Madame George

It was recorded at Century Sound Studios in New York on 25 September 1968, the first Astral Weeks session, with Lewis Merenstein producing. Morrison sang, with Richard Davis on double bass, Connie Kay on drums, John Payne on flute and Larry Fallon arranging the strings, which were the only overdub. Morrison said the title was originally Madame Joy and that the way he wrote it down was Madame George, and that the song came right out as a stream of consciousness. He called it basically about a spiritual feeling.

Its setting is Belfast: Cyprus Avenue, a tree-lined residential street in the east of the city, and the working-class Sandy Row district. Many listeners, including Lester Bangs, took Madame George to be a drag queen, which Morrison has denied. He told a Rolling Stone interviewer that the character was based on six or seven different people and that he had no clue who she might have been. An earlier Bang Records recording, with altered lyrics and a much faster tempo, appeared on the 1973 release T.B. Sheets. In 1974 Morrison told Ritchie Yorke it was definitely his finest single track.

Bruce Springsteen named it among his eight Desert Island Discs in December 2016, calling it his favorite cut from Astral Weeks and saying that his song New York City Serenade would not exist without it. Morrison performed it with the full album at the Hollywood Bowl in November 2008, and it appears in 80 of the 2,253 logged setlists that list songs.