--- instrumental ---

If I only could deceive you
Forgetting the game
Every time I try to leave you
You laugh just the same

'Cause my wheels never touch the road
And the jumble of lies we told
Just returns to my back to weigh me down...

We lay cards upon the table
The backs of our hands
And I swear I like your people
The boys in the band

Reminiscences gone astray
Coming back to enjoy the fray
In a tangle of night and daylight sounds...

All completeness in the morning
Asleep on your side
I'll be waking up the crewmen
Banana-boat ride

She responds like a limousine
Brought alive on the silent screen
To the shuddering breath of yesterday...

There's the succour of the needy
Incredible scenes
I'll believe you in the future
Your life and death dreams

As the cavalry of despair
Takes a stand in the lady's hair
For the favour of making sweet sixteen...

You make my life and times
A book of bluesy Saturdays
And I have to chose...

Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers

And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money

     Easy money

With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders

We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty

     Easy money

Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making

     Easy money

   --- instrumental ---

Shine, shine, the light of good works shine
The watch before the city gates depicted in their prime
That golden light all grimy now
Three hundred years have passed
The worthy Captain and his squad of troopers standing fast

The artist knew their faces well
The husbands of his lady friends
His creditors and councillors
In armour bright, the merchant men

Official moments of the guild
In poses keen from bygone days
The city fathers frozen there
Upon the canvas dark with age

The smell of paint, a flask of wine
And turn those faces all to me
The blunderbuss and halberd-shaft
And Dutch respectability

They make their entrance one by one
Defenders of that way of life
The redbrick home, the bourgeoisie
Guitar lessons for the wife

So many years we suffered here
Our country racked with Spanish wars
Now comes a chance to find ourselves
And quiet reigns behind our doors
We think about posterity again

And so the pride of little men
The burghers good and true
Still living through the painter's hand
Request you all to understand

Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit

Great Deceiver

In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon

Great Deceiver

Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary

Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans

In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition

Great Deceiver

Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show

Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary

Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry

   --- instrumental ---

Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black

Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that oh years to be
Starless and bible black

Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black

   --- instrumental ---

Tears of joy at the birth of a brother
Never alone from that time
Sixteen Years through knife fights and danger
Strangely why his life not mine

West side skyline crying
Fallen angel dying
Risk a life to make a dime

Lifetimes spent on the streets of a city
Make us the people we are
Switchblade stings in one tenth of a moment
Better get back to the car

Snow white side streets of cold New York City
Stained with his blood it all went wrong
Sick and tired blue wicked and wild
God only knows for how long

Fallen angel
Fallen angel
West side skyline
Crying for an angel dying
Life expiring in the city
Fallen angel...

Pan American nightmare
Ten thousand feet fun-fair
Convinved that I don't care
It's safe as houses I swear
I was just sitting musing
The virtues of cruising
When altitude dropping
My ears started popping
One more red nightmare

Sweat beginning to pour down
My neck as I turn round
I heard fortune shouting
Just get off of this outing
A farewell swan song
See you know how turbulence can be
The stewardess made me
One more red nightmare

Reality stirred me
My angel had heard me
The prayer had been answered
A reprieve has been granted
The dream was now broken
Thought rudely awoken
Really safe and sound
Asleep on the Greyhound
One more red nightmare