Hi Suzanne:
¿Why Maggie May? ¿Who is Maggie May? ¿Maybe, a symbolical woman in the american culture?}}}

Hi Raul!

In "(I'll Never Be) Your Maggie May" - Maggie May is the subject of Rod Stewart's classic song, "Maggie May":

MAGGIE MAY
(Rod Stewart / Martin Quittenton)

Wake up Maggie I think I got something to say to you
It's late September and I really should be back at school
I know I keep you amused but I feel I'm being used
Oh Maggie I couldn't have tried any more
You lured me away from home just to save you from being alone
You stole my heart and that's what really hurt

The morning sun when it's in your face really shows your age
But that don't worry me none in my eyes you're everything
I laughed at all of your jokes my love you didn't need to coax
Oh, Maggie I couldn't have tried any more
You lured me away from home, just to save you from being alone
You stole my soul and that's a pain I can do without

All I needed was a friend to lend a guiding hand
But you turned into a lover and
mother what a lover, you wore me out
All you did was wreck my bed
and in the morning kick me in the head
Oh Maggie I couldn't have tried anymore
You lured me away from home 'cause you didn't want to be alone
You stole my heart I couldn't leave you if I tried

I suppose I could collect my books and get on back to school
Or steal my daddy's cue and make a living out of playing pool
Or find myself a rock and roll band that needs a helpin' hand
Oh Maggie I wish I'd never seen your face
You made a first-class fool out of me
But I'm as blind as a fool can be
You stole my heart but I love you anyway

Maggie I wish I'd never seen your face
I'll get on back home one of these days


From an interview in the East Hampton Independent: "Vega toys with an ideal in "(I'll Never Be)Your Maggie May," from the point of view of an older woman who's attracted to a younger man. While in the classic Rod Stewart tune, the man leaves the woman, she thought it would be "cool" to rewrite it from a woman's point of view. "I'll never be your Maggie May/ the one you loved and then forgot/ I'll love you first and let you go/ because it must be so/ and you'll forgive or you will not." "

ERIC:
Thank you. Your answer is complete. Here, in my country (Argentina),we know Rod Stewart, but in the "disco" much dancings, nothing lyrics. I'm 39 old. I recall Rod Stewart in other age;nevertheless, I don't know Rod's lyrics. Anyway, thanks, Eric.

I think this may make for a culturally relevant song, and maybe it's a good answer song, but if you ask me, Suzanne is wasting her time by featuring it so prominently at the expense of other great songs like "Last Year's Troubles". I rank this one up there with "Lolita".

-M

I've been hesitant to bring this up, but it seemed to me that Suzanne was going though a bit of a mid-life crisis in the writing of this album.

For instance, the album title "Songs in Red and Gray" always said to me that she was starting to see some gray hairs ('songs at an age where my hair is red and gray').

Red heads go gray sooner than brunettes and blondes (me? I'll never go gray... I won't have any hair left by then!).

Long before she wrote her Maggie May, I remember hearing Rod's song and hearing this line where he says that the sunlight really shows her age. I thought "Ouch! That's got to sting!" And in Suzanne's song there's a lot of emphasis on this kind of fading beauty... hiding behind a fan with lots of make up... and what not.

The sentiment gets echoed in other songs on that album, about being loved despite outside appearances, and about doubting a man's capability to have that love.

Don't get me wrong, I still think of Suzanne as not only young, but beautiful. But I know we all tend to get self conscious into our 30's and early 40's... and women, for the most part feel it more keenly than men.

Long before Rod Stewart became a sell-out disco cartoon character he was actually one of the best Rock and Roll Singers of the late 60's and early 70's. First as the lead singer for the Jeff Beck Group and later with his band "The Faces", he was known as "Rod the Mod" for his english Mod style.
In England beginning in the 60's "The Mods" were the hip, swingin' cool, fab, groovy cats with the coolest haircuts. In contrast you had "the Rockers", the guys with greased back hair and leather jackets who were still stuck in the "50's.

Maggie May was a classic song from the early 70's

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If nothing ever changes then.....nothing ever changes

I remember Ringo's famous reply to the question "Are you A Mod or Rocker?". He said "I'm a Mocker.

Having read Patrick's previous entry: "Long before she wrote her Maggie May, I remember hearing Rod's song and hearing this line where he says that the sunlight really shows her age."

Ah, but the next very important line is "WELL THAT DON'T WORRY ME NONE.."

