"Maggie May" is a song co-written by singer Rod Stewart and Martin Quittenton, and performed by Stewart on his 1971 solo album Every Picture Tells a Story.  Although the song is titled “Maggie May”, the entire name does not appear in the song.

In the January 2007 issue of Q magazine, Stewart recalled: "Maggie May was more or less 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 a Liverpool folk song about a Lime Street prostitute that the Beatles covered on their “Let It Be” album in 1970.

In his memoir Stewart provided details of the experience that led to this song.  Wrote Stewart: "At 16, I went to the Beaulieu Jazz Festival in the New Forest.  I'd snuck in with some mates via an overflow sewage pipe.  And there on a secluded patch of grass, I lost my not-remotely-prized virginity with an older (and larger) woman who'd come on to me very strongly in the beer tent.  How much older, I can't tell you - but old enough to be highly disappointed by the brevity of the experience."

“Maggie May” has several oddities to the song.  There is no real chorus in the song but plenty of vocal and instrumental changes to keep it interesting.  This is one of the first times a mandolin was used as a primary instrument in a popular rock song.  The running time of the song is over 5 minutes and for that reason it was not considered a potential hit, so it was used as the B-side of “Reason To Believe”.

When the record was released in August, “Reason To Believe” only rose to # 62 on the charts whereas Maggie May went to # 1 in October 1971. 

Various Sources