Madame George

Down on Cyprus Avenue
With childlike visions leaping into view
The clicking clacking of the high heeled shoe
Ford & Fitzroy, and Madame George.

Marching with the soldier boy behind
He's much older now, with hat on, drinking wine
And that smell of sweet perfume comes drifting through
on the cool night air like Shalimar oil

And outside they're making all the stops
Kids out in the street collecting bottle-tops
Gone for cigarettes and matches in the shops
I’d be taken Madame George

That's when you fall
Whoa, that's when you fall

Yeah, that's when you fall

When you fall into a trance
A sitting on a sofa playing games of chance
With your folded arms in history books you glance
Into the eyes of Madame George

And you think you’ve found the bag
You're getting weaker and your knees begin to sag
In the corner playing dominoes in drag
The one and only Madame George

And then from outside the frosty window raps
She jumps up and says Lord have mercy I think it's the cops
And immediately drops everything she gots
Down into the street below

And you know you gotta go
On that train from Dublin up to Sandy Row
Throwing pennies at the bridges down below
And the rain, hail, sleet, and snow.

Say goodbye to Madame George
Dry your eye for Madame George
Wonder why for Madame George

And as you leave, you'd be laughing, you'd be
dancing, music goin all around the room
And all the little boys come around, walking away from it all
So cold

And as you're about to leave
She jumps up and says Hey love, you forgot your gloves
And the love to love she loves to love the love
to love to love she loves to love the love to love.

To say goodbye to Madame George
Dry your eye for Madame George
Wonder why for Madame George
Dry your eyes for Madame George

Say goodbye in the wind and the rain on the back street
In the backstreet, in the back street
Say goodbye to Madame George
In the backstreet, in the back street, in the back street
Down home,

down home in the back street….

Say goodbye, goodbye
Get on the train

Get on the train, the train, the train...
This is the train, this is the train...
Whoa, say goodbye, goodbye....
Get on the train, get on the train...

Van Morrison sings out the first line of Madame George and, with the descending phrase that tumbles down and curls up with "Avenue", I'm transported to a place not quite physical but voiced into being verse to verse a narrative that gradually disassembles into feeling; and looking up from the street below a flash of a woman pausing in the third floor window frame, before closing the drapes on a scene that flickers in the mind of a man looking back in his memory with longing and regret, upon an event that will never be quite digested because the coincidences of time that brought him to that place will never be retrieved.

Madame George carries a mystery; no one can quite fathom who Madame George is. Lester Bangs, best known for his in-depth reviews in Rolling Stone Magazine, wrote a compelling piece about Morrison's Astral Weeks, focusing in particular on Madame George whom he, naturally with a line like "caught up in a corner playing dominoes in drag, the one and only Madame George", deduces to be a drag queen. He starts out;

" 'Madame George' is the album's whirlpool. possibly the most compassionate piece of music ever made, it asks us, no, arranges that we see the plight of what I'll be brutal and call a lovelorn drag queen with such intense empathy that when the singer hurts him, we do too."

Van Morrison, in various interviews, denied the drag queen theory:"Oh no. Whatever gave you that impression? It all depends on what you want, how you want to go. If you see it as a male or female or whatever, it's your trip." Later he said,

"Madame George was about six or seven people who probably couldn't find themselves in there if they tried."

Perhaps Cyprus Avenue itself is a way station in Van's memory for a number of people and happenings that he gives form to in this song.


The writer Tom Nolan recently wrote an article in Wall Street Journal (a likely place!) positing that Morrison's Madame George was actually "George" Yeats (originally Georgie Hyde Lees) the wife of William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet. "George", who was about 30 years younger than W.B. when they married, was a psychic medium and fellow member with her husband-to-be of the mystical Order of the Golden Dawn. Most importantly, she introduced Yeats to automatic writing. If the assumption of George Yeats as our "Madame" seems too loopy to consider, especially given the setting of the song, there are some odd connections, if only coincidental.

Consider Morrison's further descriptions of the song in an interview:



"The original title was 'Madame Joy' but the way I wrote it down was 'Madame George'. Don't ask me why I do this because I just don't know. The song is just a stream-of-conciousness thing, like 'Cyprus Avenue'.

It may have something to with my great aunt whose name was Joy. Apparently she was clairvoyant...that may have something to do with it. Aunt Joy lived in the area mentioned in connection with Cyprus Avenue. She lived on a street just off Fitzroy Street which is quite near to Cyprus Avenue."


"Madame George" begins with the simple 3 chord turnaround pattern that Morrison uses for the duration of the song. The singing commences together with Richard Davis' jazz double bass line which grounds the proceedings while Connie Kay on drums, John Payne on flute, and a violinist float in and out - an unconventional line-up that gives it a feel that defies labels.

I'll give the final word to Van the Man himself:

"I didn't even think about what I was writing. There are some things that you write that just come out all at once....'Madame George' just came right out. The song is basically about a spiritual feeling."



While somewhere out there or in the hereafter "six or seven people" are wandering about in a state of unknowing as regards their contributions to the person that is Madame George, I'll be kicking back and relishing this song again and again just i did that first day some time in 1969. I leave the solving to some other sleuth, admitting that really, like a great jazz improvisation or beautiful painting, there's no need for a solution.




* For those who haven't the record I've copied a clip from youtube which I've posted here
The video has nothing to do with the tune, and my version keeps stopping about a 2 or 3 minutes near the end (which is an area that shouldn't be missed) , but I'm grateful, nevertheless, that the poster posted it!
There is another earlier, still formative, version posted of it from hitherto unreleased tapes but i heartily do not recommend it.

* there is a nice myspace site on the album Astral Weeks that has some complete versions of a few great songs . check it out here