Before The Kiss, A Redcap Lyrics
Blue Öyster Cult
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 patron's 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
Song & Lyrics Facts
Blue Öyster Cult's "Before the Kiss, a Redcap" was released on their 1973 album Tyranny and Mutation. Written by band members Eric Bloom and Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser, the song is an uptempo rocker with darkly humorous lyrics about a man who has been cursed to live forever unless he can find someone willing to kiss him and break the spell.
The song features some of Blue Öyster Cult's signature guitar riffs and solos from Buck Dharma. It remains one of the most popular songs in the band's catalog and continues to be performed at their concerts today.