Maggie May

"Maggie May"
Single by Rod Stewart
from the album Every Picture Tells a Story
B-side	"Reason to Believe"
Released	1971
Format	7"
Genre	Folk Rock
Length	5:15
Label	Mercury
Writer(s)	Rod Stewart and Martin Quittenton
Rod Stewart singles chronology
"Gasoline Alley" (1970) "Maggie May" / "Reason to Believe" (1971) "(I Know) I'm Losing You" (1971)

"Maggie May" is a song written by singer Rod Stewart and Martin Quittenton and recorded by Stewart in 1971 for his album Every Picture Tells a Story.

"Maggie May" expresses the ambivalence and contradictory emotions of a young man involved in a relationship with an older woman, and was written from Stewart's own experience. In the January, 2007 issue of Q magazine, Stewart recalled: "Maggie May was more or less a true story, about the first woman I had sex with, at the Beaulieu Jazz Festival." ^[1] The reference to returning to school in "late September" refers to the Michaelmas term, the first academic term of the academic year of many British and Irish universities.

It was initially released in the United Kingdom as the B-side of the single "Reason to Believe," but DJs became fonder of the B-side and, after two weeks on the charts, the song was reclassified, with "Maggie May" becoming the A-side. However, the single continued to be pressed with "Maggie May" as the B-side.

In October 1971, the song went to number one in the UK and simultaneously topped the charts in the United States. Every Picture Tells a Story achieved the same status at the same time, a feat achieved by only a handful of performers, most notably The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel.

The song was Stewart's first substantial hit as a solo performer and launched his solo career. It remains one of his best-known songs. A famous live performance of the song on Top of the Pops saw The Faces joined onstage by DJ John Peel, who pretended to play the mandolin (the mandolin player on the recording was Ray Jackson of Lindisfarne). Stewart himself was amused by the song's success, saying, "I still can't see how the single is such a big hit. It has no melody. Plenty of character and nice chords, but no melody."^{[citation needed]}

The song re-entered the UK charts in December 1976, but only reached number 31.

Oddly, in the days of Top-40 Hit Radio, when songs were released for airplay and to the public on 45RPM singles, "Maggie May" was not edited in any way or fashion. The full 5:15 version was pressed to single, even though its multiple refrains & 5-bar mandolin solo could have been easily taken to edit. Perhaps it was because "Maggie May" was initially only meant to be a B-side single, and many B-sides are left intact without editing.

In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked the song #130 on their list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Cover versions

No other act has released the song as a single. The guitar-solo picking halfway through the song, though, was lifted by Deva, a film composer from South India, for the film Aasai.

Edwin McCain, Blur, Wet Wet Wet, and Ben Mills have recorded versions of "Maggie May"; Melissa Etheridge, The Pogues, The Dirty Three and The Counting Crows have performed it in concert. The Spanish rock band M-Clan recorded a translated version of the song, called Maggie despierta, on their Sin enchufe (Unplugged) album. The Argentine skate punk band Massacre recorded version of the song on El Mamut album 2008.

Popular 70's band Top of the Poppers covered the song on its Top of the Pops, Volume 20 album, which reached No. 1 on the UK album charts in 1971.

Canadian pianist and singer Burton Cummings has recorded a humorous variant on the song, titled "Gordon Lightfoot does Maggie May".

The song is covered by Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs on their album "Under the Covers, Vol. 2"

References