golden age of leather lyrics

Raise your can of beer on high
And seal your fate forever
Our best years have past us by
The golden age of leather

This was the night not long to come
In the year of our lord a.d.
Where in a desert way-house poised on the brink of eternity
Four and ninety studded horsemen closed the knot of honor
As only drunken soldiers can

And passed from man to man
A wanton child to dead to care
That each would find his pleasure as he might
For this fantastic night was billed
As nothing less than the end of an age
A last crusade
A final outrage
In this day of flaccid plumage

And there was worn no cloth but leather
Made supple by years of stinging cinders
And here were seen the scars of age
For age had been the common call for one last night together

Dawn colored the sky......the ritual ceased
Some had died.............they were buried with their bikes
Each grabbed a rag........from a man with a sack
Torn strips of color......the red and the black

I cam here willingly
And I will go down valiantly
We made a vow
To give it all we had to give
We made a vow
To die as we had lived

They flew the colors they began to fight
They flailed at each other like bugs at a light
Bodies and bikes beyond repair
Smell of oil and gas in the air

Then the wind whipped the desert with a giant hand
And the humans and the harleys caught the shifting sand
The old ranger weathered the storm
And he topped the rise by the middle of morn
He saw rippled dunes
Calm and surreal
And a glint of a solitary shaft of chromium steel

Golden age...