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Live 07 Apr 2008 version
[Spoken intro:] I've got a close friend of mine here with me tonight, gonna come up and do a song — Mr. Tommy Morello from Rage Against The Machine! Come on Tommy. Tommy also makes great acoustic records with the name of "The Nightwatchman". Let's try it.
| Bruce Springsteen: | Men walking 'long the railroad tracks |
| Going someplace, there's no going back | |
| Highway patrol choppers coming up over the ridge | |
| Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge | |
| Shelter line stretching around the corner | |
| Welcome to the new world order | |
| Families sleeping in the cars in the southwest | |
| No home, no job, no peace, no rest | |
| Bruce Springsteen: | Well the highway is alive tonight |
| But nobody's kidding nobody about where it goes | |
| I'm sitting down here in the campfire light | |
| Searching for the ghost of Tom | |
| Tom Morello: | He pulls a prayer book out of his sleeping bag |
| Preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag | |
| Waiting for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last | |
| In a cardboard box 'neath the underpass | |
| You got a one-way ticket to the promised land | |
| You got a hole in your belly and a gun in your hand | |
| Sleeping on a pillow of solid rock | |
| Bathing in the city's aqueduct | |
| Springsteen and Morello: | The highway is alive tonight |
| Where it's headed everybody knows | |
| I'm sitting down here in the campfire light | |
| Waiting on the ghost of Tom Joad | |
| Bruce Springsteen: | Now Tom said, "Mom, wherever there's a cop beating a guy |
| Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries | |
| Where there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air | |
| Look for me, Mom, I'll be there | |
| Tom Morello: | Wherever somebody's fighting for a place to stand |
| For a decent job or a helping hand | |
| Wherever somebody's struggling to be free | |
| Look in their eyes, Ma, you'll see me" | |
| Springsteen and Morello: | Well the highway is alive tonight |
| But nobody's kidding nobody about where it goes | |
| I'm sitting down here in the campfire light | |
| With the ghost of old Tom Joad | |
| Well the highway is alive tonight | |
| But nobody's fooling nobody about where it goes | |
| I'm sitting down here in the campfire light | |
| With the ghost of old Tom Joad | |
| With the ghost of old Tom Joad | |
| With the ghost of old Tom Joad |
[Spoken outro:] Tom Morello! Rage Against The Machine! The Nightwatchman!
The above lyrics are for the live 07 Apr 2008 performance of THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD at Honda Center in Anaheim, CA, during the Magic Tour. The song was performed as a duet with Tom Morello in a full-band rock arrangement similar to the 2014 album version. This live 07 Apr 2008 version of THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD was officially released on the Magic Tour Highlights digital EP in 2008.
The entire live 07 Apr 2008 performance of THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD was posted on Bruce Springsteen's VEVO YouTube channel on 02 Oct 2009.
The 07 Apr 2008 show in Anaheim, CA, was the first time that THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD was played in this full-band re-arrangement. In a December 2013 interview for Rolling Stone, Bruce Springsteen told Andy Greene:
My cousin Lenny [Sullivan] was a huge Rage Against the Machine fan and he said, "They did 'The Ghost of Tom Joad.'" I said, "Really?" But it sounds great. Then Tom came to a few shows, and he knows my sister in Los Angeles, and over a very long period of time we kinda became friendly. It was many, many years before we said, "Why don't you come up and play? Let's find something you can play on." In other words, "Let's find a way to take what you do and take what I do, [and] let's find the crossroads where they intersect." I can remember, it was in Los Angeles, and he came up and played the "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and the place exploded in probably one of the loudest crowd responses I've heard in all the years we've been playing. It was just like something explosive happened.
[...] That was something we worked out at the soundcheck that day. We probably played [the song] maybe two or three times at the soundcheck, and then played it live. And then if Tom came out, it became something we did together. So then it became, "Where does this lead? This is fascinating. It extends the power of the band. Where does it go?" That's something that I've been thinking about for quite a while. And so this group of music was sort of like, "Let's put our feet in the water a little bit here and see what happens if we take that place where we intersect." It was kind of done very casually, and relatively quickly, but it was, once again, sort of just a place where lightning struck. We're getting close to that place, and bang: lightning strikes. Something exciting happens and something expanding happens. That's what he brings.
On 15 Jul 2008, Columbia Records released Magic Tour Highlights, a Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band download-only digital EP consisting of four live audio tracks and their accompanying videos. The performances were recorded in March and April 2008 during the Magic Tour, and feature guest musicians, as well as Danny Federici's last performance with the group. Bob Clearmountain mixed and Bob Ludwig mastered the songs. Frequent Springsteen collaborator and Grammy and Emmy Award winner Thom Zimny edited the videos.
The songs on the EP are not the Magic Tour's "highlights", but more of a sampling of some of the tour's best guest spots.
Magic Tour Highlights was not released commercially on a physical format, but some CD-R's were issued in the United States and Europe for promotional use.
The EP is available for download from all major digital downloads stores, including the iTunes Store and Amazon.com. The net proceeds from the sales of Magic Tour Highlights support The Danny Federici Melanoma Fund. These include the artists', the songwriters', and the music publishers' royalties, in addition to all Columbia Records' net profits. The iTunes Store donated their first year's net profits as well.
The Danny Federici Melanoma Fund was started shortly after Frederici's death, and is dedicated to the research and development treatments for melanoma through funding for clinical trials at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The fund also aims to help raise awareness for the disease.
The live 07 Apr 2008 version of THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD was also released on a Record Store Day exclusive single in 2010.
List of available versions of THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD on this website:
THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD [1995 album version]
