Tom Morello "The Ghost of Tom Joad" live at "Rolling Stone"

The Ghost of Tom Joad by Bruce Springsteen (1995)

Men walkin' 'long the railroad tracks

Goin' someplace there's no goin' back

Highway patrol choppers comin' up over the ridge

Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge

Shelter line stretchin' round the corner

Welcome to the new world order

Families sleepin' in their cars in the southwest

No home no job no peace no rest

The highway is alive tonight

But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes

I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light

Searchin' for the ghost of Tom Joad

He pulls prayer book out of his sleeping bag

Preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag

Waitin' for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last

In a cardboard box 'neath the underpass

Got a one-way ticket to the promised land

You got a hole in your belly and gun in your hand

Sleeping on a pillow of solid rock

Bathin' in the city aqueduct

The highway is alive tonight

But where it's headed everybody knows

I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light

Waitin' on the ghost of Tom Joad

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."

The highway is alive tonight

But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes

I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light

With the ghost of old Tom Joad

 Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

Link to Morello w/Springsteen, Coachella 2010 video, and info on John Steinbeck, Henry Fonda, "The Grapes of Wrath", and Tom Joad

John Kennedy, Jr. once said that the entire progressive agenda was best encapsulated in Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom", but maybe this Steinbeck/Springsteen number comes a close second....