"Madame George" is a song about saying goodbye to one's youthful

friends and the old

scene - it's a song about outgrowing a place and moving on. The lyric

describes a party

full of laughing, rowdy people. The singer, who finds himself no

longer feeling like one of

the gang, looks around for the last time and then slips out into the

night to catch a train

that will take him away. As he moves toward the station, he hears the

party growing

softer behind him...

Some listeners have always maintained that Madame George is a

transvestite, owing to

her name and to the line about "playing dominoes in drag." In the

early '70s, Rolling

Stone asked Van if Madame George was a drag queen and Van said

absolutely not.

More than ten years later he told Musician, "Madame George was about

six or seven

different people who probably couldn't find themselves in there if

they tried."..."

Madam George