The Ghost of Tom Joad by Bruce Springsteen
The Ghost of Tom Joad is the eleventh studio album by Bruce Springsteen, released in 1995 (see 1995 in music). The album was recorded and mixed at Thrill Hill during the spring and summer of 1995. Musically and lyrically reminiscent of Springsteen's 1982 critically acclaimed album Nebraska. The Ghost of Tom Joad received mostly favorable reviews. Mikal Gilmore of Rolling Stone called it "Springsteen's best album in ten years," and considered it "among the bravest work that anyone has given us this decade." However, it reached only #11 on the Billboard 200, breaking a string of eight consecutive Top 5 studio albums in the U.S for Springsteen. The album is mainly backed by acoustic guitar work and the lyrics on many of the tracks are a somber reflection of life in the mid-1990s in America and Mexico. Tom Joad is the protagonist of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Springsteen has commented that he was first inspired by John Ford's film of the novel. The album's release was followed by Springsteen's solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, which ran from 1995–1997 and consisted of mostly small venues. "The Ghost of Tom Joad" recalls the minimalist production and instrumentation of "Nebraska (album)" (although it does include a small backing band on several tracks, where "Nebraska" featured only Springsteen). It also recalls the album's dark stories of desperate and sometimes violent characters fighting for survival in America. The title track serves as the album's centerpiece, expressing the search for resilience during hard times ("The highway is alive tonight/But where its headed everybody knows/I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light/searchin' for the ghost of Tom Joad," the chorus goes.) "Youngstown (song)" and "Galveston Bay" recall Springsteen's previous work from "Born in the U.S.A." with references to Factory Life and Vietnam War veterans. On tracks like "Across the Border," and "Sinaloa Cowboys," he sings about the plight of Mexican Immigrants and their search for a better life in the U.S. More than any other songs on the album, "The New Timer" recalls the starkness of "Nebraska." It shares melodic similarities with that album's title track and follows a desperate worker during the Great Depression whose partner is killed by "somebody killing just to kill." The song ends with the austere lines "My Jesus your gracious love and mercy/Tonight I'm sorry could not fill my heart/Like one good rifle/And the name of who I ought to kill." The album concludes with "My Best Was Never Good Enough," which bears no explicit link to the themes on the rest of the album. The song includes Springsteen's take on popular sayings such as: "'Now life's like a box of chocolates,/You never know what you're going to get'/'Stupid is as stupid does and all the rest of that shit,'" (an obvious reference to "Forrest Gump.") However, this song can be seen as the desperate characters from the previous tracks on the album expressing their frustration that their "best was never good enough" (as the song's refrain goes).
One of the things Bruce Springsteen loved about living in California was riding his motorcycle through the mountains above Los Angeles and out into the Southwestern desert. These trips off of the main highways and through the small towns in the Sierras and Central California inspired his songwriting for 1995’s <i>The Ghost of Tom Joad</i>, a collection of quiet, mostly acoustic songs. The album tells stories set primarily in the American Southwest, though Springsteen also finds time for tales set everywhere from Ohio to Louisiana to Texas. Springsteen had heard stories about the brutal circumstances that many migrant workers faced. He spent time doing research, to ensure the details and the emotional heart of each song on <i>The Ghost of Tom Joad</i> would ring true. On “Sinaloa Cowboys”, he tells the story of two brothers from Mexico who make the choice to leave agricultural work in favour of working in a meth lab, while “Balboa Park” is the saga of a group of teenagers working as child sex workers. Springsteen also created connections between the songs on the record; in his mind, the steelworker from “Youngstown” leaves Ohio and become the hobo moving from city to city in search of work in “The New Timer”. The title track, meanwhile, was directly inspired by John Steinbeck’s Great Depression epic <i>The Grapes of Wrath</i>, and also reflected the economic downturn in the US manufacturing industries. These songs were even more stripped down in their arrangements than the ones on <i>Nebraska</i>. Springsteen began by recording himself on acoustic guitar, and later assembled a small ensemble, including the E Street Band’s Danny Federici on keyboard and accordion, and Garry Tallent on bass. The sparseness of the arrangements focus the listener’s attention on the storytelling.
