Wake Up, Maggie, I think I got something to say to you

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kinda oedipal with that mrs robinson vibe and the "mutha what a lover" line, not to mention the fact that he wants to "steal his daddy's cue"...but that whomp! whomp! before the first line, then: zitfaced young rod suddenly sitting bolt upright in the unmade mattress on the floor realizing he's got to tell maggie something right then but after he starts, he's not sure exactly what he wants to say or do - get on back to school? find himself a rock n roll band? and she'll probably just put on a pot of herbal tea and talk him down, maybe roll a joint of that crunchy stems n seeds kinda shit homegrown. it's all indecision and sloth, & letting companionship play at love. it's such a reluctant kiss-off, but he's still awed by her - not at all a dylan fuckyou or a stones "you know he won't be leaving as soon as he says. but he will leave, and she'll be better off for it.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Sunday, 17 November 2002 01:22 (twenty-three years ago)

with all the mandolins and earnest wickerback chair laddism, i don't imagine that ilm will like it much

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Sunday, 17 November 2002 01:34 (twenty-three years ago)

it just seems so slept-in, you know.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Sunday, 17 November 2002 01:35 (twenty-three years ago)

I like it. What's more, I like Blur's cover of it.

― Nate Patrin (Nate Patrin), Sunday, 17 November 2002 01:35 (twenty-three years ago)

I love this song but I haven't heard it in years.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Sunday, 17 November 2002 02:04 (twenty-three years ago)

i've never given this song a second thought but fritz just made me like it

― jones (actual), Sunday, 17 November 2002 02:08 (twenty-three years ago)

I always thought "You Wear It Well" was the next episode. Like, he goes off to school in Minnesota and one day he gets the urge to give Maggie May a call for old times sake. I prefer "You Wear It Well", the lyrics are really beautiful in a off hand sort of way. "the birthday gown that I bought in town when you sat down and cried on the stairs", "basement parties, your brother's karate" , "so when the sun goes down and you're home all alone, think of me and try not to laugh", all that. He was a great lyricist back then.

"Madame Onassis got nothing on you!"

― Arthur (Arthur), Sunday, 17 November 2002 02:45 (twenty-three years ago)

I like the idea of Rod Stewart and Kofi Annan going off to school in Minnesota, cheering on the Purple People Eater defense, idolizing Bill Musselman, and then one night Kofi comes across this in Rod's diary.

― James Blount (James Blount), Sunday, 17 November 2002 03:06 (twenty-three years ago)

I always liked that short story that Lester Bangs wrote based upon "Maggie May" that appears in Psychotic Reactions and Carbureator Dung.

― earlnash, Sunday, 17 November 2002 03:29 (twenty-three years ago)

maggie may and you wear it well are both great great songs. i dont have much interesting to say about them, but yeah

― ron (ron), Sunday, 17 November 2002 05:03 (twenty-three years ago)

I like the name Hopey a lot more than Maggie.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 17 November 2002 05:24 (twenty-three years ago)

i have maggie as my desktop now!!! the one from uh... chester square i think, yes

― ron (ron), Sunday, 17 November 2002 06:57 (twenty-three years ago)

where she's sitting on her suitcase and waiting for the bus

― ron (ron), Sunday, 17 November 2002 07:14 (twenty-three years ago)

rod = god

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 17 November 2002 12:44 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm sure I've gone on about "You Wear It Well" before - I love that song so much - "wrote that lyric without even trying". "Maggie May" is great too. As is his version of "Reason To Believe". His "Handbags And Gladrags" isn't as good as Chris Farlowe's, and is v. vulnerable because the Stereophonics awful version is so like it. Great post Fritz. Dammit where's my Play It Again Rod?

― Tom (Groke), Sunday, 17 November 2002 12:57 (twenty-three years ago)

Similar vintage, 'Every picture tells a story':

Spent some time feelin' inferior
standing in front of my mirror
Combed my hair in a thousand ways
but I came out looking just the same...

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Sunday, 17 November 2002 13:20 (twenty-three years ago)

wow, i underestimated ilm's tolerance for rod.

I also like that there's a slight time shift in the storytelling, the way I see it anyway. the main action is in the present, him spilling his guts to Maggie as they lay in bed in the morning sun (that's probably more noonish than dawn), but then when he says "Maggie I couldn't have tried anymore" and "Maggie I wished I'd never seen your face" in the choruses, it feels later - after he's already left... and that's an interesting line too - you get the feeling that he "couldn't have tried anymore" not because he has tried so hard that he's worn himself out, but rather that he wasn't capable of trying very hard at anything ever ... and then at the very end he says "I'll get on back home one of these days" - is he still with Maggie, thinking about going home to his parents? or is he off shooting pool/back at school/helping a rock n roll band and thinking about getting back to maggie may's little apartment?

