Before the Kiss, a Redcap

Before the Kiss, a Redcap

Cover of the US 7" single (A-side "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll")

Artist	Blue Öyster Cult
Album	Blue Öyster Cult
Released	January 16, 1972
Length	4:59 (album) 4:54 (7" single)
Writers	Sandy Pearlman Murray Krugman Allen Lanier Donald Roeser
Lead vocals	Donald Roeser

Before the Kiss, a Redcap is the fifth track from Blue Öyster Cult's debut studio album, Blue Öyster Cult. It was released as the B-side to the "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll" 7" single, which did not chart.

Lyrics

So grab your rose and ringside seat
We're back home at Conry's Bar
The blond girl with her tattoo
Reds and wine, cokes of course
Oh my Susie, my Susie
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, doom the dawn
With threats of gas and rose motif
Their lips apart like swollen rose
Their tongues extend and then retract
A redcap, a redcap
Before the kiss
Before the kiss

Doors like flint and window panes
And endless shadow bar
The owner’s boys have gone to work
We'll stop big deals behind that bar
While outside on the turnpike
They got this new hit tune
Thrills become as cheap as gas
And gas as cheap as thrills

One threat and mundane here at last
Expect to cross once more
Lecherous, invisible
Beware the limping cat
Whose black teeth grip between loose jaws
Still ripe and fully bloomed
A rose and not from anywhere
That you would know or I would care

And the owners act most cheerfully
Back home at Conry's Bar
When their patrons' thoughts at last
Grow too big for their skulls
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 ringside seat
We're back home at Conry's Bar
The blond girl with her tattoo
Reds and wine, cokes of course
Oh my Susie, my Susie
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

Trivia

• TBA