(Credits: Far Out / Island Records)
Few bands manage to define an era as effectively as Roxy Music. Arguably the definitive band of the 1970s, the Bryan Ferry-fronted art-rock outfit played a major influence on styles ranging from the glitz of glam rock to the sweating rebellion of new wave punk. As daring as their musical discography was, it pales in comparison to the shocking nature of the band’s album covers.
Throughout the early part of their career, Roxy Music became known for featuring prominent, often scantily clad, models on their album covers. Their eponymous debut, for instance, featured an image of Bond girl Kari-Ann Muller, dressed in satin and evoking glamour shoots of the 1940s and ’50s. Muller’s cover set a precedent for all future Roxy Music albums, often featuring Playboy models such as Marilyn Cole – who featured on 1973’s Stranded. For their 1974 effort, Country Life, however, Ferry took the artwork of Roxy Music to bold and fairly questionable new heights.
It is fairly well-documented that most of the Roxy Music cover stars had a brief fling with frontman Bryan Ferry, which makes the cover of Country Life all the more problematic. Featuring two women wearing very little clothing amid a backdrop of foliage, the cover stars were reportedly Roxy Music fans that Ferry had happened to meet at a bar in Portugal.
The cover models were Constanze Karoli and Eveline Grunwald. The former was the sister of CAN’s Michael Karoli, while Grunwald was reportedly his girlfriend at the time. Prior to the photoshoot, carried out by Eric Boman, the pair had also helped Ferry to translate part of the track ‘Bitter-Sweet’ into German. They were not credited for their appearance on the cover, though they got name-dropped on the inserted lyric sheet for their help translating ‘Bitter-Sweet’.
With Karoli appearing topless on the cover, next to Grunwald, who was clad only in sheer underwear, Country Life was deemed too controversial for some markets. Initial copies of the album in the US were sold in black shrinkwrap so that customers could not see the obscenities beneath. Future pressings of the Roxy Music album featured an alternate cover, which saw Constanze and Eveline removed from the cover entirely, opting instead for the background foliage to take centre stage.
Although the US version of the album reverted back to the original cover art during the 1980s, the censorship of Country Life remains an interesting look at both the careers of Roxy Music and the degree of artistic repression within the music industry. Country Life, of course, was not the first album cover to be censored or deemed ‘obscene’. Over the years, everybody from The Beatles to Dead Kennedys has caused controversy with their album artwork.
Regardless of the album’s controversial and censored artwork, the music contained within the record is undeniable. One of art rock’s finest efforts, Country Life cemented Ferry and Roxy Music as being among the most innovative and exciting artists in the world. In fact, it is likely the controversial nature of the album’s cover turned more people onto Roxy Music, buying the album through sheer curiosity. Perhaps that explains Ferry’s desire to use models for his album covers despite his background in art and painting.