• Writers: Rod Stewart and Martin Quittenton
• Producer: Rod Stewart
• Recorded: Early 1971
• Released: May 1971
• Players:
  Rod Stewart — vocals, acoustic guitar
  Martin Quittenton — acoustic guitar
  Ron Wood — guitar, bass
  Ian McLagan — organ
  Pete Sears — piano
  Mick Waller — drums
  Ray Jackson — mandolin
• Album: Every Picture Tells A Story (Mercury, 1971)
• Also On:
  Sing It Again, Rod (Mercury, 1972)
  Best Of Rod Stewart (Mercury, 1977)
  Greatest Hits (Warner Bros., 1979)
• No one, including Rod Stewart, saw the potential of “Maggie May” as a single. Although it has become one of his most successful songs, it was almost left off Every Picture Tells A Story because its theme of a younger man with an older, more experienced woman was considered overly sentimental. It was added because the album seemed too short without it.
• “Maggie May” wasn’t originally released as a single — it was actually the B-side to “Reason To Believe.” In the liner notes for his Storyteller box set, Stewart wrote, “If it wasn’t for a diligent DJ in Cleveland who flipped it over, I would still be digging graves. Some guys have all the luck.”
• The lyric is based on an experience in Stewart’s youth. In 1961, he was trying to sneak into an annual weekend-long Jazz Festival on an estate in Hampshire, England, when a “well-built older woman” pulled him into her tent. Stewart recalled, “The whole thing didn’t last more than 35 seconds.”
• Stewart found mandolinist Ray Jackson, whose playing lent the track one of its signatures, in a London restaurant, where he did romance songs from the ’30s.
• Stewart said he’s responsible for the way “Maggie May” was constructed musically: “In the studio I would just whistle the parts for them to play. That’s one thing I pride myself on, coming up with melody lines for the instrumentals.”
• Both “Maggie May” and Every Picture Tells A Story hit Number One on their respective charts.

FAST FORWARD:

• Stewart attempted a rewrite of “Maggie May” the following year on his album Never A Dull Moment with the song “You Wear It Well.” It reached Number 13 on the pop chart.
• Stewart was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1994. He missed the ceremony because of an earthquake in Los Angeles.
• Stewart had surgery to remove a cancerous lump from his throat in April 2000, which left him unable to sing for nearly nine months. He had to go through extensive vocal therapy and training after the operation.

In the past few years, he’s released several volumes of pop standards under the heading The Great American Songbook, and a volume of rock covers from the 1970s, called Still The Same…Great Rock Classics Of Our Time.