The D.E.A.'s Got a Chopper in The Air4 Out Of 5 Stars
Steve Earle had two well received and critically acclaimed country albums under his belt, but he had been saying all along that he didn't consider himself a country singer. Being a big lefty liberal wasn't endearing him to the staid conservatism of the Music Row establishment. With these worlds colliding, Earle went all in for his third album, 1988's "Copperhead Road." MCA Nashville and MCA Los Angeles were so befuddled by it that they resurrected the old UNI Records imprint to try and find a bridge between the two worlds. And for his part, Earle hit a park on "Copperhead Road" that took him almost a decade to recover from.
The album is, at its absolute best, a perfect ahead of its time blend of rockin' with the new country crew that Earle was initially batched in with. Rock as hard as he wanted to, but he couldn't escape that southern drawl and many of the lyrical tropes of the genre. At the same time, the guitars, drums and overall sound were closer to John Mellencamp than George Strait. The epic title song is all but a Mellencamp record with a tougher lyrical punch; a story about a moonshiner's son who comes back from Vietnam with a bag of pot plants and post traumatic stress disorder. With that kind of content, it's no wonder that the Suits in Nashville didn't know what the fox to do with him. The same with the unknown soldier who is angry about how his Grandfather came home a hero, but he's disabled, standing alone on a runway in San Diego and "there's nobody here, maybe know body knows" (in "Johnny Come Lately").
Earle could still do convincing country, like the gunslinger's lament "Devil's Right Hand" and the pedal steel ballad "Once You Love." All the same, Earle had reached a crossroads, personally and musically. "Copperhead Road" remains his commercial apex and is among his best albums, but his decline into addiction and his overall distrust of the music industry left him stranded until 1995 and "Train a'Comin'." But for the sheer raw power of a battle waged and won, Steve Earle's "Copperhead Road" remains a must listen.
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