Hamilton saw a painting, "not as a canvas, but a mood board, an array of inspirations and goals that could as easily clash as blend together", which were adapted by Ferry on For Your Pleasure, taking him from "the past and into what still feels like the future".

John Porter agreed to play bass temporarily, working on the album and the subsequent tour, but turned down an offer to join permanently.

[11] The cover photo, taken by Karl Stoecker, featured Bryan Ferry's girlfriend at the time, model Amanda Lear, who was also the confidante, protégée and closest friend of the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí.

[13] The full sleeve art features a smiling Ferry dressed like a chauffeur and waits next to a limo, parked on the left side from Lear.

[14] Pitchfork put the feeling captured by the sleeve art as "an enthralling, modern image of desirability, danger, sexual satisfaction, and luxe living.

"[3] Brian Eno disliked the choice for the album's cover art, feeling it was glamorous and pretentious, and "too stereotyped", preferring a "nice unpretentious unglamorous picture of the band, wearing false beards and denims and standing around a tree, with "Support Ecology" on the back of the sleeve.

[5] On "Beauty Queen" Ferry was "drawn to the anxious, feminine side of R&B", where he sings about parting ways with a woman who has "swimming pool eyes, but it sounds more like he's pitching woo".

The song features "1950s R&B sax invocations" and "pitch-bending synthesizer solo" with tweaked frequency control creating, what Brian Eno later "approvingly termed, quite unpalatable noises".

Roxy Music's saxophonist Andy Mackay said "the've done one very weird thing with a reggae drum beat", and he played "completely atonal sax" stopping himself himself from performing in key.

Over the last four and a half minutes, the song accumulates a "panoramic disorientation" of multi-layered sounds blurred together into one wave of the echo on electric piano, more reverb on the guitar, phasing, tremolo; and "it gently becomes hazy and puzzling".

taken from "Chance Meeting", the song recorded for the first Roxy Music album,[17][16] and "For Your Pleasure" ends with voice of Judi Dench saying "You don't ask.

Tony Palmer of The Observer, who was not a fan of their album, applauded their presentation, calling it "demonic, sinister, apocalyptic, monstrous, dazzling, flashy".

The contemporary music critics[note 1] emphasised the band's general technique's improvements, highlighting the performances by drummer Paul Thompson and guitarist Phil Manzanera.

[citation needed] A concert version of "For Your Pleasure", recorded live at the Empire Pool Wembley in October 1975, was used as a B-side to "Both Ends Burning" single.

[33] Robert Christgau also reviewed the album, giving it a B rating and saying, "These guys make no secret of having a strange idea of a good time, but this isn't decadent, it's ridiculous".

[15] Paul Gambaccini of Rolling Stone received mixed feelings, calling album "remarkably inaccessible" and writing that "the bulk of For Your Pleasure is either above us, beneath us, or on another plane altogether".

Moreover, Erlewine liked how the album demonstrates that "avant-garde ideas can flourish in a pop setting"; For Your Pleasure "walks the tightrope between the experimental and the accessible, creating a new vocabulary for rock bands, and one that was exploited heavily in the ensuing decade".

[26] Another Pitchfork reviewer, Rob Tannenbaum, described For Your Pleasure as "happily pretentious and self-involved" creating a middle ground between glam and prog with the "greatest degree of success.

Tannenbaum added that he did not hear a "struggle between Ferry and Eno, just two guys with similar ideas and a band juiced on its early success and acclaim, trying to get farther from earth while still holding on to the Marvelettes and the Shirelles."

[3] Simon Reynolds, writing for Uncut, lauded the song "For Your Pleasure" saying he "can't think of anything in rock like it, before or after, except perhaps Nico's Marble Index and Joy Division's "Atmosphere".

[41] Happy Mag included the album in its list of "10 records to introduce you to the world of art-rock" and called it "an art-pop, glam-rock masterpiece.