From the Hip

Everybody loves to quote the immortal line from Shakespeare: “Kill all the lawyers.” Now Al Stewart, who returns this week with a new album called “Last Days of the Century,” is throwing darts at highly paid attorneys (though he somehow failed to single out any of our fave music-biz legal eagles). In his song “License to Steal,” Stewart blasts lawyers as “ambulance chasers” with “greed hard to conceal.” He adds: “We should throw them in chains, chastise them and rebuke them, if it doesn’t work we ought to take ‘em out and nuke ‘em, blow a lawyer to pieces, don’t wait for a thesis, do it today.” . . . Steve Earle’s new album, “Copperhead Road,” is due this fall from Uni Records. New songs include “Snake Oil,” “Back to the Wall,” “The Devil’s Right Hand” and “Nothing But a Child.” . . . And meanwhile, we hear that sister label, MCA, is finishing up negotiations which will whisk the Judds away from RCA and to Universal City (One clue that the Judds’ contract is up--RCA’s just released a greatest hits collection from the mom-daughter duo). . . . And the Everly Brothers’ new album, “Some Hearts,” is due out in early September on PolyGram Records. The duo wrote most of the material themselves, with the exception of two outside tracks--John Hiatt’s “Single Solitary Heart” and a remake of “Don’t Worry Baby,” with both the Beach Boys and the Everlys on harmony vocals.