What do Bruce Springsteen, John Steinbeck, and Rage Against the Machine have in common (besides sounding like a set-up for a strangely dark Americana joke)? On November 21, 1995, The Boss from New Jersey released The Ghost of Tom Joad, the title and title track of which directly reference the main character of Steinbeck’s 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath.
Steinbeck’s novel opens with Joad getting out of prison, after which he meets with his family as they’re making the long journey to California. Unlike other characters in the novel, Joad seems to undergo a change in consciousness, beginning to prioritize the working class, the hungry, and the downtrodden. He kills a union buster in self-defense and has to go on the lam, but not before he offers one of the most poignant pieces of prose in the entire book.
While trying to quell his mother’s concerns that she would never see him again, Joad says, “I’ll be all aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be everywhere—wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’ I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in houses they build, why I’ll be there.”
Bruce Springsteen Embodies Tom Joad in Ballad Later Covered by Rage Against the Machine
Given Tom Joad’s novel-long battle with pursuing morality in the face of capitalism and his journey to empathizing and fighting for the oppressed, it’s unsurprising that a blue-collar-anthem songwriter like Bruce Springsteen would find inspiration in writing about the character’s trajectory. In addition to paying homage to Grapes of Wrath author John Steinbeck, Springsteen also directly referenced a Woody Guthrie song, “The Ballad of Tom Joad”, which was also written for the Steinbeck character. In Springsteen’s version, the timeline shifts forward from the 1930s Great Depression to the 1990s.
Springsteen’s title track to The Ghost of Tom Joad calls back to the character’s speech at the end of the novel with lyrics like, “Wherever somebody’s fighting for a place to stand / or a decent job or a helping hand / Wherever somebody’s struggling to be free / Look in their eyes, ma, and you’ll see me.” Though certainly not one of Springsteen’s most mainstream hits, it achieved moderate success outside of the States, peaking at No. 7 in Italy, No. 10 in the Netherlands, and No. 26 on the U.K. Singles chart.
Two years after Springsteen released his eleventh studio album, Rage Against the Machine put out their own rendition of the song on their 1997 home video and, later, on the band’s fourth and final album, Renegades. A similar expression of American discontent in a notably different flavor, Rage’s cover of Springsteen’s song continues The Boss (and Guthrie and Steinbeck’s) story with all the righteous anger one would expect from someone crushed in the cogs of the American capitalist machine.
Photo by Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images