FEATURE:
Groovelines
Rod Stewart – Maggie May
__________
MAYBE a musical reaction…
to The Beatles’ Let It Be, Rod Stewart released Maggie May in 1971. The Beatles included a song called Maggie Mae on 1970’s Let It Be. It may be a coincidence, though I feel Stewart was inspired by The Beatles (Maggie May (or Maggie Mae) is a traditional Liverpool Folk song about a prostitute who robbed a "homeward bounder”). As Stewart plays the legends slot at Glastonbury this week, I wanted to go deep with one of his best-known songs. Co-written with Martin Quittenton, it is a track taken from his album, Every Picture Tells a Story, released in 1971. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked it number 130 in The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It is amazing to think that this song was a B-side! Its A-side, Reason to Believe, is a good song but not remembered as fondly as Maggie May! The woman who inspired the song was not called Maggie May. An older woman who took Rod Stewart’s virginity in the 1960s, there are some unpleasant memories associatyed with the song. The sexual encounter not consensual. The woman dragging Rod Stewart into a tent at a musical festival. Despite it being this hugely popular and celebrated song, there is some controversy to it. Far Out Magazine wrote about Maggie May for a feature, where they addressed the origins of the song:
“The situation, which is problematic through today’s lens, tells the story of how the woman had her way with him in a festival tent and “stole” his “soul” in the process, according to the lyrics of the song. If we are to believe those words, when morning came, she kicked him in the head – literally or metaphorically – putting a painful end to proceedings, leaving him bruised emotionally, or worse.
In his more recent retellings of the story, Stewart makes the whole thing sound like an uncomfortable, unwarranted and somewhat sinister experience. He implicitly calls into question whether he consented to the act.
But the song tells a different story. One of a jilted young lover enamoured by his more experienced seductress, who “stole” his “heart” – “and that’s what really hurt”. The line “Maggie, I couldn’t have tried any more” with its melancholic minor passing chord also suggests Stewart was hurt because he feels he failed to live up to the woman’s expectations.
It could be that turning the episode into a song about lost love was simply his way of processing what happened in retrospect. Perhaps the idea of a stolen heart is a euphemistic metaphor for something else Stewart feels was stolen from him. Or maybe, nine years later, he just found the story a nice idea for a song and needed to sanitise the lyrics to appeal to a wider audience.
Whatever the truth about Stewart’s deeper feelings on the matter and the specific identity of the real ‘Maggie May’, the song’s version of events is what will go down in history. And so, an unknown 30-something attendee of the 1961 Beaulieu Jazz Festival is destined to be marked for all time by the name of a legendary Liverpool prostitute. If Stewart really felt violated by the event, perhaps this is the best form of vengeance he could have served as his own recompense”.
A number one single in 1971, the background to the creation of Maggie May is fascinating. I know that there was a period when Rod Stewart did not want to perform the song live. I wonder whether it would be included in the setlist of his Glastonbury set on Sunday (29th). I have a couple of other features I want to include before rounding things off. Stereogum examined the song as part of their The Number Ones feature:
“In the summer of 1961, Rod Stewart climbed into a drainage pipe in the south of England. Stewart, a 16-year-old London dropout and aspiring footballer, was with a few friends, and they were all sneaking into the Beaulieu Jazz Festival, one of the first big festivals in the UK. (Stewart later said that this was when he “just coming out of [his] beatnik phase, wondering whether [he] should become a mod.”) When the friends got into the festival, they went straight for the beer tent, where Stewart met an older woman, who — again, per Stewart — “was something of a sexual predator.” That day, Stewart and the older woman snuck off somewhere, and Stewart lost his virginity: “It was over in a few seconds.” A decade later, Stewart took that experience and made one hell of a song out of it.
In that decade, Rod Stewart had done a lot of things. He’d started protesting for left-wing causes, getting arrested a few times. He’d drifted around Europe, getting himself deported from Spain. He’d moved in with an art student and fathered a daughter, who was put up for adoption. He’d discovered Otis Redding and gone all-in on the mod thing. And he’d started playing music.
