Bruce Springsteen is an American icon for myriad reasons, but the reason he has outlasted many popular artists is that his overall worldview of the American soul needing and desiring justice and equality for all people continues to speak to us all. Bruce has been performing a show of sorts on Broadway for the past few months. It has been highly acclaimed as you might imagine. Tuesday night, Bruce decided to perform a song he hasn’t played at the end of the show: “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” from the 1995 album of the same name. The album itself is about American history, about outlaws and the people desperate to make a life in America, both from inside its borders and outside its borders. Inspired by the great American novel The Grapes of Wrath, the track uses inspiration from the book, which was adapted into the 1940 John Ford film starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad.
Before Bruce sang his final song he spoke with his trademark eloquence. Brucespringsteen.net has a transcription of what he said.
I never believed that people come to my shows, or rock shows to be told anything.
But I do believe that they come to be reminded of things. To be reminded of who they are, at their most joyous, at their deepest, when life feels full. It's a good place to get in touch with your heart and your spirit, to be amongst the crowd. And to be reminded of who we are and who we can be collectively. Music does those things pretty well sometimes, particularly these days when some reminding of who we are and who we can be isn't such a bad thing.
That weekend of the March for our Lives, we saw those young people in Washington, and citizens all around the world, remind us of what faith in America and real faith in American democracy looks and feels like. It was just encouraging to see all those people out on the street and all that righteous passion in the service of something good. And to see that passion was alive and well and still there at the center of the beating heart of our country.
It was a good day, and a necessary day because we are seeing things right now on our American borders that are so shockingly and disgracefully inhumane and un-American that it is simply enraging. And we have heard people in high positions in the American government blaspheme in the name of God and country that it is a moral thing to assault the children amongst us. May God save our souls.
There's the beautiful quote by Dr. King that says the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. Now, there have been many, many days of recent when you could certainly have an argument over that. But I've lived long enough to see that in action and to put some faith in it. But I've also lived long enough to know that arc doesn't bend on its own. It needs all of us leaning on it, nudging it in the right direction day after day. You gotta keep, keep leaning.
I think it's important to believe in those words, and to carry yourself, and to act accordingly. It's the only way that we keep faith and keep our sanity.
I've played this show 146 nights with basically the same setlist, but tonight calls for something different...
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Follow below the fold to read the powerful scene Springsteen is referencing.
In one of the most powerful scenes in American cultural history, Tom Joad, who is now a fugitive, speaks one last time to his mother before the two will part forever.
Tom: I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin’ fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin’. And I been wonderin’ if all our folks got together and yelled…
Ma: Oh, Tommy, they’d drag you out and cut you down just like they done to Casey.
Tom: They’d drag me anyways. Sooner or later they’d get me for one thing if not for another. Until then …
Ma: Tommy, you’re not aimin’ to kill nobody.
Tom: No, Ma, not that. That ain’t it. It’s just, well as long as I’m an outlaw anyways… maybe I can do somethin’… maybe I can just find out somethin’, just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that’s wrong and see if they ain’t somethin’ that can be done about it. I ain’t thought it out all clear, Ma. I can’t. I don’t know enough.
Ma: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I’d never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?
Tom: Well, maybe it’s like Casy says. A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then…
Ma: Then what, Tom?
Tom: Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too.
Ma: I don’t understand it, Tom.
Tom: Me, neither, Ma, but – just somethin’ I been thinkin’ about.