Released in 1971 on Rod Stewart’s album Every picture tells a storyis one of the singer’s most popular songs. In 2004 Rolling Stone The magazine ranked it 130th on its list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” But who IS the woman Rod Stewart had something to say to “in late September”?
“Maggie, I wish I’d never seen your face,” Stewart sings in his iconic autobiographical hit about the conflicting feelings between a young man and his older lover. But who is this mysterious woman? In 2007, Stewart mentioned in an interview for Q Magazine: “Maggie May was more or less a true story about the first woman I had sex with, at the Beaulieu Jazz Festival in 1961.”
The woman’s real name, however, was not Maggie May. It comes from a traditional Liverpool folk song about a prostitute who robbed a sailor returning from a sea voyage. (This name and a similar personality are also mentioned in a 38-second ad-lib that the Beatles recorded on Let it be. They had performed it years earlier as The Quarrymen.) The true identity of the woman to whom Rod Stewart lost his virginity at the age of 16 remains unknown.
Still, this personal experience led to Stewart’s first major hit as a solo artist and really launched his career. Although he had enjoyed some success with two previous albums, Rod Stewart – nearly 27 years old – had not yet become the true rock star he had dreamed of being, like his heroes, the Rolling Stones.
When he recorded and released Every picture tells a storyThe British rocker did not expect “Maggie May” to be a hit. His colleagues criticized the lack of melody. In fact, the song was on the B-side of the album. According to Stewart, it was a DJ in Cleveland who launched the album and first aired the song.
Even today, this look back at a past love affair is understandable. No wonder that the British singer “Maggie May” MTV Unplugged Episode in which he was reunited with his faceS bandmate Ron Wood, resulting in one of Stewart’s best-selling albums ever.
In 2015, Stewart looked back on his breakthrough: “At first I didn’t think much of ‘Maggie May’. I guess that was because the record company didn’t believe in the song. I didn’t have much confidence at the time. I thought it was best to listen to the people who knew better. I’ve learned that sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.”
-Gabriel Karkovsky
Photo: Rod Stewart, 1971 (public domain)
