Bruce Springsteen - Land of Hope and Dreams Live (Lyrics)

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The song's origins date to 1998 or early 1999, when it was first written, although the mandolin riff first appeared on the song "Labor of Love" on Joe Gruscheky's 1995 album American Babylon that Springsteen played on. It came during the close of a decade in which Springsteen had parted ways with the E Street Band, gotten married again and had children, and had released very little new music in a rock vein. He later said, "I was having a hard time locating my rock voice. I knew I didn't want it to be what it was, but I didn't know ... I'd made some records over the past years, I made one in '94 that I didn't release. Then I made a series of demos, kind of in search of that voice. And I was having a hard time finding it. And there was a point I said: 'Well, gee, maybe I just don't do that now. Maybe that's something that I did.'" But after writing "Land of Hope and Dreams", he felt it was "as good as any songs like this that I've ever written. It was like, there's that voice I was looking for."

The song was first heard by outsiders in March 1999 during preparations for the Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Reunion Tour. During a series of private rehearsals at Asbury Park, New Jersey's Convention Hall, several dozen of the Springsteen faithful, eager with anticipation at what the long-awaited reunion might bring, stood outside the hall on the cold and windy boardwalk and beach to hear what they could from inside the walls and reporting their findings on several Springsteen Internet forums. It was during one of these rehearsals that fans first heard run-throughs of what they called "The Train Song" or "This Train". When the first public rehearsal performance at Convention Hall was given on March 18, 1999, and then when the tour actually opened on April 9 at Barcelona's Palau Sant Jordi, the song became the tour's closing epic "Land of Hope and Dreams".

Indeed, the one newly written song to be featured during most of the tour, and closing the shows for much of it, was "Land of Hope and Dreams". Musically based in part around The Impressions' "People Get Ready", written by Curtis Mayfield, but set to a loud guitar churn with a sometimes-heard mandolin riff from Steven Van Zandt, lyrically it was a deliberate inversion of the traditional American gospel song first recorded in the 1920s, "This Train", also known as "This Train Is Bound for Glory". (The song is often associated with Woody Guthrie, as the inspiration for his 1943 autobiography Bound for Glory, but to music writer Dave Marsh, Springsteen's song was based more off of Sister Rosetta Tharpe's rendition.) In Springsteen's take, all are welcome on the train - not just "the righteous and the holy" of the original, but "saints and sinners", "losers and winners", "whores and gamblers" - you just get on board. Stretched to eight or more minutes, with several false endings, "Lohad" (as it soon became known to fans in shorthand) represented the culmination of the tour's message of rock and roll revival.