"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
Qmagazine, Stewart recalled: "Maggie May was more or
less a true story, about the first woman I had sex with, at the
Beaulieu Jazz Festival." 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 Storyachieved 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 Popssaw 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 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 Stoneranked the song #130 on their list of The
500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
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 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 Mamutalbum 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"