Before The Kiss, A Redcap

(Album: Blue Öyster Cult - 1972)

So grab your rose and ring side seat,
We're back home at Conry's bar
The blond girl with her tattoo,
Reds and wine, cokes of course

Oh my suzy, my suzy,
Why did we ever start
It's morning now, you'd never know
The gin, the gin, glows in the dark, glows in the dark

And underneath, the black light,
Underneath it all
Four and forty redheads meet,
Come to doom 'til the dawn

With threats of gas and rose motif
Their lips apart like a swollen rose
Their tongues extend, and then retract
A redcap, a redcap, before the kiss, before the kiss.

Doors like flint and window panes
An endless shadow bar
The owner's boys have gone to work
To stop big deals behind the bar

While outside on the turnpike
They got this new hit tune
Where thrills become as cheap as gas
And gas as cheap as thrills

One thrill and mundane here at last
Expect the cross one more
Lecherous invisible
Beware the limping cat

Whose black teeth grip between loose jaws
Still ripe and fully bloomed
A rose that's not from anywhere
That you would know or I would care

And the owners boys act most cheerfully
Back home at Conry's bar
When their patrons' thoughts at last
Grow too big for their skulls

And awful things are happening
We've let this drama fold
And now the time has come at last
To crush the motif of the rose.

So grab your rose and ring side seat
We're back home at Conry's bar
The blond girl with her tattoo
Reds and wine, cokes of course

Oh my suzy, my suzy
Why did we ever start
It's morning now, you'd never know
The gin, the gin, glows in the dark, glows in the dark