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Sunday, 17 November 2002 13:51 (twenty-three years ago)

oh and yeah, 'you wear it well' is the perfect sequel song... and 'young turks' is about their love child daughter running away from home just like her old man.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Sunday, 17 November 2002 13:53 (twenty-three years ago)

I love Rod Stewart from that era. I particularly like the mandolin/guitar breakdowns in both 'Maggie May' and 'You Wear It Well' and the way the drums shamble back in (and on one of them the kick drum pattern sounds wrong and would be edited to be 'right' these days which is what I was getting at in that pro tools thread but no-one understood what I meant).

― David (David), Sunday, 17 November 2002 14:14 (twenty-three years ago)

"Maggie May" topped the US charts right about the time when the Vietnam draft was cut back sharply to its lowest level in six years. A year or two earlier, the choice for an American Rod would have been school or army.

Rod's hair back then always looked like he had just pulled himself up from Maggie's lovebed.

― Curt (cgould), Sunday, 17 November 2002 14:43 (twenty-three years ago)

I saw Rod Stewart in concert in San Diego when I was 16. I never thought I'd have the opportunity to broadcast this info on ILM!

By the way, I heard that his latest effort is an album of cover songs. The woman sitting next to me at the Bryan Ferry concert was very upset that the Rod Stewart cover doesn't hold a candle to the Bryan Ferry cover...

ILM: Zzzz...Why do we care what concerts Mary went to when she was 16, or indeed the other night...?

― Mary (Mary), Sunday, 17 November 2002 16:39 (twenty-three years ago)

I care! Specifically because I want to know -- how is Bryan live these days?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 17 November 2002 17:17 (twenty-three years ago)

every picture... was sounding really good in almost famous

― ron (ron), Sunday, 17 November 2002 17:24 (twenty-three years ago)

"Gasoline Alley" is classic.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Sunday, 17 November 2002 19:13 (twenty-three years ago)

Don't worry Fritz, I too love 'Maggie May'. If Rod had any sense nowadays instead of murdering Cole Porter songs he'd be getting Martin Quittenton out of retirement to write the sequel. Rod as the older, wiser(?) man dealing with the heartbreak of a young girl, no doubt blonde, loving him and leaving him.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Sunday, 17 November 2002 20:15 (twenty-three years ago)

"I care! Specifically because I want to know -- how is Bryan live these days?"

Aw! He was wonderful! The man is ageless! The set was Moulin Rouge meets Las Vegas. I felt sleazy just watching it! I saw him at the Beacon which is fairly mid-sized, I almost wish he would suffer some sort of setback so that I could see him crooning in some small-ish smoky night club in, where else, Vegas, it would be the best!

― Mary (Mary), Monday, 18 November 2002 05:04 (twenty-three years ago)

I can't believe that no one's mentioned Lester Bang's short story yet.

― Christine "Green Leafy Dragon" Indigo (cindigo), Monday, 18 November 2002 15:34 (twenty-three years ago)

So funny... I heard Maggy May on the radio this weekend and thought to myself, "Now this really is a great song."

― Aaron W, Monday, 18 November 2002 15:37 (twenty-three years ago)

maggie may's great, as is baby jane in a 60s/70s british rocker makes good record in 80s shocker.

against my better judgement i really like the 'you're in my heart, you're in my soul' one and i did actually have the moment of epiphany he no doubt intended as i was sitting in a mexican cafe vaguely listening to it, having vaguely listened to it for years

*what* did he just say?!?

so it's about....?

and not about.....?

but...?

oh rod, you are a one!

― adam b (adam b), Monday, 18 November 2002 17:33 (twenty-three years ago)

I think Lester Bangs' short story is one of his lesser moments. It's not very good, and the whole idea of doing a short story based on Maggie May in the first place is pretty dodgy.

"Every Picture Tells a Story" is a great album, of course. I've always had a soft spot for "First Cut is the Deepest," too.

― Ben Williams, Monday, 18 November 2002 17:38 (twenty-three years ago)

(not really an expert at Bangs, but wasn't he a classicist at heart? Loved the Stones so much, but could never write about them, etc... some of his less compelling moments come when he does try to deal with the rock canon with due reverence, cf Maggie May, Astral Weeks...)

― Ben Williams, Monday, 18 November 2002 17:45 (twenty-three years ago)

Classic. "Maggie May" is up there with Toto's "Africa" and "Benny and the Jets" in the category of "Best Songs To Hear Unexpectedly Playing from the Supermarket Sound System".

