Roxy Music: “For Your Pleasure” gets reborn with a deluxe reissue, featuring unreleased tracks, live material, a DVD and a book

Roxy Music return to one of the defining chapters of their history with a new, monumental edition of "For Your Pleasure", the British band's landmark second album, released in 1973. The reissue will come in several formats and will dig deep into the making of the record through unreleased demos, home recordings, rehearsals, outtakes from AIR Studios, BBC sessions, live performances and a wealth of archival material.

The genesis of the album

"For Your Pleasure" marked a decisive turning point in the evolution of Roxy Music. Following the previous year's debut, Bryan Ferry and his bandmates radically expanded the possibilities of their glam rock, pushing it into darker, more experimental and sophisticated territory. It was also the last album to feature Brian Eno in the lineup, alongside Ferry, Andy Mackay, Phil Manzanera and Paul Thompson. In Britain the album reached number four on the charts, outselling the debut and definitively cementing the band's reputation.
Among its tracks were "Do The Strand", "Beauty Queen", "Editions Of You", "In Every Dream Home A Heartache", "The Bogus Man", "Grey Lagoons" and the title track, while the single "Virginia Plain", released between the first two albums, had already propelled Roxy Music toward major success. Over the decades, "For Your Pleasure" would go on to become one of the defining records of British art rock and one of the most influential works in the band's entire catalogue.

Looking back on the album in a 2022 interview with The Guardian, Ferry explained: "The first album was interesting and clearly pointed in several directions, but 'For Your Pleasure' was an important album for me. We'd been on tour and had a lot more experience and cohesion. We recorded at Air Studios with the engineers in white coats, high above Oxford Street, with people running around below. We felt like we were at the centre of everything. The album just felt more mature: darker, with better singing."
The debut's success had also changed the way Ferry approached songwriting. If the first record had been made without knowing what audience it would find, this time Ferry felt a new sense of responsibility: "It was a positive pressure. I realised there was now an audience to write for. An intelligent audience. I felt a responsibility for the work that I hadn't felt for the first album, especially when it came to the lyrics. There was a huge appetite to do more across the whole band: a very strong desire to get back into the recording studio and make a record better than the first. Nick de Ville had a cottage in Derbyshire and offered to lend it to me for a few days. So I went there with the sole purpose of writing songs."

Ferry then loaded his Renault 4 with keyboards, guitar, amplifier, tape recorders, notepads and pens and moved into the isolated cottage for a few days. "I was completely alone there, focused only on writing. I remember sheets of paper scattered across the floor, while I worked on pieces like 'In Every Dream Home A Heartache' and 'Editions Of You'. Those few days in that cottage were crucial to the making of 'For Your Pleasure'."
It's precisely those early creative stages that take centre stage in the new reissue. The tapes recorded in Derbyshire and later at Ferry's London flat have survived for over half a century and are now being unearthed, allowing listeners to trace the evolution of the songs from their first sparks of inspiration to their final versions.

The unreleased track previewing the reissue

Previewing the reissue is "Grey Lagoons – 1971 Demo", the first version of what was known at the time as "The Bogus Man Part 2". The track was part of the home-recorded tape with which Roxy Music had first begun to catch the attention of the music press. In the Super Deluxe Edition, the story of "Grey Lagoons" can be traced through multiple documents: alongside the 1971 demo, there's an AIR Studios outtake, the first live performance at the BBC Paris Theatre in London in August 1972, and a version recorded in Montreux in April 1973. Two clips from the BBC archives also document the song's transformation over the space of just a few months.

The various formats

The new edition of "For Your Pleasure" will be released in numerous configurations. There will be a 2LP version on 140-gram black vinyl and a limited edition on Blue Pearl vinyl, both with a gatefold sleeve and previously unreleased material from AIR Studios, alongside 2CD, digital and Blu-ray editions. The latter will feature the album in new Dolby Atmos, 5.1 and stereo mixes, together with "Pyjamarama", instrumental versions, live sessions and studio outtakes; some additional 5.1 mixes were created by Steven Wilson.
The heart of the release, however, is the 3CD+DVD Super Deluxe Edition. The first CD reproduces "For Your Pleasure" in full, while the second gathers twenty recordings including demos, rehearsals and studio discards. These include home sketches of "Pyjamarama", "Do The Strand", "Beauty Queen", "Editions Of You", "In Every Dream Home A Heartache" and "For Your Pleasure", the 1973 rehearsals of "Pyjamarama" and "The Bogus Man", the 1971 demo of "Grey Lagoons" and numerous recordings made at Air Studios.
The third CD focuses instead on the live, radio and instrumental side of things. Besides the first live performance of "Grey Lagoons" at the BBC Paris Theatre in August 1972, it includes the session of "For Your Pleasure" recorded for John Peel in November of that same year and the March 1973 sessions devoted to "Do The Strand", "Editions Of You" and "Pyjamarama", along with singles and instrumental versions.

The DVD and the book

Rounding out the Super Deluxe Edition will be a DVD and a 116-page book, featuring rare and previously unseen photographs, Ferry's lyrics and working notes, reproductions of the original boxes and tapes, tour dates and other archival material. The book also includes an approximately 7,000-word essay built from new interviews with band members, producers and people involved in the making of the album, alongside a contribution from Michael Bracewell.
Special space is also devoted to Nick de Ville, a friend of Ferry's since their university days in Newcastle and a key figure in shaping Roxy Music's visual identity. Besides lending the cottage where part of the material for "For Your Pleasure" was written, de Ville helped create some of the band's most celebrated album covers, effectively acting as art director at a time when music, fashion, photography and design were inseparable elements of Roxy Music's identity.

The full tracklist

CD1 – "For Your Pleasure"

1. Do The Strand
2. Beauty Queen
3. Strictly Confidential
4. Editions Of You
5. In Every Dream Home A Heartache
6. The Bogus Man
7. Grey Lagoons
8. For Your Pleasure

CD2 – Demos, Rehearsals & Studio Outtakes

1. Pyjamarama – guitar & vocal
2. Do The Strand – piano & vocal
3. Beauty Queen – tremolo piano
4. Beauty Queen – electric piano
5. Beauty Queen – piano & vocal
6. Strictly Confidential (segue into)
7. Editions Of You – electric piano
8. In Every Dream Home A Heartache – farfisa & guitar
9. In Every Dream Home A Heartache – tremolo guitar
10. For Your Pleasure – electric piano
11. Pyjamarama – Rehearsal 1973
12. Bogus Man – Rehearsal 1973
13. Grey Lagoons – 1971 Demo (Original title The Bogus Man Part 2)
14. Pyjamarama – AIR Studios outtake
15. Beauty Queen – AIR Studios outtake
16. Strictly Confidential – AIR Studios outtakes
17. Editions Of You – AIR Studios outtake
18. The Bogus Man – AIR Studios outtake
19. Grey Lagoons – AIR Studios outtake
20. For Your Pleasure – Eno tapes

CD3 – Live Sessions, Singles & Instrumentals

1. Grey Lagoons – BBC Paris Theatre (London) August 1972 (first live performance)
2. For Your Pleasure – Peel Sessions November 1972
3. Do The Strand – Peel Sessions March 1973
4. Editions Of You – Peel Sessions March 1973
5. Pyjamarama – Peel Sessions March 1973

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