplace, even while it thrilled the faithful who were willing to take another dark, Nebraska-like journey with him. It's abundantly clear that Springsteen had been soaking himself in the work of John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie during the writing of The Ghost of Tom Joad, but their combined influence is found on more than just the title track. It's all over these windblown songs (including the haunting "Dry Lightning" and "the seminal "Youngstown") and their hard-scrabble protagonists. Not the Boss's biggest record, but certainly one of his best. --Michael Ruby

Customer Reviews

Bruce at his absolute best
In retrospect, "Tom Joad" seems like an aberation in the Springsteen back catalogue between "Tunnel of Love" and 2007 (just prior to the release of "Magic"). Amidst the misguided session band experiments of the '92 albums, the various and assorted compilations and retrospectives, the ambitious but ultimately disappointing "Rising" and the scraped-together off-cuts and cast-offs that make up "Devils and Dust", "Tom Joad" stands out as Springsteen's only great recording since "Tunnel of Love". And it is truly great, by any standard and in any time.

Lyrically, I believe this is his greatest achievement, despite the stark abandonment of the trademark faith and hope that had permeated his previous efforts. The sweep of his lyrical concerns here are exceptional, encompassing immigrants, railroad bums, career criminals, unemployed steelworkers and border guards. Most songs here deliver a concentrated and often unsettling picture of lives in turmoil or on the edge, often trapped by circumstance, culture or accident - and sometimes plain bad decision making.

Musically, we veer from stately (the title track) through chillingly spare (Highway 29) to almost entirely tuneless (The New Timer). But there is logic and calculation in every choice.

Highlights are many, but my favourite may be "Youngstown".

"Youngstown" is one of Bruce's great lyrics, simply magnificent in its simplicity, majestic in its glorious depiction of the mixed blessings of the Youngstown mills:

"Taconite, coke and limestone
Fed my children and made my pay
Then smokestacks reachin' like the arms of god
Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay".

And there is a barely suppressed rage below the surface, that you feel could explode into violence at any minute. Later, Springsteen expressed this with awesome power in the live E Street version of the song, powered unforgettably by Lofgren's spine-tingling play out solo as the song hammered brutally into "Murder Incorporated" and then "Badlands", the logical extension and next step from this lyric.

And at the end the protagonist, tossed away by the rich men who care for money and power over life and society, finds eloquence that he might never have guessed he possessed:

"From the Monongaleh valley
To the Mesabi iron range
To the coal mines of Appalacchia
The story's always the same
Seven-hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world's changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name"

This is classic story-song Springsteen, able to sum up an age and a lifetime in a verse.

I hope one day he will deliver another set of songs this good.

Truly great, and of its type, unsurpassable.

Brilliantly depressing.
Never been a huge springsteen fan, but bought a couple of albums with a voucher last year, this one and Born in the Usa.
Born in the USA is a classic no doubt, but "the ghost of Tom Joad" is my favourite.
If you ever want to kick back, close your eyes and be taken on a truly saddening journey then this is the album to choose.
My personal favourite is "the line" for its ability to make me want to cry like no other song can.

I am looking forward to listening to some more albums by the same artist, but do not anticipate finding anything of this calibre.

Underrated and often ignored
For me, "The Ghost Of Tom Joad" contains three of the finest narrative songs recorded by anyone, let alone Bruce Springsteen. The Southern Californian/Mexican border triptych of "Sinaloa Cowboys", "The Line" and "Balboa Park" are up there with the best of Dylan. They are each mini-masterpieces of migrants, misery, misplaced loyalty and maudlin despair. Any album containing such contributions has to be granted true attention

Released in 1995. "The Ghost Of Tom Joad" sees Bruce Springsteen once gain in bandless, acoustic mode first heard in the iconic "Nebraska" from 1982. Here, as opposed to the Midwest, the songs and characters which the author creates so well are all from the Californian/Texan/Mexican borderlands and their stories are those of desolation, despair, decadence and dreams. Unlike in "Born To Run" however, these dreams are rudely shattered against life's rough wall and none of these characters end their respective songs with much hope at all, save the protagonist in "Galveston Bay" who sheathes his knife as opposed to exacting false revenge on a Vietnamese immigrant.

The albums opens with a stark, bleak song in the title track and the atmosphere is not lifted by the tales of seedy lust and petty criminality in Highway 29" and "Straight Time". "Youngstown" sees Springsteen head briefly back to the steeltowns of the Midwest, backed by Nils Lofgren's searing guitar, but from then on it is firmly back to the baking heat and stultifying despair of the South West's migrant towns. There is a brief hope in the beautiful "Across The Border" but not much can lift the sombre mood and the album is all the better for it. There is a case to be made for this album to feature some of the artist's best ever work. Not a case that will ever be won, but it is worth pitching.

One piece of advice - ensure you have complete quiet when listening to this album, as times the voice and guitar are almost inaudible as Springsteen whispers out his semi-spoken narrative...