― o. nate (onate), Monday, 18 November 2002 17:50 (twenty-three years ago)

on a vaguely similar theme, there's an article in greil marcus' 'in the fascist bathroom' about (i think) 'every picture tells a story' which, despite having read it 30 times, still yields no meaning to me at all. dos ANYONE understand it?

― adam b (adam b), Monday, 18 November 2002 17:51 (twenty-three years ago)

one year passes...

what a lovely song this is, very moving too if you're willing to access it. i admit it might be hard due to overexposure. but the little portrait it paints is quite an observant and involving one. also a great sense of small-group dynamics. nice bass. nice mandolin. nice vocal. nice xylophone (??).

― amateur!!st, Friday, 12 November 2004 23:52 (twenty-one years ago)

that greil marcus thing btw always read to me like he spotted a germ of a good idea and then got exhausted trying to chase it down, and just sort of moved on to something more gaseous and irrelevant. (two-year-late response to adam b.)

― amateur!!st, Friday, 12 November 2004 23:53 (twenty-one years ago)

I always think of this and 'You Wear It Well' as companion pieces.

― 57 7th (calstars), Saturday, 13 November 2004 00:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Those first few Rod Stewart albums are all really good. And that drummer had a great sound, Mickey Waller did.

― Ken L (Ken L), Saturday, 13 November 2004 03:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Mick Waller is amazing on those records! Whatever happened to him?

Search: "Lost Paraguayos," "Twisting the Night Away," "Every Picture Tells a Story," "Cut Across Shorty," "Italian Girls," that amazing version of "Street Fighting Man."

― Burr (Burr), Saturday, 13 November 2004 05:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Was it Lester Bangs who said that Little Micky Waller deserved the Nobel Prize for physics for his drumming on, I think, Stay With Me?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 13 November 2004 10:41 (twenty-one years ago)

no, i think that was greil marcus, and i was never sure what it meant aside from "boy that drummer sure does have a light touch." which he does. did.

― amateur!!st, Saturday, 13 November 2004 13:41 (twenty-one years ago)

"you wear it well" is very special too. i should get some rod stewart records. i suspect theyr're hit and miss.

― amateur!!st, Saturday, 13 November 2004 16:15 (twenty-one years ago)

is the faces' "stay with me" the same as lorraine ellison's "stay with me"?

― amateur!!st, Saturday, 13 November 2004 16:16 (twenty-one years ago)

*that greil marcus thing btw always read to me like he spotted a germ of a good idea and then got exhausted trying to chase it down, and just sort of moved on to something more gaseous and irrelevant.*

this summation fits 98% of what Marcus writes! OTM.

― lovebug starski (lovebug starski), Saturday, 13 November 2004 16:34 (twenty-one years ago)

amateurist, the first four stewart albums are solid all the way through. Very enjoyable listening. I am so grateful that my roommate 4 years ago was able to convince me that Rod Stewart (and T Rex) was not cheesy crap, like I had assumed for some reason.

I wonder what Dylan thinks of Rod's covers, cause I think they are the best done Dylan covers, ever.

― Magic City (ano ano), Saturday, 13 November 2004 16:49 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, his early albums are really great, then he goes downhill quite quickly. No, completely different songs - the Ellison one is actually entitled Stay With Me Baby.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 13 November 2004 16:57 (twenty-one years ago)

One of those old school Elvis Costello-lookin' critics said something about Rod like "no other artist has so completely betrayed his talent so thoroughly." Maybe it was Dave Marsh. Or maybe it was Greil Marcus quoting Dave Marsh.

boy that drummer sure does have a light touch
The only guy other than Waller that got a similar soft touch/big sound (Dave Clark playing with brushes?) was Kenny Buttrey, who played on lots of Dylan records like "I Want You," I think, as well as with Neil Young on Harvest.

― Ken L (Ken L), Saturday, 13 November 2004 17:05 (twenty-one years ago)

check Truth by the Jeff Beck group for some non-suck Rod belting. Mick Waller is also the drummer on that LP. And isn't he the drummer who Beck later fired on stage? No accounting for taste.

― lovebug starski (lovebug starski), Saturday, 13 November 2004 17:43 (twenty-one years ago)

man, that original post on this thread by fritz wollner is beautiful...nice writing. great song, also.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Saturday, 13 November 2004 18:09 (twenty-one years ago)

All the Rod you'll ever need, aside from the 'Young Turks' single, can be found by buying the two-disc Mercury Anthology and the single-disc Faces anthology Good Boys . . . When They're Asleep.

BTW, I think Tom's dead wrong about "Handbags and Gladrags"--it's one of Rod's finest moments, even though it's damned near impossible to hear the song now without thinking of The Office.

