"Maggie May" is a song co-written by singer Rod Stewart and Martin Quittenton, performed by Stewart for 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. In 2017, the Mercury Records single was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The song is regarded as Stewart's signature song.
Background
Written from Stewart's personal experience, "Maggie May" expresses the ambivalence and contradictory emotions of a boy involved in a relationship with an older woman. In the January 2007 issue of Q magazine, Stewart recalled: "Maggie May was a true story, about the first woman I had sex with, at the 1961 Beaulieu Jazz Festival." The woman's name was not "Maggie May"; Stewart has stated that the name was taken from "an old Liverpudlian song about a prostitute". The mandolin player on the actual recording was Ray Jackson of Lindisfarne. Jackson wrote and developed the mandolin piece at the start and middle of the song, but got no recognition, nor royalties from Stewart other than £15.00 for the recording session, and a mention on Stewart's ‘Every Picture Tells A Story’ album, which famously reads: “The mandolin was played by the mandolin player in Lindisfarne. The name slips my mind.”
The album version of "Maggie May" incorporates a 30-second solo guitar intro, "Henry", composed by Martin Quittenton. and simultaneously topped the charts in Australia (four weeks), Canada (one week), and the United States (five weeks). It was the No. 2 record for 1971 on both the US Billboard Hot 100 and UK singles charts.
The song re-entered the UK chart in December 1976, but only reached number 31.