What is the only Bruce Springsteen song not sung by Bruce Springsteen?
While Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band has always been a rather exclusive group to be a part of, with new members only ever being inducted where necessary, The Boss has been known to invite many collaborators to work with him on his songs and has himself appeared as a guest on records by a broad selection of artists such as Lou Reed, Donna Summer and Roy Orbison. However, surely if a song isn’t sung by Springsteen himself, it can’t be a Springsteen song, can it?
Having originally recorded ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ for the album of the same name in 1995, the song is undoubtedly one of his own compositions, and he took on the role of lead vocals on the stripped-back acoustic version heard on the record. The album was released with little fanfare, and the decision to record an album of acoustic Americana ballads was seen as something of a rare misstep by his devoted fans.
However, in the years following its release, one particular superfan allowed the song to go through something of a renaissance and played a huge role in allowing Springsteen to realise exactly how he’d intended for the song to sound. Realising the underappreciated brilliance of the track, guitarist Tom Morello put forward the song for Rage Against the Machine to cover in 1997 and featured on their fourth and final album, Renegades, in 2000. Morello, who describes himself as a “big Bruce Springsteen fan”, wouldn’t have his last interaction with the song after he recorded it with his band either, and there was plenty more for him to achieve with the track.
The Rage Against the Machine version of the song is considerably more electrifying than the original Springsteen version, and the writer himself acknowledged this and realised that he could have a little fun rearranging the track for his own live performances. In 2008, Morello would get his first taste of playing the track alongside Springsteen during a live performance in Anaheim, where alongside the rest of the E Street Band, the two delivered a full band arrangement that more closely resembled the electric presentation of the Rage Against the Machine version.
Five years on from this, while Morello had been working as an official deputy for absent guitarist Steven Van Zandt in the E Street Band, Springsteen would choose to revisit the track once more and re-record the song with Morello in the studio. Taking on a more electric full-band arrangement, the song is not only dramatically changed in this sense but also sees Springsteen rescind his own lead vocal duties so that Morello can take the lead instead.
This re-recorded version eventually made it onto Springsteen’s 2014 album, High Hopes, and remains the only song of his where he is not the lead vocalist – something that Morello is no doubt delighted to lay claim to. The guitarist said in a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone that ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ is one of his best songs and that “this version starts as a plaintive ballad, which feels like a lament, and becomes a full-bore rocker that feels like a threat.”
Springsteen himself has been known to praise this reimagining of the track in years since as well, explaining how the original recording sessions with the E Street Band didn’t go as planned and he was left to record it as an acoustic track, but after years of tinkering with it live, “Tom walked in one night and just exploded the boundaries of the thing and turned it into just something else.”
The sheer admiration that the two parties clearly have for each other meant that this collaboration was always destined to be fruitful, and Springsteen’s gesture of allowing Morello to take the lead on a song that he helped to reinvigorate was the least he could possibly do as a token of appreciation.
