Response
The rock journalist Lester Bangs wrote in 1979 that the song "is the album's whirlpool. Possibly one of the most compassionate pieces 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." Bangs also remarks that "Morrison has said in at least one interview that the song has nothing to do with any kind of transvestite – at least as far as he knows, he is quick to add – but that's bullshit."
Artist Mark Wallinger described "Madame George" as: "The sense of desire and loss expressed in this song is so sad because it dares one to try to hear it again as if for the first time. It describes our exile from our past. Radical, allusive, heartbreaking, and the ultimate three-chord trick."
In 1974, after he had recorded eight albums, Morrison told Ritchie Yorke when he asked him what he considered his finest single track and the one that he enjoyed the most that it was: "Definitely "Madame George", definitely. I'm just starting to realize it more and more. It just seems to get at you... it just lays right in there, that whole track. The vocals and the instruments and the whole thing. I like that one."
Read more about this topic: Madame George
Famous quotes containing the word response:
“Love is the victim’s response to the rapist.”
—Ti-Grace Atkinson (b. 1938?)
“Perhaps nothing in all my business has helped me more than faith in my fellow man. From the very first I felt confident that I could trust the great, friendly public. So I told it quite simply what I thought, what I felt, what I was trying to do. And the response was quick, sure, and immediate.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)
“From time to time I listen to what you are saying, just in case a response is needed.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)