Maggie May

"Maggie May" is a song written by singer Rod Stewart and Martin Quittenton and recorded by Stewart in 1971 for his album Every Picture Tells a Story.

In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked the song #131 on their list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Background

"Maggie May" expresses the ambivalence and contradictory emotions of a young man involved in a relationship with an older woman, and was written from Stewart's own experience. 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 claimed that the name was taken from "... an old Liverpudlian song about a prostitute."

The song was recorded in just two takes in one session. Drummer Micky Waller often arrived at recording sessions with the expectation that a drum kit would be provided and, for "Maggie May", it was - except that no cymbals could be found. The cymbal crashes had to be overdubbed separately some days later.

Maggie May (folk song)

"Maggie May" (or "Maggie Mae") is a traditional Liverpool folk song (Roud #1757) about a prostitute who robbed a "homeward bounder": a sailor coming home from a round trip.

John Manifold, in his Penguin Australian Song Book, described it as "A foc'sle song of Liverpool origin apparently, but immensely popular among seamen all over the world". It became widely circulated in a skiffle version from the late 1950s.

In 1964, the composer and lyricist Lionel Bart (the creator of the musical Oliver!), used the song and its backstory as the basis of a musical set around the Liverpool Docks. The show, also called Maggie May, ran for two years in London. In 1970 a truncated version of the song performed by the Beatles was included on their album Let It Be.

Lyrics

As with most folk songs, the lyrics exists in many variant forms. The song specifies several real streets in Liverpool, notably Lime Street in the centre of the city.

In the most established version, it is sung in the first person by a sailor who has come home to Liverpool from Sierra Leone. He is paid off for the trip. With his wages in his pocket, he sees Maggie "cruising up and down old Canning Place". She had "a figure so divine" (either "like a frigate of the line" or with "a voice so refined"). He picks her up and she takes him home to her lodgings. When he awakes the following morning, she has taken all his money and even his clothes, insisting that they are in "Kelly's locker", a pawn shop. When he fails to find his clothes in the pawn shop, he contacts the police. She is found guilty of theft and sentenced to transportation to Botany Bay.

Maggie May (musical)

Maggie May is a musical with a book by Alun Owen and music and lyrics by Lionel Bart. Based on "Maggie May", a traditional ballad about a Liverpool prostitute, it deals with trade union ethics and disputes among Irish-Catholic dockers in Liverpool, centring on the life of streetwalker Margaret Mary Duffy and her sweetheart, a freewheeling sailor.

The show includes bittersweet ballads, robust chorus numbers, and even some rock 'n' roll, making it one of the most musically diverse British scores of the 1960s. Steven Suskin, in reviewing a newly released CD, wrote: the show begins with a "rather weird folk-ballad", and has "a couple of gentle lullaby-like ballads...raucous production numbers... a tongue-twister, set to an almost violent waltz", along with a distinctive version of the title song "which mixes a sailor's chanty with — what, Dixieland?".

History

The West End production opened on September 22, 1964 at London's Adelphi Theatre, where it ran for 501 performances. The cast included Rachel Roberts, Kenneth Haigh, Andrew Keir, Barry Humphries, John Junkin, and Geoffrey Hughes.Georgia Brown later replaced Roberts in the title role.

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See also

A. J. Baker

A. J. (Jim) Baker (born 1923) is an Australian philosopher who is best known for systematising the realist philosophy of John Anderson.

He studied under Anderson at Sydney University and has taught philosophy in Scotland, New Zealand, the United States and Australia. He was a prominent member of the Sydney Libertarians and the Sydney Push.As of 2012, he continued to contribute occasional articles to The Sydney Realist.

References

Bibliography