Songfacts®:

• The opening song on Roxy Music's sophomore album For Your Pleasure is a theatrical homage to a fictional dance craze called "The Strand." As is typical for Roxy Music, the lyrics contain numerous art and cultural references. Frontman Bryan Ferry explained to The Mail on Sunday in 2009:
  
  "There was a particular genre of songs based on dance crazes, like 'The Twist,' 'The Jerk,' and 'The Madison Time' etc. which I found amusing, and 'Do the Strand' was a nod in their direction, although it attempted to be more highbrow, or a bit further uptown, in as much as I wanted to turn 'The Sphinx and Mona Lisa/Lolita and Guernica' into a rhyming couplet."
• Ferry revealed in the same interview with The Mail on Sunday that this song was inspired by Broadway standards songwriter Cole Porter. "I had long been a fan of Cole Porter and other songwriters from that era, and in particular I admired the sophistication of their lyrics," he said. "'Do the Strand' was an attempt to emulate that style of writing, with a lot of cultural references that I found interesting."
• Brian Eno, who went on to become a very successful and influential producer, played synthesizer in Roxy Music, leaving after the For Your Pleasure album. One of the many groups he inspired was OMD, whose lead singer Andy McCluskey told Songfacts, "Apart from loving the first two Roxy Music albums, Eno was our hero because he taught how to make interesting music on ordinary instruments. We couldn't afford synths in the early days. He also championed music on cheap instruments. That's all we had."
• The German synthpop band Alphaville covered "Do The Strand" on their 2003 album CrazyShow. American electroclash band Scissor Sisters also covered it for the 2009 charity album War Child Presents Heroes at the personal request of Roxy Music.
• While most of his songs tend to come from a place of sadness, Ferry told Melody Maker in 1975 that "Do The Strand" was one of the exceptions. "I become very reflective and I think about things. I very rarely write a song when I'm up," Ferry said. "There are a few. 'Do The Strand' was one."
• "Do The Strand" has featured in most Roxy Music live sets since its release in 1973. Speaking to The Mail on Sunday, Ferry called it "an anthem for Roxy fans," adding, "We traditionally made it the closing song at all our shows."
• Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones named his first band The Strand after this song. Jones later named Roxy Music's self-titled debut album as one of his "must-have CDs" in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2005.
• In Season 2, Episode 4 of Westworld, "The Riddle of the Sphinx," Peter Mullen's character, James Delos, is seen dancing to this song. In an interview with The Atlantic, Westworld co-creator and director Lisa Joy said it was Mullen who asked to bust a move to "Do the Strand": "If you're going to ask a wonderful actor to dance, the least you can do is ask him if there's a song he likes to dance to."
• The song was released as a single in the US, Japan, and Europe in 1973, but it wasn't released as a single in the UK until 1978, when it was used to promote Roxy Music's compilation album Greatest Hits. Even though it failed to chart, "Do The Strand" remains one of the band's most famous songs.