There was a time when two lanes and plenty of horsepower could take Bruce Springsteen anywhere—even the promised land. But somewhere along the way, rock’s last great romantic ran headlong into the contradictions at the heart of the American Dream. At some point, he learned, like Huck Finn and Dean Moriarty before him, that none of us can escape responsibility forever, no matter how far we run and no matter how free we think we might be.
Shot through as it was with bitterness and resentment, Darkness on the Edge of Town was perhaps the first Springsteen record haunted by this discovery. But it was nothing compared to the betrayal he felt after Born in the USA. Risking a big political statement, Springsteen stood powerless as his audience mistook the tortured cry of the title track for a jingoistic anthem. His faith shaken, Springsteen nevertheless remained determined to overcome the obstacles in his path. Even Nebraska, bleak as it was, offered reasons to believe.
“The highway is alive tonight,” promises the title song of his new album, The Ghost of Tom Joad. The line is vintage Springsteen—until he adds, “But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody about where it goes.” Gone, in the turn of a phrase, is the optimism of “Thunder Road.” Where once the slam of the screen door signaled liberation, now the door just hangs off its hinges, as he observes in “Dry Lightning”; its incessant banging keeps him awake all night.
The characters who move through Tom Joad —people with “no home no job no peace no rest”—have also been keeping Springsteen up nights, racking him with doubt about himself and his country. The record expresses this political reawakening artfully and without sloganeering: From families sleeping in cars to “illegals” risking their lives to cross the border, Springsteen’s ruminations on the death of opportunity are grounded in the lives of people merely hoping to survive.
There’s the ex-con of “Straight Time” who works at a rendering plant. He knows he’ll never be more than half-free, so it hardly matters when he steps back over the line. Things aren’t so different for the Vietnam vet in “Youngstown,” an unemployed munitions worker who faces the servitude of the welfare line. Then there are the Rosales brothers, Miguel and Louis, who’ve learned the lessons of capitalism all too well. Cooking methamphetamine in just two 10-hour shifts, they make the equivalent of one year’s wages working in the orchards of the San Joaquin. Before they left Mexico, their father warned them, “For everything the North gives, it exacts a price in return.” These words come back to haunt Miguel the night he buries Louis after his brother is killed in a chemical explosion.
The record’s understated, almost static musical lines effectively convey the resignation at the heart of Springsteen’s narratives. Many songs feature only atmospheric keyboards and guitar, while others, graced with violin and pedal steel, create a warmer, homespun feel. Bob Dylan often comes to mind, but, as with the music of the great singer-songwriter, Springsteen’s simple, folk-based melodies sound at least as old as their influences.
With only one misstep—the one-dimensional crime spree of “Highway 29”—The Ghost of Tom Joad confronts pressing social problems with great sensitivity and insight. But, as critic Ann Powers has pointed out, the question remains: What’s a millionaire rock star, even one of humble, working-class origins like Springsteen, doing speaking on behalf of people with whom he shares virtually nothing? In the end, the singer’s privileged position can’t be explained away. But, as country singer James Talley observes, at least someone of Springsteen’s influence is confronting issues of suffering and injustice; at least somebody sees the faces of people out there “fightin’,” as Tom Joad puts it in The Grapes of Wrath, “for a place to stand.”
There’s a reason Springsteen can make such an uncommercial record in the first place: For nearly 25 years, his songs have spoken to the hopes and dreams of millions. Ultimately, his extraordinary gift for empathy—his unprepossessing way of inhabiting the lives of everyone from highway patrolmen to convicted killers—gives him the authority to take up with such complex, wide-ranging issues.
Nowhere is this more evident than on “Galveston Bay,” the story of two shrimp fishermen—Billy, a Vietnam vet, and Le, a Vietnamese refugee. Out to save “America for Americans,” Billy assumes the role of the victim; he makes Le out as the Asian equivalent of Stagger Lee, the no-good rounder who takes what doesn’t belong to him (and this, despite the fact that the two men fought on the same side in Vietnam). But Billy doesn’t just vilify Le, he goes a deadly step further, mobilizing the Texas KKK to burn all the Vietnamese boats in Galveston harbor. The plan ends up backfiring as Le, trying to protect his livelihood, shoots two of the vigilantes dead. Justice ultimately prevails when the jury returns a verdict of self-defense; reconciliation, however, is nowhere in sight.
Arguably an update of the Stagger Lee myth, the song bears only a formal resemblance to previous versions of the archetypal ballad. More global in scope, “Galveston Bay” can be heard as an allegory about the fear that governs U.S. relations with foreign nations perceived to be an economic or ideological threat. What makes Springsteen’s narrative so remarkable is the fact that it doesn’t play politics: Focusing not on the differences between the two men, but on what they have in common, Springsteen emphasizes their shared humanity, ultimately the most compelling reason any of us have to wage peace.
Springsteen’s Hollywood mansion may be far removed from the struggles of people who can’t afford to buy his records, but, in the end, The Ghost of Tom Joad proves that he couldn’t be more in touch with the hopelessness that’s their inheritance.
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