The Roxy Music For Your Pleasure deluxe edition lands this Friday, November 6, and it is the deepest look yet inside the record that made art rock look dangerous. The 2026 edition of the band's second album opens the vault on songwriting sketches Bryan Ferry taped at home, studio outtakes, live sessions and rare television footage, most of it never officially released. Preorders are live on the official Roxy Music store, and the box with a signed insert is still there for now.
Why this album, and why now
For Your Pleasure first came out on March 23, 1973, on Island Records. It was the follow-up to a debut that had already rewritten the rules, and it was the last Roxy Music album with Brian Eno in the lineup. The five members on the hook for that second act were Ferry, Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackay, Eno and Paul Thompson.
The band's official announcement, published by Universal Music Japan, tells the origin story. Ferry packed keyboards, a guitar, an amplifier and a tape recorder into his small Renault 4 and drove to a remote cottage in the Derbyshire Dales lent to him by Nick de Ville, a friend from Ferry's Newcastle University days who became the band's de facto art director. Those fragile cassettes, plus tapes from his London flat, survived. They are the heart of this set.
The first taste was Grey Lagoons, a 1971 demo originally titled The Bogus Man Part 2, recorded in the summer of 1971 with Graham Simpson on bass and Roger Bunn on guitar. The deluxe set also adds a studio outtake and a live recording from Montreux dated 1973/4.
Every format, decoded
- Super Deluxe box, three compact discs (CDs) plus a digital versatile disc (DVD): the collector's piece. The original album is remastered by Bob Ludwig. Disc two holds 20 previously unheard home sketches, rehearsals and outtakes, newly mastered by John Webber at AIR (Associated Independent Recording) Studios. Disc three gathers live sessions, singles and instrumentals, 14 of them unheard. The DVD carries 1972 and 1973 television and live performances from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and German and Swiss television, and the 116-page book adds a 7,000-word essay built from new interviews, a 2,500-word essay by Michael Bracewell and a piece by de Ville on the band's look. The official store bundle adds an insert signed by Ferry, Manzanera and Mackay.
- Blue Pearl double long-playing record (2LP): a limited, online-exclusive blue pearl pressing of the original album plus the AIR Studios outtakes in a gatefold sleeve. This is the one vinyl people will chase later.
- Black 2LP: the same program on 140-gram black vinyl, also sold through EMI Records.
- 2CD Deluxe: the album plus AIR Studios outtakes, the Pyjamarama single and its B-side The Pride And The Pain, and John Peel and BBC sessions from 1972 and 1973, in a hardcover digibook with a new essay and unseen photos.
- Blu-ray and Dolby Atmos: the album newly mixed in Atmos, 5.1 surround and stereo, with extra 5.1 mixes by Steven Wilson. The Blu-ray is a single-retailer exclusive, and the Atmos mix also comes to digital.
One note for buyers in the United States: the official store ships from the United Kingdom, with release day shipping aimed at November 6.
The cover that still stops people
That cover, glossy, noir and impossible to forget, is part of the story. De Ville worked with photographer Karl Stoecker and the late couturier Antony Price, with Amanda Lear cast as the femme fatale and Ferry in a chauffeur's uniform, shot with a Cadillac in an empty car showroom in Marylebone. The book covers that whole visual world, and the store has matching tees, posters and a slipmat if you want the look on the wall too.
Our call
If you only buy one, make it the Super Deluxe box. The home demos are the reason this edition exists, and they only live there in full. Vinyl buyers should move on the Blue Pearl pressing before it sells through. Release day is also Bandcamp Friday, so it is a big week for record money. Eno fans can follow his thread forward with our look at the Opal Records relaunch, and the rest of the gift list lives in our gifts for vinyl collectors guide.
