Roxy Music: For Your Pleasure - 1973
There are three great "glam", typically Ferry upbeat tracks to be found in the thumping, lyrically oddball opener Do The Strand, the frantic, swirling Editions Of You and the Andy Mackay (saxophone) dominated Grey Lagoons. The first two songs mentioned above, Do The Strand and Editions Of You appeared as a US double "A" side single. Surely it would have been a huge hit if released in the UK? Instead, we had the quirky and somewhat short Pyjamarama, which charted, but not as high as I am sure Do The Strand or Editions Of You would have. All these tracks follow in the footsteps of Roxy’s first, ground-breaking huge hit, Virginia Plain - they are lively, catchy, lyrically bewildering and fully representative of the glammy art rock that Roxy burst upon the scene with in 1972-73. There had certainly been nothing like this before, had there? Once more, Roxy were showing themselves to be totally unique in so many ways.
There's a new sensation....
Anyway, back to the wonderful opener, Do The Strand - it is another in the collection of killer opening tracks that Roxy albums seemed to specialise in - overflowing with saxophone, Paul Thompson's rolling, glammy drumming and Ferry's hammed-up vocal delivering intriguing, captivating lyrics about rhododendrons, fandangoes, Mona Lisa and the Sphinx among multifarious references. It is up there in the pantheon of Roxy Music off-the-wall classics. Quite how one should dance "the Strand" remains unclear.
The beautifully bassy gem that is Beauty Queen was second up on the album (who was Valerie as mentioned in the song, I wonder?). Who knows, but I'll briefly carry on with a bit of superfluous analytical rambling about the song. It finds Ferry praising his subject in surprisingly everyday fashion as he proclaims “you’re the pride of your street”. For me, any girl Ferry sings about doesn’t hail from your average street, she would come from a large house with its own grounds, surely? Maybe Bryan is remembering his working-class upbringing, something he rarely does/did. It is unusual for him to express such sentiments in his songs, he usually sings of fantasy figures like sirens and Vassar girls, buffeted by sea breezes or flying down to Rio, not of a Diana Dors-style back to back terraced street beauty. There is a brief kitchen-sink reality found here that clashes strongly with the image of those “swimming-pool eyes”. I'm probably completely over-analysing here, in Dylanologist style, but the line had always stuck in my head.
The two ballads, Beauty Queen and Strictly Confidential, use the now trademark Roxy tactic of building a song up slowly and quietly before the second half arrives in far stronger fashion. In the case of Beauty Queen it is in frenetic, speeded-up Ladytron-style and for Strictly Confidential it is in a solid drum-powered ending à la Sea Breezes. This ghostly, electric piano-backed track is another quintessential Ferry slow, intoxicating song that eats into your consciousness. It is a dark and eerie one, perfectly exemplifying the point that Bryan Ferry's love songs were never straightforward.
Editions Of You gives us more superbly madcap Roxy glam, with Andy Mackay's Farfisa organ taking the lead in driving this breakneck glammed-up fun number on, from its first note. As said earlier, what a magnificent single pairing these two bizarre beauties would have made.
Then there is this monumental, now iconic In Every Dream Home A Heartache - Ferry's love song to an inflatable sex toy. How did he get away with that in those days? “I blew up your body - but you blew my mind”. The track is also notable for Phil Manzanera's blistering guitar solo at the song's climax, having built up to it with Ferry's slow, evocative and insistent verses. The song is chock full of mystery and atmosphere."Eating into your consciousness" - such as the two earlier slow numbers did - can also be said for the extended, insistent and at times almost funky The Bogus Man, albeit in a different way. Apparently about a sexual stalker, Eno has since said he was influenced on this track’s creation by the “krautrock'" band, Can. The song's lengthy, minimalist sound was very representative of the sort of material that Eno was coming up with at the time. It was probably a couple of minutes too long, to be honest and the album would not have suffered if the two minutes or so of Pyjamarama had taken their place - indeed, it would have been enhanced in my opinion. Interestingly, the song was chosen to begin the old "side two" on vinyl whereas often a more upbeat song was selected for this spot, such as Serenade on Stranded.
Andy Mackay's saxophone-driven rocking contribution, Grey Lagoons, was all late fifties throwbacks and breathless rocking pace. It was this album's equivalent of the previous one's Would You Believe? Only Roxy Music ever sounded like this, didn't they? Despite their influences, they were still unique.
In the same vein as The Bogus Man - For Your Pleasure was a somewhat bizarre lengthy fade out to the album which has subsequently served well as a live show closer, with band members departing one by one. It is dominated by Eno’s messing around with tape loops which, on this track, goes on a few minutes too long, to be honest. It is probably here that the differences between Ferry and Eno occurred because Roxy certainly didn't subsequently record anything else like these two tracks. Incidentally, the "you don't ask, you don't ask why" spoken whisper at the end was provided by the now Dame Judi Dench.
Overall, personally, I prefer Stranded, but this is right up there as an example of Roxy Music's best work. It was a perplexing, beguiling and challenging album in all ways - musically, lyrically and stylistically. Indeed, at the time, American rock critic Paul Gambaccini stated that that -
"the bulk of “For Your Pleasure” is either above us, beneath us, or on another plane altogether."
Quite. Roxy Music at this time really were quite unique.
There were two versions - one on Island Records and one on Polydor. There are said to be differences but I have never been particularly successful in noticing them. The Polydor one seems to have a slightly clearer sound quality to it and the guitar bit at the end has a few different notes.
The Pride And The Pain. Roxy Music seemed to be building up a tradition of putting out instrumental 'b' sides that underplayed their abilities, in many ways. Many people find their 'b' sides interesting in a "cultish" sort of way, unfortunately, I am not one of those people. I just find them not very good! Oddly, on all these 'b' sides, the sound quality is far inferior to that of the albums. Anyway, this track is pretty unremarkable, punctuated at the beginning by some off-putting whiplash noises, presumably put in there to give some vague hint of sado-masochism. To be fair, the track does carry a certain amount of mysterious atmosphere with it. After a few listens, I find myself getting into it. There is something of the ambience David Bowie created on Low, the common denominator, of course, being Brian Eno.
