Will the Wolf Survive?

Hidalgo and Perez wrote it, and T-Bone Burnett and Berlin produced it with a drum machine; the single's B-side was "The Breakdown". It reached 78 on the Hot 100 and 26 on Top Rock Tracks. Perez told American Songwriter that a National Geographic cover showed a wolf with an article titled "How Can the Wolf Survive?", that Hidalgo came up with a skeletal chorus and the start of a verse walking the room with an acoustic guitar, and that he wrote the rest. The final verse is about the US punk and new-music scene and band camaraderie, with shared trucks. He said the song is about keeping alive what they believed in, Mexican-American efforts to preserve culture and fathers' traditions, and is about America.

Waylon Jennings recorded it for MCA, released on May 17, 1986 and reaching 5 on Hot Country Songs; Tony Joe White introduced him to the song, and Perez called the version great. Los Lobos played it at the 2015 Americana Music Honors and Awards, where they received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Performance, and Medialoper's Jim Connelly recalls them opening for the Clash at the Warnors Theatre in Fresno around its release, booed for not being punk. We found no director for the video; our upload is presumably the album track.