#14: Copperhead Road by Steve Earle
City: Hamilton, ON
Radio Station: CKOC
Peak Month: February 1989
Peak Position in Hamilton ~ #4
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #21
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ no Hot 100
YouTube: “Copperhead Road”
Lyrics: “Copperhead Road”
Stephen Fain Earle was born in 1955 in Ft. Monroe, Virginia. His father was an air traffic controller and the family moved to San Antonio, Texas, when Earle was a child. Earle began learning the guitar at the age of 11 and entered a school talent contest at age 13. He ran away from home at age 14 to search for his idol, singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt. Earle was “rebellious” as a young man and dropped out of school at the age of 16. He moved to Houston with his 19-year-old uncle, also a musician. While in Houston Earle finally met Van Zandt. Earle was opposed to the Vietnam war as he recalled in 2012: “The anti-war movement was a very personal thing for me. I didn’t finish high school, so I wasn’t a candidate for a student deferment. I was fucking going.” The end of the Selective Service Act and the draft lottery in 1973 prevented him from being drafted, but several of his friends were drafted, which he credits as the origin of his politicization. Earle also noted that when he was a young man, his girlfriend was able to get an abortion despite the fact that abortion was illegal. Her father was a doctor at the local hospital in San Antonio while several other girls he knew at the time were not able to get abortions; they lacked access to those with the necessary power to arrange an abortion, which he credits as the origin of his pro-choice views.