Roxy Music: an early, previously unreleased version of “Pyjamarama” unveiled. A reissue of “For Your Pleasure” is on the way

Roxy Music are revisiting their own past with a previously unreleased version of "Pyjamarama", one of the most representative singles of their early years, originally released in 1973. The recording, which documents a still embryonic stage of the song's composition, anticipates the new reissue of "For Your Pleasure", the second, milestone album by the band led by Bryan Ferry, due out in early November via Umr/Island Emi in a multi-format edition including CD, vinyl, Blu-ray and DVD.
Among the rarities recovered is also footage of Roxy Music's appearance on "Top of the Pops" from March 1973. The footage, long thought lost from the BBC archives for decades, was recently rediscovered in the private collection of DJ Roger Hill, offering a precious televised record of the band's early days. Watch the video below.

The genesis of "Pyjamarama" also tells a curious story about the collaboration between Ferry and guitarist Phil Manzanera. A vintage photograph taken by Ian Dickson shows the two musicians working on the song's structure using a blue Hagstrom guitar. Ferry, still fairly inexperienced on the instrument, wanted to try his hand at playing guitar himself, and Manzanera came up with a solution to make it easier for him: an open tuning that let him run through the chord progression simply by shifting his hand between four positions along the neck. The trick, simple as it seemed, ended up causing complications during the studio sessions. The slack string tension made it hard to keep the tuning stable, while Manzanera had to build solos, countermelodies and overdubs around a decidedly unusual guitar structure.

The release of these recordings offers a glimpse into the creative workshop of early Roxy Music, at a time when the lineup of Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera was forging a language capable of combining art-rock, electronic experimentation, glam flourishes and pop sophistication. Released in March 1973, "For Your Pleasure" would go on to represent one of the defining moments of that pursuit, as well as the band's last album to feature Eno as a full member. The recovery of the early version of "Pyjamarama" and the period television footage thus adds new pieces to the story of a band destined to exert a profound influence on later generations of British rock, from post-punk to new wave.

The genesis of the album

"For Your Pleasure" marked a decisive turning point in the evolution of Roxy Music. After the previous year's debut, Bryan Ferry and co. radically expanded the possibilities of their glam rock, pushing it toward darker, more experimental and sophisticated territory. It was also the last album the band made with Brian Eno as a full member, alongside Ferry, Andy Mackay, Phil Manzanera and Paul Thompson. In Britain the album reached number four on the charts, outperforming the debut commercially and firmly 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 following decades, "For Your Pleasure" would become one of the emblematic 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 much 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 success of the debut had also changed the way they approached songwriting. While 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 real drive to do more throughout 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".

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