592 - Bruce Springsteen The Ghost of Tom Joad 1995

Performed largely on an acoustic guitar with the occasional support of an Appalachian mountain fiddle and pedal steel guitar, "The Ghost Of Tom Joad" is part folk album, part protest record. On the title track, a man sits by a campfire under a bridge, not far from the endless railroad tracks. He is waiting on the ghost of Tom Joad, the hero of John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath". But hopes of salvation in the mid-1990s aren't really much more palpable that ghosts, and you understand that the man sitting and praying by the fire will wait a long time before his deliverance comes.

Now Tom said "Mom, wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there's a fight 'gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I'll be there
Wherever there's somebody fightin' for a place to stand
Or decent job or a helpin' hand
Wherever somebody's strugglin' to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you'll see me".