― J (Jay), Saturday, 13 November 2004 18:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Why do British comedy shows always have to have some non-standard version of a sixties song as the theme song? I mean, if I were to make a British comedy would I have to have Brian Auger doing "What'd I Say?" as the theme? (You know what I mean)

― Ken L (Ken L), Saturday, 13 November 2004 19:17 (twenty-one years ago)

I think it's a holdover from "The Young Ones."

― J (Jay), Saturday, 13 November 2004 19:44 (twenty-one years ago)

i just got "the best of rod stewart: the 20th century masters: the millennium collection: i'm sure there's another subtitle in there"--it's all stuff from his first 4 (??) solo records. it's all good, but the standout tracks are the obvious ones.

"handbags & gladrags" -- ah HA so that's what "the office's" theme song. makes a perverse bit of sense to, what with the theme of our fathers' fathers slaving away in mines etc. so that we might waste our lives on consumer goods and doing pointless jobs in anonymous office parks. ok, well that sort of has the song and show meeting halfway. but you see my point.

p.s. what is a gladrag? it sounds like something you'd use after wanking off.

― amateur!!st, Saturday, 13 November 2004 23:27 (twenty-one years ago)

i just downloaded the song and didn't like it.

― jed_ (jed), Saturday, 13 November 2004 23:28 (twenty-one years ago)

gladrags are your best kit you put on for going out to fancy doos.

― jed_ (jed), Saturday, 13 November 2004 23:29 (twenty-one years ago)

the only line i don't like is

"you laughed at all of my jokes/my love you didn't need to coax"

― amateur!!st, Saturday, 13 November 2004 23:32 (twenty-one years ago)

i can't help but reading double-entendres into nearly every line of this song today

"all i needed was a guiding hand..."

― amateur!!st, Saturday, 13 November 2004 23:32 (twenty-one years ago)

I can't believe how much I like his cover Jimi Hendrix's Angel. It sometimes seems really awkward and cheese, but I kinda enjoy it's very casual groove.

― Magic City (ano ano), Sunday, 14 November 2004 00:43 (twenty-one years ago)

"every picture tells a story" is kicking my ass right now

dig those drum rolls everybody

― amateur!!st, Sunday, 14 November 2004 01:40 (twenty-one years ago)

so wait, is Maggie May the song with the Nobel prize-nominated drumming or is that a different song?

― Maxwell von Bismarck (maxwell von bismarck), Sunday, 14 November 2004 02:35 (twenty-one years ago)

he was awarded a nobel for his "contributions toward the advancement of humanism everywhere" and also for very precise 16th notes.

― amateur!!st, Sunday, 14 November 2004 07:40 (twenty-one years ago)

The best Faces song I've heard is still 'You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything'. If you haven't heard that, you're in for a treat. My second favourite is the amazing, rough-hewn ballad 'Open To Ideas', which for some reason went unreleased until the greatest hits compilation of a few years ago (which is all I have). What a chorus.

is the faces' "stay with me" the same as lorraine ellison's "stay with me"?

Emphatically not.

― Alba (Alba), Sunday, 14 November 2004 14:00 (twenty-one years ago)

There's some really nice stuff on 'Ooh la la' album by the Faces. I like 'My Fault' especially; it grooves for awhile and then goes into a really tuneful minor thing at the end.

― 57 7th (calstars), Sunday, 14 November 2004 14:13 (twenty-one years ago)

The title track of that LP kills. oh, but Rod doesn't sing it.

― lovebug starski (lovebug starski), Sunday, 14 November 2004 14:18 (twenty-one years ago)

take me like you find me
don't try to change me
you know better than that
take me as you see me
don't try to hide me
I ain't used to that

shout it out loud
put a bomb in a crowd
if I got something to say
there's nothing that can stop me
I can't let it lay

if I have to fall on my head
every night of the week
it's gonna be my fault and no one else
if everything goes wrong
when I'm singing my song
it's gonna be my fault and no one else

there ain't nothing you can do about it
I've sat and thought it over
don't try to help me
I was just born this way

yes I was born this way
I ain't gonna change for nobody
ooh, never, never gonna change

so if everything goes wrong
and I drink all night
it's gonna be my fault and no one else
people don't change just over night
it ain't natural
so don't break it kindly, don't hypnotize me
I just won't understand
take me like you find me
don't try to change me
you know better than that

oh don't you know better than that
oh don't you know better than that

― 57 7th (calstars), Sunday, 14 November 2004 14:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Micky Waller's receiving the Nobel Prize in Percussion had an important side effect. For it was in Stockholm after the prize-giving ceremony, at an afterparty given by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, that Rod Stewart first met Britt Ekland. Prior to this, Rod had only been interested in dark-haired Southern European Gina Lollobrigida types. In the parallel, non-Nobel universe, there is a Rod Stewart album entitled "Brunettes Have More Fun."

