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Country Life (Roxy Music album)

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Untitled
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[2]
Rolling Stone[3]
Robert Christgau(B+)[4]
Piero Scaruffi[5]

Country Life is the fourth album by British rock band Roxy Music, released in 1974 and reaching #3 in the UK charts. It also made #37 in the United States, their first record to crack the Top 40 there. The album is considered by many critics to be among the band's most sophisticated and consistent. Ferry took the album's title from the British rural lifestyle magazine Country Life.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 387 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It was one of four Roxy Music albums that made the list (For Your Pleasure, Siren and Avalon being the others).[6]

Style and themes

The opening track, "The Thrill of it All", was an up-tempo rocker that further developed the style of songs like "Virginia Plain" (1972) and "Do the Strand" (1973); it included a quote from Dorothy Parker's poem "Resume": "You might as well live". Edwin Jobson's violin dominated the heavily-flanged production of "Out of the Blue", which became a live favourite. Esoteric musical influences were betrayed by the German oom-pah band passages in "Bitter-Sweet", the Elizabethan flavour of "Triptych" and the lighthearted, boogie-blues, Southern rock edge to "If It Takes All Night".

"Casanova" was singled out for praise by a number of critics as a more cynical and hard-rocking number than the usual Roxy Music fare. Like the earlier "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" (1973), it was seen as a critique of the hollowness of the contemporary jet set, and contained further instances of Bryan Ferry's idiosyncratic word association ("Now you're nothing but / Second hand in glove / With second rate"). A re-recorded version, more mellow than the original, appeared on Ferry's 1976 solo album Let's Stick Together.

The final track, "Prairie Rose", was an ode to Texas and one of its daughters, Jerry Hall, Ferry's new girlfriend, who was soon to appear on the cover of Roxy Music's fifth album, Siren (1975), and later in the video to Ferry's hit single "Let's Stick Together".

Country Life included Roxy Music's fourth single, "All I Want Is You" b/w "Your Application's Failed", which reached #12 in the UK charts. An edited version of "The Thrill of It All", with the same B-side, was released in the United States.

Cover art

The cover features two scantily-clad models, Constanze Karoli (reportedly either the sister or the cousin of Can's Michael Karoli) and Eveline Grunwald. Bryan Ferry met them in Portugal and persuaded them to do the photo shoot as well as to help him with the words to the song "Bitter-Sweet". Although not credited for their photos they are credited on the lyric sheet for their German translation work.

The cover image was considered controversial in some countries such as the United States, Spain, and the Netherlands, where it was censored for release. As a result, a later American LP release of Country Life (available during the years 1975-80) featured a different cover shot. Instead of Karoli and Grunwald posed in front of some trees, the reissue used a photo from the album's back cover that featured only the trees.[7] Author Michael Ochs has described the result as the "most complete cover-up in rock history".[8]

The cover art has been mimicked by

Track listing

All songs written by Bryan Ferry except where noted.

Side One

  1. "The Thrill of It All" – 6:24
  2. "Three and Nine" (Ferry, Andy Mackay) – 4:04
  3. "All I Want Is You" – 2:53
  4. "Out of the Blue" (Ferry, Phil Manzanera) – 4:46
  5. "If It Takes All Night" – 3:12

Side Two

  1. "Bitter-Sweet" (Ferry, Mackay) – 4:50
  2. "Triptych" – 3:09
  3. "Casanova" – 3:27
  4. "A Really Good Time" – 3:45
  5. "Prairie Rose" (Ferry, Manzanera) – 5:12

Personnel

Note: On the 1999 CD reissue of Country Life, Paul Thompson is credited for playing guitar and Phil Manzanera is credited for playing drums, when in fact the reverse is true.

Charts

Album

Year Chart Position
1974 UK Albums Chart 3
Billboard Pop Albums 37

Single

Year Single Chart Position
1974 "All I Want Is You" UK Singles Chart 12

Certifications

Organization Level Date
BPI - UK Gold March 1, 1975

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Strong, Martin C. (2006). The Essential Rock Discography. Edinburgh: Canongate. p. 930. ISBN 1841958603.
  2. ^ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "allmusic ((( Country Life > Review )))". Allmusic. Retrieved March 17, 2010.
  3. ^ Brackett, Nathan. "Roxy Music". The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. November 2004. pg. 705, cited March 17, 2010
  4. ^ Christgau, Robert. "Roxy Music". robertchristgau.com, Retrieved on March 17, 2010.
  5. ^ Scaruffi, Piero. "Roxy Music". pieroscaruffi.com (Italian). Retrieved on March 17, 2010.
  6. ^ The RS 500 Greatest Albums of All Time : Rolling Stone
  7. ^ Both covers compared
  8. ^ Michael Ochs (2002). Record Covers, Taschen, p.545
  9. ^ Love & Desperation - compare the album cover with Country Life's

References

  • Rex Balfour (1976). The Bryan Ferry Story
  • David Buckley (2004). The Thrill of it All: The Story of Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music
  • Todd Burns (2004). Stylus Magazine: "Under the Covers"
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