Live 08 May 1981 version
[Spoken intro:] In uh... in America, you're... from the, from time you're a little kid, all ??? your life and ???. And there's a promise that gets made, and it's... over there, I guess, it's called, they call it the American Dream or... which is just, just the right to be able to live your life with uh... with some decency and some dignity. But... (cheers) over there and in a lot of places in the world now, that that dream, that's only true for very, very few people, you know. (cheers) It seems if you weren't, if you weren't born into the right place, or if you didn't come from the right town, or if you believe in something that, that's different from the next person, you know, uh... Right now there's a lot of, in the States there's a lot of, there's a lot of hard times, and... when that happens there's always a resurgence of the kinds of groups like, uh, Ku Klux Klan and National Socialists. (boos) And it seems like the hard times turn the people against each other, people that have common interests, people that don't understand that, that... that the enemy is not, is not the guy down the street that looks different from you, you know. (cheers) But it's hard, it's hard in the States because the enemy is this something that when you're brought up as a kid, you're taught to respect, you know, like it's something different, uh... it's something that you can't see, it's something that's invisible and it's something that works on you and eats you away inside every day of your life and twists us and the countries that we have into, into, into nothing. So, this is a song by a guy named Woody Guthrie. (cheers) And... he, he understood what the world is about. And... it's just a song about living free, about the land that you live in should belong to each and every one of you and that you have the right and a promise to life, to fulfilling yourself inside (cheers).
Well once I rode that ribbon highway
I saw above me the endless sky
I saw below me the golden valley
Oh this land was made for you and me
I roamed and I rambled, and I followed my footsteps
Through the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was crying
It sighed this land was made for you and me
Well the sun came shining as I went strolling
Through the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
And the bells were ringing and the fog was lifting
Yeah this land was made for you and me
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forests to the Gulf Stream waters
Oh this land was made for you and me
This land was made for you and me
The above lyrics are for the live 08 May 1981 performance of THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND at Johanneshovs Isstadion in Stockholm, Sweden, during The River Tour. The song was played in a solo acoustic guitar and harmonica arrangement. This version exceptionally has Springsteen repeating the last line of the song.
List of available versions of THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND on this website:
THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND [1988 studio version]