― Ken L (Ken L), Monday, 15 November 2004 02:42 (twenty-one years ago)

It was also Marcus who wrote the line about Rod's wasting his talent. The "slow side" of 'Atlantic Crossing' is good L.A. studio rock, tho certainly no 'Never a Dull Moment.'

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Monday, 15 November 2004 08:21 (twenty-one years ago)

The bass playing on "Maggie May" is sooo bad, so show-offy, so obviously played by a guitarist who thinks bass playing is "easy", that it puts me off the song completely. A shame, because I agree that Rod had some great stuff in this era.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Monday, 15 November 2004 11:41 (twenty-one years ago)

I really like this song, but reading the comments about the drumming, I'm just like WTF? Part of the reason I've always liked this song is that the drumming sounds so amateurish. It sounds like something I could play, including all the fills, and I'm a terrible drummer. Is this a case of something sounding easy but being really hard, or is his drumming better on other songs, or am I just wrong?

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 15 November 2004 16:06 (twenty-one years ago)

"Maggie May" has been ruined for me through overexposure, but you can't deny a lyric like "the morning sun when it's in your face really shows your age." It's one of the most deliciously cutting one-liners in popular song. Stephin Merritt would die to write something close to it.

― mike a, Monday, 15 November 2004 17:55 (twenty-one years ago)

To me that line is just cutting, nothing delicious about it.

― o. nate (onate), Monday, 15 November 2004 18:07 (twenty-one years ago)

but then he says "that don't worry me none, in my eyes you're everything"

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Monday, 15 November 2004 18:09 (twenty-one years ago)

True, but then you don't really believe him.

― o. nate (onate), Monday, 15 November 2004 18:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Anyway, it's a good song, but IMO Stephin Merritt has written many better lines.

― o. nate (onate), Monday, 15 November 2004 18:12 (twenty-one years ago)

x post

i know what you mean, it's all the contradictions and indecision that make it such a good little story.

i'm glad this thread got revived. & thanks matt h for your nice comment.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Monday, 15 November 2004 18:15 (twenty-one years ago)

on most days it's my favorite song ever

― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Monday, 15 November 2004 18:16 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost

To clarify what I mean, as a line, it's nothing special, but I think Stewart's voice puts the warmth into it that the words scanned on a page would lack.

― o. nate (onate), Monday, 15 November 2004 18:19 (twenty-one years ago)

-- Colin Meeder (amisrau...), November 15th, 2004.

-- n/a (nu...), November 15th, 2004.

so what we've established is that "maggie mae" is punk rock.

― amateur!!st, Monday, 15 November 2004 19:23 (twenty-one years ago)

yanc3y, you didn't sell any early Rod or Faces stuff at your sale, did you? Cause if you didn't and are planning to trash it don't...

― 57 7th (calstars), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:32 (twenty-one years ago)

that's all long gone, i'm afraid

― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Actually, Maggie Mae is pretty punk rock, and PRETTY punk rock. I mean, Rod even sings like the dude from Rancid.

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 15 November 2004 21:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Needs more palm-muting though.

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 15 November 2004 21:17 (twenty-one years ago)

seven years pass...

this is probably the one overplayed '70s radio staple i've never gotten sick of. it feels as deep as a really good novel and as light and graceful as a sparrow. the whole 'every picture...' album is terrific, but this is the one cut i could never live without.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, 17 March 2012 06:14 (fourteen years ago)

I was quite shocked when I finally got the albuM and discovered that the song had another intro that got chopped off by radio.

― Mike Love Costume Jewelry on Etsy (C. Grisso/McCain), Saturday, 17 March 2012 07:32 (fourteen years ago)

from back in 2002,

... and then at the very end he says "I'll get on back home one of these days" - is he still with Maggie, thinking about going home to his parents? or is he off shooting pool/back at school/helping a rock n roll band and thinking about getting back to maggie may's little apartment?

Neither, he never got back to any of the things he was supposed to do before his detour with Maggie. He never got back to Maggie either.

― warren harding (Zachary Taylor), Saturday, 17 March 2012 07:47 (fourteen years ago)

So nobody's posted that classic TOTP clip with Rod doing the song with the Faces and John Peel on *mandolin*? right then.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD_6KqP7K0g&feature=related

― I'm Street but I Know my Roots (sonofstan), Saturday, 17 March 2012 08:39 (fourteen years ago)

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