The Ghost Of Tom Joad

About

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 song. The album tells stories set primarily in the American Southwest, though Springsteen also finds time for tales set everywhere from Ohio to Louisiana to Texa. 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 Cowboy,” he tells the story of two brothers from Mexico who make the choice to leave agricultural work in favor of working in a meth lab, while “Balboa Park” is the saga of a group of teenagers working as child sex worker. 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 industrie. .

via Apple Music

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