{"id":305924,"date":"2025-11-21T21:50:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T21:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/305924\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T21:50:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T21:50:13","slug":"on-this-day-in-1995-bruce-springsteen-released-a-john-steinbeck-inspired-song-later-covered-by-rage-against-the-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/305924\/","title":{"rendered":"On This Day in 1995, Bruce Springsteen Released a John Steinbeck-Inspired Song Later Covered by Rage Against the Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

What do Bruce Springsteen<\/a>, 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\u2019s 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath.<\/p>\n

Steinbeck\u2019s novel opens with Joad getting out of prison, after which he meets with his family as they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

While trying to quell his mother\u2019s concerns that she would never see him again, Joad says<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019ll be all aroun\u2019 in the dark. I\u2019ll be everywhere\u2014wherever you look. Wherever they\u2019s a fight so hungry people can eat, I\u2019ll be there. Wherever they\u2019s a cop beatin\u2019 up a guy, I\u2019ll be there. I\u2019ll be in the way guys yell when they\u2019re mad an\u2019 I\u2019ll be in the way kids laugh when they\u2019re hungry an\u2019 they know supper\u2019s ready. An\u2019 when our folks eat the stuff they raise an\u2019 live in houses they build, why I\u2019ll be there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bruce Springsteen Embodies Tom Joad in Ballad Later Covered by Rage Against the Machine<\/p>\n

Given Tom Joad\u2019s novel-long battle with pursuing morality in the face of capitalism and his journey to empathizing and fighting for the oppressed, it\u2019s unsurprising that a blue-collar-anthem songwriter like Bruce Springsteen would find inspiration in writing about the character\u2019s trajectory. In addition to paying homage to Grapes of Wrath author John Steinbeck, Springsteen also directly referenced a Woody Guthrie<\/a> song, \u201cThe Ballad of Tom Joad\u201d, which was also written for the Steinbeck character. In Springsteen\u2019s version, the timeline shifts forward from the 1930s Great Depression to the 1990s.<\/p>\n

Springsteen\u2019s title track to The Ghost of Tom Joad calls back to the character\u2019s speech at the end of the novel with lyrics like, \u201cWherever somebody\u2019s fighting for a place to stand \/ or a decent job or a helping hand \/ Wherever somebody\u2019s struggling to be free \/ Look in their eyes, ma, and you\u2019ll see me.\u201d Though certainly not one of Springsteen\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Two years after Springsteen released his eleventh studio album, Rage Against the Machine<\/a> put out their own rendition of the song on their 1997 home video and, later, on the band\u2019s fourth and final album, Renegades. A similar expression of American discontent in a notably different flavor, Rage\u2019s cover of Springsteen\u2019s song continues The Boss (and Guthrie and Steinbeck\u2019s) story with all the righteous anger one would expect from someone crushed in the cogs of the American capitalist machine.<\/p>\n

Photo by Bob Riha, Jr.\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What do Bruce Springsteen, John Steinbeck, and Rage Against the Machine have in common (besides sounding like a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[50829,16755,88,216,27722,2156],"class_list":{"0":"post-305924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-1990s","9":"tag-bruce-springsteen","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-rage-against-the-machine","13":"tag-rock-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}