Roxy Music – "All I Want Is You" (1974)

Somebody told me just the other day

That you're leaving me – we're through

Well, if you knew how it hurt me so

Then you'd change your mind, I’m sure

You’re wrong – that would not change her mind.  (You blew it, stupid.)

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The fourth Roxy Music album, Country Life, was released in 1974, when I was a first-year law student.  I bought a copy at the “Coop” (the Harvard Cooperative Store) and proceeded to play it to death – especially “All I Want Is You” and the track that followed it, “Out of the Blue.”

I must have bought the album soon after it was released, because my copy has the original cover, which features two models (usually described as “scantily-clad,” which is accurate albeit a tad clichéd) who helped translate one verse of the song “Bitter-Sweet” into German:

The original cover was later replaced in the U.S., Spain, and there Netherlands with a more innocuous one:

The original album cover inspired dozens of parodies.  Here are just a few of them:

It was used on t-shirts and umbrellas:

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The critics loved Country Life, which one reviewer said represented “the zenith of contemporary British art rock.”  

Robert Christgau described Roxy’s frontman and primary songwriter, Bryan Ferry, as an “oblique and ambitious” artist.  Ferry can be tiresome – his solo albums are too campy for my taste – but he’s rarely boring.

At heart, Ferry is a romantic  – or, at least, he plays one on Roxy Music’s records.  As he croons in today’s featured song, “L’amour, toujours l'amour.”

Here’s “All I Want Is You”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: