My fav is a tasty love ballad called Ballerina. The date here says CD 1987? I thought that was the publish date but apparently VM put out this music in 1967! The notes say it was his first record and it does have his signiture songs on it such as Cyprus Avenue and Madame George. I hope you are someone who gets it, most musicians do and that is why it is always considered one of the most important albums of its era. Van's is just so much more vivid and real yet vague enough that it becomes a universal experience. The song Puff the Magic Dragon was a thinly veiled allegory of the same story. Remember Van's first name is also George and at some point he has to go and says goodby to Madame Joy. But the song is not just about getting stoned, rather it is about passing though that period of youthful turmoil and the memories and loves and experiences that consume all young people. Clearly the next scene is a drug bust "Lord have mercy I think that its the cops" and then its all thrown out to the street below. And then "in the corner playing dominos and drag" that is inhale, "the one and only madame Joy". In the song the lyrics are "happy taking Madame Joy" which results in falling into a trance, and then you get weaker and your knees begin to sag. It is possible that George Yeats is alluded to here, but there is a more specific metaphor, and that Madame George which was originally Madame Joy, is a reference to drugs. Van had been influenced by the mystic poems of W B Yeats and his young wife Georgie who went by George, and was the catalyst for Yeats automatic writing. Van had himself denied that it has anything to do with a transvestite and spoke of how it was written as stream of consciousness and that it was a sort of composite character. Tell me where he/she fits into the story of this album? This album is about Van and his life and experience of youth and transcendence.
He misinterpreted the line "Playing dominos in drag" and went off on this crazy story about a transvestite. In his twisted and demented state of drug addiction he wrote about things he imagined. The review by Bangs, written back in the day, is a piece of work worthy to be read, but Bangs got it all wrong. I just wanted to point out that Madame George is not about an ageing transvestite. But many people, my college roommates for example just don't get it. I first heard Madame George when I was 16 in 1968 and I still listen to it often. It cannot be easily defined or placed in any specific genre, but rather exists as one of those rare examples of art that come together by some special circumstance. For those of us who get it, this LP is by far the best of all time. There are two kinds of people in the world, those few of us who recognize the brilliance of Van Morrison's Astral weeks and the rest of the world.
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