Stewart had started out in 1963, playing harmonica in a group called the Dimensions. He’d bounced around the London scene, getting into short-lived collaborations with future members of the Kinks and Fleetwood Mac. Eventually, he’d teamed up with Jeff Beck, the ex-Yardbirds guitar hero, and begun singing in the Jeff Beck Group.
When that band broke up in 1969, Stewart and his Jeff Beck Group bandmate Ronnie Wood (still six years away from becoming a Rolling Stone) joined the Small Faces, a pretty great London band who were huge in the UK and who’d had some success in the US. Frontman Steve Marriott had just left the band to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton. So Wood and Stewart came in to replace him, and the Small Faces became the Faces, leaning into Stonesian blues-choogle and enjoying another pretty-great run. (The Faces’ highest-charting song was 1971’s “Stay With Me,” which peaked at #17.) But Stewart had also started recording his own solo albums in 1969. And thanks to the song that Stewart wrote about that afternoon in 1961, his solo records soon came to overshadow anything the Faces did.
Stewart co-wrote “Maggie May” with Martin Quittenton, guitarist for the blues-rock band Steamhammer. Ray Jackson, of the folk group Lindesfarne, improvised the mandolin intro. (Jackson only got session-musician pay for that, and no songwriting credit, and he was pissed off about that for decades.) For two albums, Stewart had been figuring out his own solo style, which built folk instrumentation and sloppily cluttered rock arrangements around his beautifully whiskeyed white-soul rasp. On paper, that combination looks a little too neatly triangulated, but that’s not how it sounds. It comes out organic, as if Stewart had drunkenly stumbled upon this sound. Every Picture Tells A Story, the album that gave us “Maggie May,” remains an absolute motherfucking front-to-back burner. Nobody sounded anything like Rod Stewart. Probably, nobody could.
“Maggie May” is the sound of a guy processing a formative experience. Something has happened, and he’s not sure how it’ll affect his life, but he knows he’ll never be the same again. He’s mad about it, but he’s not sure why he’s mad. There’s no chorus to the song, no structure. It’s not contrived. It’s more of a freeform unburdening, a wild parade of accusations and equivocations and confessions of love. It’s quite a ride.
I will finish off with part of an article from Culture Sonar. In terms of Rod Stewart’s relationship with the song. Even if Maggie May found its origins from a somewhat uncomfortable or unwanted moment, it has gained so much acclaim through the years. It would be great if he performed the song at Glastonbury! One of the greatest songs of the 1970s, it is played widely to this day. A track that I first heard when I was a child. It is so recognisable and acclaimed:
“Nonetheless, this personal experience led to Stewart’s first substantial hit as a solo performer and truly launched his career. Despite having done fairly well with two previous album releases, Rod Stewart – approaching twenty-seven – had yet to become the true rock star he’d dreamt of being, like his heroes, The Rolling Stones.
When he recorded and released Every Picture Tells a Story, the British rocker didn’t expect “Maggie May,” to become a hit. His collaborators criticized its lack of melody. In fact, the track was the B side of the single, “Reason to Believe.” According to Stewart, it was a DJ in Cleveland who flipped it and first aired the song.
Even today, this look back on a past romantic relationship remains relatable. No wonder the British singer included “Maggie May” in his MTV Unplugged episode where he reunited with his Faces bandmate Ron Wood, leading to one of Stewart’s best-selling albums ever.
In 2015 Stewart reflected on his breakout hit: “At first, I didn’t think much of ‘Maggie May.’ I guess that’s because the record company didn’t believe in the song. I didn’t have much confidence then. I figured it was best to listen to the guys who knew better. What I learned is sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t”.
Perhaps Rod Stewart’s defining track, I wanted to spend some time with Maggie May. One of the most famous B-sides ever, it is amazing that the record executives were cold towards the track. Rod Stewart himself almost convinced that Maggie May was inferior. I am glad that it was not buried and has since been hailed as a classic. A sensational and powerful song in 1971, it still makes its mark…
OVER fifty years later.