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Ghost of Tom Joad Tour
The Ghost of Tom Joad Tour was a worldwide concert tour featuring Bruce Springsteen performing alone on stage in small halls and theatres, that ran off and on from late 1995 through the middle of 1997. It followed the release of his 1995 album The Ghost of Tom Joad.
The tour represented Springsteen's first full-length, solo tour; he traveled with only an instrument technician and a sound engineer. As such it was a marked departure from the high-energy shows with the E Street Band that Springsteen had become famous for. The album itself was quiet, dark, and angry, and Springsteen presented it as such in the shows on the tour. Older songs from Springsteen's catalog, such as "Born in the U.S.A.," were presented in very different, often harsh re-arrangements.
The result, especially in the tour's first leg of shows, was an uncompromising portrayal of pessimism; Jon Pareles of The New York Times said that with the tour's performances, Springsteen "has taken his music to an extreme, a depressive's view of tedious, unending woe." Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune wrote, "In contrast to past tours, which have been celebratory events tinged by introspection, Springsteen brought a sobering sense of solitude" to the shows of this tour. By some of the later shows of the tour, however, Springsteen relaxed the mood a bit by interweaving a few new songs with an almost comedic bent.
The tour began on November 21, 1995, at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The first group of shows ran through the end of the year in major media centers such as Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston.
After a winter holiday break, the show visited other North American cities in January 1996, including a stop in Youngstown, Ohio, due to "Youngstown" being the album track most played on radio.
February and March saw shows in Western Europe, followed by a three-week break during which Springsteen attended the Academy Awards show in Los Angeles. The tour resumed in Europe through early May.
A family man with three small children at the time, Springsteen took off the summer of 1996 and then started again in the U.S. in mid-September, playing smaller markets and colleges, as well as local stops in Asbury Park and his old St. Rose of Lima School in Freehold, and finishing in mid-December.
Another winter holiday break was taken, then in late January 1997 Springsteen took the show to Japan and Australia for three weeks. In May the final leg started up; first Springsteen went to Stockholm to accept the Polar Music Prize, then he toured Central Europe, seeing Austria, Poland, and the Czech Republic, before concluding with additional shows back in Western Europe. The 128th and final show of the tour was on May 26, 1997, at the Palais des congrès in Paris and was attended by hundreds of fans from around the world.
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Ghost of Tom Joad Tour
The Ghost of Tom Joad Tour was a worldwide concert tour featuring Bruce Springsteen performing alone on stage in small halls and theatres, that ran off and on from late 1995 through the middle of 1997. It followed the release of his 1995 album The Ghost of Tom Joad.
The tour represented Springsteen's first full-length, solo tour; he traveled with only an instrument technician and a sound engineer. As such it was a marked departure from the high-energy shows with the E Street Band that Springsteen had become famous for. The album itself was quiet, dark, and angry, and Springsteen presented it as such in the shows on the tour. Older songs from Springsteen's catalog, such as "Born in the U.S.A.," were presented in very different, often harsh re-arrangements.
The result, especially in the tour's first leg of shows, was an uncompromising portrayal of pessimism; Jon Pareles of The New York Times said that with the tour's performances, Springsteen "has taken his music to an extreme, a depressive's view of tedious, unending woe." Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune wrote, "In contrast to past tours, which have been celebratory events tinged by introspection, Springsteen brought a sobering sense of solitude" to the shows of this tour. By some of the later shows of the tour, however, Springsteen relaxed the mood a bit by interweaving a few new songs with an almost comedic bent.
The tour began on November 21, 1995, at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The first group of shows ran through the end of the year in major media centers such as Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston.
After a winter holiday break, the show visited other North American cities in January 1996, including a stop in Youngstown, Ohio, due to "Youngstown" being the album track most played on radio.
February and March saw shows in Western Europe, followed by a three-week break during which Springsteen attended the Academy Awards show in Los Angeles. The tour resumed in Europe through early May.
A family man with three small children at the time, Springsteen took off the summer of 1996 and then started again in the U.S. in mid-September, playing smaller markets and colleges, as well as local stops in Asbury Park and his old St. Rose of Lima School in Freehold, and finishing in mid-December.
Another winter holiday break was taken, then in late January 1997 Springsteen took the show to Japan and Australia for three weeks. In May the final leg started up; first Springsteen went to Stockholm to accept the Polar Music Prize, then he toured Central Europe, seeing Austria, Poland, and the Czech Republic, before concluding with additional shows back in Western Europe. The 128th and final show of the tour was on May 26, 1997, at the Palais des congrès in Paris and was attended by hundreds of fans from around the world.