"Maggie May" by Rod Stewart (Song
Study)
Riff Rundown
"Maggie May" is a song written by Rod Stewart
and musician Martin Quittenton and recorded by Stewart in 1971
-- a solo work under the Mercury Record label, not involving his
group The Faces, who were contracted with Warner Brothers (though
several members of The Faces appear on the album that this song
comes from, Every Picture Tells a Story; and Ronnie Wood plays
all the guitar and bass parts). The song expresses the ambivalence
and contradictory emotions of a young man involved in a relationship
with an older woman, and is thought to have been written from Stewart's
own experience.
It was initially released in the United Kingdom as the B-side
of the single "Reason to Believe", but DJs became more
fond of the B-side and, after two weeks in the chart, the song
was re-classified with "Maggie May" as the A-side. However,
the single continued to be pressed with "Maggie May" designated
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 feat at the same time -- a feat achieved by only
a handful of performers, notably The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel
and Beyoncé.
The song launched Stewart as a solo performer, and remains arguably
his best-known song. 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."
The song re-entered the UK charts in December 1976, but only reached
number thirty-one. No other act has released the song as a single,
though Blur, Wet Wet Wet and Ben Mills have recorded versions of
it, and Melissa Etheridge has performed it in concert, as have
The Pogues and The Dirty Three.
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