For Your Pleasure is the second album by the English rock bandRoxy Music, released by Island Records in 1973. It was their last to feature synthesiser and sound specialist Brian Eno, who would later gain acclaim as a solo artist and producer.
Production
The group was able to spend more studio time on this album than on their debut, combining strong song material by Bryan Ferry with more elaborate production treatments. For example, the song "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" fades out in its closing section, only to fade in again with all the instruments subjected to a pronounced phasing treatment. The title track fades out in an elaborate blend of tape loop effects. Brian Eno remarked that the eerie "The Bogus Man", with lyrics about a sexual stalker, displayed similarities with contemporary material by the krautrock group Can. Of the more upbeat numbers on the album, "Do the Strand" and "Editions of You" were both based around insistent rhythms in the tradition of the band's first single "Virginia Plain". "Do the Strand" has been called the archetypal Roxy Music anthem, whilst "Editions of You" was notable for a series of ear-catching solos by Andy Mackay, Eno, and Phil Manzanera. Eno is very present in the final song from the album, "For Your Pleasure" making it unlike any other song on the album. The song ends with the voice of Judi Dench saying "You don't ask. You don't ask why" amid tapes of the opening vocals from "Chance Meeting" from the first Roxy Music album. A live recording of the song has been used in 1975 as a B-side to "Both Ends Burning". The original UK LP cover credits "Produced by Chris Thomas and Roxy Music" for the entire album, but only the side one label repeats that; the side two label credits "Produced by John Anthony and Roxy Music." Various foreign editions and reissues have confused the matter with random variations.
Promotion
As with the debut Roxy Music album, no UK singles were lifted from For Your Pleasure upon its initial release. A non-album single "Pyjamarama" b/w "The Pride and the Pain", was issued in advance of the album in Britain, making #10. "Do the Strand" b/w "Editions of You" was released as a single in the US and Europe; it was finally issued as a UK single in 1978 to promote Roxy's Greatest Hits album, released in December the previous year. The cover photo, taken by Karl Stoecker, featured Bryan Ferry's girlfriend at the time, singer and model Amanda Lear, who later became Salvador Dalí's muse. Original pressings of the album, featured a gatefold sleeve picturing all five band members posing with guitars.
Critical reception
For Your Pleasure made No. 4 in UK charts in 1973. In 2000 Q magazine placed it at number 33 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. In 1973, Paul Gambaccini of Rolling Stone gave it a mixed review, and wrote that "the bulk of For Your Pleasure is either above us, beneath us, or on another plane altogether." However, by 2012, the album was ranked number 396 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It was one of four by the group that made the list. It placed at 87 on Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1970s. The citation notes that Morrissey told the British press that "he could 'only think of one truly great British album: For Your Pleasure." Classic Rock named the album in their list of "10 Essential Glam Rock Albums". NME ranked the album at 88 on their list of 500 greatest albums of all time, and called it "the pinnacle of English art rock." Happy Mag named the album in their list of "10 records to introduce you to the world of art-rock" and called it "an art-pop, glam-rock masterpiece."
