Review: Roxy Music – For Your Pleasure (1973)

For Your Pleasure is the second studio album by Roxy Music, formed in 1971.

In the early 1970s, aspiring singer/songwriter Bryan Ferry auditioned for King Crimson to replace Greg Lake. He didn’t get the job, but Robert Fripp recommended Ferry to his management company EG as a promising talent. In 1971, Ferry began putting together his own band through a newspaper ad, which was answered by classically trained wind player Andy Mackay and his friend, keyboardist/non-musician Brian Eno.

Ferry was determined to have David O’List, whom he knew from The Nice, as the guitarist, and through a lucky (?) coincidence, O’List joined the band. However, the collaboration did not work out due to O’List’s huge ego and substance abuse problems. Ferry replaced the unreliable superstar with another prog rocker, Phil Manzanara, who had been hanging around the band for some time.

Paul Thompson, who came from a working-class background, was hired as the drummer, an exception among the Roxy Music crew, who had mostly come from the art school world. The bassist position in the band has always been a turbulent one, with both Graham ‘Crybaby’ Simpson and Rik Kenton playing on the debut album.

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The inner jackets of the Four Your Pleasure vinyl showcase the colourful band. From left to right: Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, Bryan Ferry, Andy Mackay and Paul Thompson.

Roxy Music became an instant success with their eponymous debut album (produced by King Crimson’s Peter Sinfield) in 1972. The debut is a fascinating and original album in all its retrofuturism. Drawing on influences ranging from avant-garde to 1950s rock, Roxy Music’s music is a unique blend of glam rock and art rock. Roxy Music helped define both genres, even though they did not originate either of them. The debut album contains a few truly magnificent songs, but as a whole it is somewhat uneven. On their second album, For Your Pleasure, which also marked the beginning of the band’s long collaboration with producer Chris Thomas, Roxy Music clearly improved.

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Bryan Ferry: art direction ja kansikonsepti
Karl Stoecker : valokuva

For Your Pleasure begins with the exuberantly confident and delicious rock number ‘Do The Strand,’ in which Ferry sings about an imaginary dance craze called the strand. Ferry’s staccato piano is nicely supported by Mackay’s raucous saxophone. Ferry’s vocal performance on this track is typically exaggerated, and his unique emphasis on words is truly delightful to hear. As a vocalist, Ferry is like a combination of Elvis and Count Dracula. Ferry makes even the more conventional songs on the album, such as the beautiful ‘Beauty Queen’, sound delightfully strange, crooning and snarling the lyrics.

The most delicious moments of For Your Pleasure are its two strangest tracks, ‘In Every Dream Home a Heartache’ and ‘Bogus Man’. ‘In Every Dream Home a Heartache’, which tells the story of an inflatable doll, is a truly unusual song that is at once strangely touching and delightfully funny. The song is a magnificent study of materialism and the distancing of genuine human contact. The protagonist, shut away in a world of luxury, finds the partner of his dreams in an inflatable doll ordered via mail order. At the climax of this slowly building, fairly minimalist song, the music finally explodes and Ferry sings poignantly:

”Inflatable doll
Lover ungrateful
I blew up your body
But you blew my mind”

In the background, Manzanera’s electric guitar writhes like a snake, its sound manipulated by Brian Eno on his VCS3 synthesiser to create an extremely psychedelic effect. A magnificent song.

The second highlight of the album is the slightly krautrock-esque, nine-minute-long ”Bogus Man”, which follows immediately after ”Dream Home”. In this mechanically jerky track, Mackay’s oboe and saxophone are given free rein, and his lively playing provides a wonderful contrast to the otherwise rather oppressive atmosphere.

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For Your Pleasure does not contain a single weak track (perhaps ‘Grey Lagoons’ is the least impressive), and this consistently strong album further elevated the band’s status, reaching fourth place in the British album charts, propelled by the single ‘Pyjamarama’ (not included on the album).

On the For Your Pleasure tour, Bryan Ferry began to seriously envy Brian Eno’s popularity, which seemed to overshadow him, the real leader of the band. A skilled orator, Eno not only captured the attention of journalists with his delicious quotes, but his wild stage outfits also made him the main focus of the concert audiences. The cries of ‘Eno, Eno, Eno!’ during the concerts infuriated Ferry. The last straw was perhaps that Eno was also the absolute favourite of young female fans, many of whom ended up in Eno’s bed, while Ferry had become the object of worship of gay men. Eno’s position became untenable, and frustrated by Ferry’s passive-aggressive behaviour, he decided to quit the band rather than wait to be kicked out.

However, Eno’s departure did not slow down Roxy Music’s rise, as only ten months later, in November of the same year, the band released their next album, Stranded, which is at least as brilliant as For Your Pleasure. On the other hand, Eno did not fare too badly either. Within a few years, his solo career produced albums that easily rivaled Roxy Music’s best, and he later became one of the most influential figures in the music world of the 20th century as a producer and musical visionary.

Best tracks: ”In Every Dream Home a Heartache”, ”Bogus Man”, ”Strictly Confidential”, “For Your Pleasure”

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI

Read also: Review: Fripp & Eno – (No Pussyfooting) (1973)

Tracks:

Side A

1. ”Do the Strand” 4:04
2. ”Beauty Queen” 4:41
3. ”Strictly Confidential” 3:48
4. ”Editions of You” 3:51
5. ”In Every Dream Home a Heartache” 5:29

Side B

6. ”The Bogus Man” 9:20
7. ”Grey Lagoons” 4:13
8. ”For Your Pleasure” 6:51

Musicians:

Bryan Ferry: vocals, piano, Hohner Pianet, Mellotron, harmonica, rhythm guitar (track 5) Brian Eno: VCS3 synthesiser, backing vocals Andy Mackay: oboe, saxophone, Farfisa organ Phil Manzanera: electric guitar Paul Thompson: drums John Porter: bass

Producer: Chris Thomas, John Anthony, Roxy Music

Label: Island

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