BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD (1995)
1) The Ghost Of Tom Joad; 2)
Straight Time; 3) Highway 29; 4) Youngstown; 5) Sinaloa Cowboys; 6) The Line;
7) Balboa Park; 8) Dry Lightning; 9) The New Timer; 10) Across The Border; 11)
Galveston Bay; 12) My Best Was Never Good Enough.
Perhaps another solo acoustic album, a return
to the simpler-than-simple values of Nebraska,
was precisely what Bruce needed at the time — to help cleanse out some of that
«generic rock» and «adult contemporary» residue that had accumulated to
disturbing levels over the previous ten years. Maybe so, and maybe it is even
so intricately construed that there would be no Rising without Tom Joad,
no reconvening of the E Street Band after a fresh start, and, oh gosh, no Tom
Morello fireworks on subsequent live and studio reinventions of the title
track. And you have to admit, Tom Morello fireworks are exciting, even if you
find them silly.
Nevertheless, to like this album you have to be
very, very warm to the idea of solo
acoustic Springsteen — without the pop-rock hooks, without The Big Man, without
the devilish energy, and, I have to say, without most of the things that make a
Boss out of a mere Bruce. Yes, «naked Bruce» is a very positive, humanistic
soul, and his spiritual connection to Tom Joad and all those waiting for the
chimes of freedom is natural and almost certainly sincere. But last time I
checked, The Ghost Of Tom Joad was
billed as a new musical album with twelve new songs on it, and this is what we are here for, songs. Melodies. Moods. Chords. And a little freshness.
Instead of this, we get hardcore — real hardcore. Aside from the
instrumentation, which is actually a little less sparse than on Nebraska (some occasional percussion,
some occasional accordeon, and a lot of hazy, foggy synthesizer background,
fortunately, pushed very deep in the
background so it does not even begin to threaten to overshadow the gentle
guitar picking), this is a record that serves one and only one noble, but
narrow purpose: make you, the
listening receptacle, deeply feel the sad and lonesome plight of the common
man. First, the ghost of Tom Joad is summoned as a non-living witness (and
potential protector), and then, one by one, we go through a gallery of
characters, already known to us all too well, I'm afraid — but this time, there
is no getting away from the characters, because nothing stands in the way
between them and you. Nothing except a little bit of soft, quiet guitar
plucking to get you in the mood. Well, there has to be some difference between listening to this record or to an audiobook
version of Grapes Of Wrath
(personally, I'd still prefer the latter).
Okay, so it might be fine not to have any
original melodies. A few of these songs are almost exactly the same, and many
more just recycle the chords of gazillions of folk tunes that people were
composing and re-composing before Woody Guthrie, after Woody Guthrie, and being
Woody Guthrie. It is not technically impossible, though, to reinvent these
melodies one more time in some new context. But that is not Bruce's point here
— no, the point is to strip them down to the barest of the bare, cut straight
to the heart and stay there, wiggling the knife a little to the left and a
little to the right, until the very end. The problem is, when you just do it
like that, the process is not very interesting to watch.
It is useless to discuss these songs one by
one: all of them set and hold exactly the same gray melancholic mood, mixing a
little bit of hope for a brighter future to the desolation and desperation of
present conditions. Are the lyrics any good? Sometimes they are, sometimes they
aren't; even for an undoubtedly talented person such as Bruce, it gets hard to
find new ways to state the same common old truths (so sometimes he resorts to
almost literally quoting Steinbeck). It really does not matter, though: be they
randomly strung together bunches of dusty clichés or a genuine verbal
revolution, they are always delivered in exactly the same way, and you know
what way it is. The way you'd expect a singer to sing after he'd just finished
unloading a couple of trucks or climbed out of a coal mine. Nothing bad about
that, but... maybe not for 50 minutes without a single second of respite.
Unfortunately, I do not subscribe to the idea
that anything (a) acoustic, (b)
relating to the plight of the simple person, (c) «composed» and performed by
Bruce Springsteen should automatically be praised to high heaven because it is
so sincere, emotional, and deep. Sincere, perhaps; but way too predictable and
formulaic to deserve to be called emotional, and «deep» only if you have had no
prior experiences with folk music whatsoever. Moreover, I have a gut feeling
that with the level of the man's undeniable talent, he could crank another Ghost Of Tom Joad maybe once every
couple of months, and would we be supposed to cheer every single goddamn time? My
decision, made up a long time ago, still stands: Bruce Springsteen has too
little diversity, subtlety, or (very importantly) sense of humor in his bones
to make successful acoustic albums. At least Nebraska had an element of surprise to it (and, actually, some bits
of composing — ʽAtlantic Cityʼ alone is worth Ghost in its entirety), but this here is just totally pedestrian
stuff, and my conscience will not bother me if I reinforce a thumbs down
judgement here. Just do yourself a favor and go read (or re-read) some
Steinbeck instead. Or hear the electric version of the title track with Morello
— at least, you know, that's entertainment.
Well, after recording all of those poppy love songs, Bruce decided that he needed to get serious again. What he forgot is that you don’t have to be boring to be serious. He deliberately minimized the melodies here, perhaps because he thought that it would force the listener to pay more attention to the lyrics. But that has the exact opposite effect. My attention drifts when I listen to this album. Catchiness my not be artistic, but it can hold somebody until the point is made.
ReplyDeleteBruce seems to have missed something when he read Steinbeck. When you read his work, there’s an underlying outrage over what is happening to his characters. That makes the reader care about them. Here, Bruce just gives us endless pathos and despair. It’s like staring endlessly at the Oklahoma Dust Bowl – monotonous to the end, but that doesn’t necessarily make one feel more involved or ennobled.
I do think that that the title track does deserve classic Bruce status. “Youngstown” is also pretty good, although it would come across better live. And, mind-boggingly enough, "My Best Was Never Good Enough" is actually FUNNY, amusingly stringing clichés together and spoofing them. The rest – well, maybe a song on a random playlist every now and then. Putting them altogether at once, though, is like being my 10-year-old trapped in the house on rainy day.