Country Life (Roxy Music album)

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". Eddie 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".

”Three And Nine” was likened to the whimsical fare of Ray Davies, with Ferry looking back nostalgically to a time of watching the moving pictures in cinemas in his youth, for the pre-decimalization price of 3 shillings and ninepence.[11][12]

"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 is sometimes mistakenly thought as a reference to Jerry Hall. However, Ferry would not meet Hall until 1975.[13]

Country Life included Roxy Music's fourth single, "All I Want Is You" b/w "Your Application's Failed", which reached No. 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. The album was released on Atco Records, a division of Atlantic Records.

Shot by Eric Boman,[14] the cover features two scantily-clad models, Constanze Karoli (sister of Can's Michael Karoli[15]) and Eveline Grunwald (who was also Michael Karoli's girlfriend). 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 appearing on the cover, they are credited on the lyric sheet for their German translation work.

The cover image was controversial in some countries such as the United States, Spain, and the Netherlands, where it was censored for release. As a result, early releases in the US were packaged in opaque shrink wrap; 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.[16] Author Michael Ochs has described the result as the "most complete cover-up in rock history".[17]

All songs written by Bryan Ferry except where noted.

Roxy Music

• Bryan Ferry – vocals, keyboards, harmonica
• John Gustafson – bass
• Eddie Jobson – strings, synthesizer, keyboards (credited as 'Edwin Jobson')
• Andy Mackay – oboe, saxophone (credited as 'Andrew Mackay')
• Phil Manzanera – guitar
• Paul Thompson – drums

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 it's the opposite.

• 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"