Over 50 years since its era-defining release in 1973, Roxy Music’s vital second album For Your Pleasure has been newly expanded in Super Deluxe Edition and multiple formats, out now via UMR/Island EMI.
While Roxy Music’s self-titled debut is routinely cited among the most influential first albums ever made, For Your Pleasure occupies an even more exclusive pantheon: the greatest second albums of all time. Released on 23rd March 1973 via Island Records, it saw a band already redefining the possibilities of rock and pop creating their ambitious second act. The dark, hard glamour and power of the instantly recognisable album artwork perfectly reflecting the music within. All mystery. An invitation to dream.
Following the breakthrough debut and hit single ‘Virginia Plain’, Roxy Music achieved the rare feat of becoming both critically revered art-rock game-changers and genuine pop stars: For Your Pleasure charted in the UK Top 5 and surpassed the commercial performance of its predecessor. A fixture in all-time greatest album rankings from Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Q and the NME, who hailed it as “the pinnacle of English art rock”, the album exemplified Roxy Music’s reputation as one of Britain’s boldest, most creative and exciting groups.
Via unheard studio recordings, songwriting sketches, rehearsals, outtakes, live sessions and rare unseen performances, the 2026 edition of For Your Pleasure transports listeners back to the defining question Bryan Ferry, Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackay, Brian Eno and Paul Thompson faced in early 1973: how do you follow a debut album like Roxy Music?
Remembering the creation of For Your Pleasure, Bryan Ferry recalls: “It was a good pressure. Realising, now there’s an audience to write for. An intelligent audience. I felt a responsibility for the work that I hadn’t for the first album, certainly with regard to the lyrics. There was a hunger in the whole band to do more: a very strong urge to get back into a recording studio and make a better record than the first one. Nick de Ville had a cottage in Derbyshire, and offered to let me have it for a few days. So I went up there with the sole purpose of writing songs. I had this great little Renault 4, and I filled the car with stuff: keyboards, a guitar, an amp, tape recorders, pads of paper and pens. I remember driving up in this crammed car with its very interesting gear stick. The cottage was quite remote, out in the Derbyshire Dales – I had to call into some local farmer to get the key, then on up a track – and very basic. I must have taken provisions, because I couldn’t cook, but I was full of energy. I was completely alone out there, and just really focused on writing this stuff. I remember sheets of paper all over the floor, working on things 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.”
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