In other words, the aging aspect wasn't an issue for "him".

And it should answer the question in Suzanne's song "would you ever see within, underneath the skin?" as a "yes".

In the past 2 years, I've seen Suzanne in concert 5 or 6 times. She pretty much performed "I'll Never Be Your Maggie May" at all of those shows, prefacing before each performance of the song her take in the issue.

I would say that in the past 2 years, i appreciated Suzanne's talent moreso than Rod's. As a result, i had a lot of respect for Suzanne's angle of the scenario, and bought into it to the point where i thought that maybe there was a womanizing point of view that Maggie May was written in.

Having said that, i recently took another listen to Rod's song in a scenario where i had been sufficiently removed from the cancerous environment of repetitive commercialized classic rock that i could listen to this song with a freshness to hear what's actually going on within the song.

When Suzanne prefaced her "reaction song" in a live performance, she seemed to hint at her 2nd line "the one you loved and left behind" or "the one you loved and then forgot".

Then there's Rod singing "You made a first-class fool out of me
But I'm as blind as a fool can be
You stole my heart but I love you anyway"

So you've got 2 lovers feeling scorned in some way and writing about it in their own songs. And with that, i think people could kinda see how these types of relationships can crash and burn.

Here comes the scary part. It's almost as if Suzanne was more concerned with the "red and gray" aspect of her life as Patrick previously alluded to, which in turn could not allow her to afford to see or relate to the trials and tribulations that men sometimes go through. Rod sings about falling in love and trying to satisfy a woman's needs as a result, only to have it cause deleterious effects on his life that prevent him from being where he should be. Then it seems like all Suzanne can focus on is the "love her and leave her" portion of the whole scenario, without regard to the negative affect on the man.

On the one hand, Rod is tallying up his receipts, saying "well i did all this for you or i was all of this to you and look what it has cost me" (heartbreak, being made a fool of, and perhaps a future). And then you have Suzanne saying "hey, I'm not gonna get involved in a relationship that's only destined for hurt" (perhaps revealing a cautiousness, a lack of openness and trust, perhaps based on wisdom).

Interesting to note.

It's just the fact that the man wakes up Maggie to TELL her that her face is aging, that's not good for Maggie's self esteem I think.

Spikes

I agree with all William says. I had already said here that "(I'll Never Be) Your Maggie May", didn't seem to me an answer to Rod Stewart's song, exactly because the reasons Rod's character pointed out for leaving his older lover are very different from those Suzanne invoques, as William said so well.

But I'm a man, so maybe I'm missing what's between the lines

Anyway I prefer to think as if there was a main story, an abstract thing, not created by Rod. He gave the version of of the male character, while Suzanne gives us the version of the female one. And as it always happens when two people tell the same story, they don't always coincide. Different points are stressed by each, different things were felt and considered important.

I know this was not the goal of Rod Stewart or Suzanne, but we're free to reinterpret the whole picture, aren't we?

José Carlos
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"Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously."
--Henry Miller

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Well Spikes, it should have actually helped her self-esteem when he declared that despite her aged appearance, in his eyes she was still "everything". In other words, her aged appearance didn't matter as far as his feelings were concerned, and that in turn should have eased her feelings of insecurity about her appearance.

To take it a step further, at times women develop this insecurity, and then they start doing things like wearing excessive make-up and stuff that turn a lot of men off.

I for one have no desire to kiss paint.

I was thinking of this when I woke up this morning, actually, and it sounds to me as if Suzanne wondered if it was actually helping Maggie's self-esteem; if the man would say: "Hey, I don't care that your face looks old" Is that what Maggie wants to hear? Could she believe that the younger man would actually see what's underneath the skin and not look at her appearance?

Spikes

Maggie's gonna think her face looks old regardless, so in a sense the man acknowledging it and saying it's really not an issue should be re-assuring to her that (her aging) doesn't matter.

Now they key word in that is "should". Maggie may not see it that way, and neither may Suzanne for that matter.

Rod Stewart probably wrote that line in the song primarily just to let the listener/audience know that the story he is telling is about him and an older woman, not even realizing how or that people would react to it.

Yeah she will think that anyway, but what's not cognitively present will have a lesser impact on a certain moment. When you wake up next to somebody - which is quite intimate - and have a romantic moment, you'll probably do not want to be reminded of life stripping you from your beauty.

Spikey / Rutger

In Rod Stewart's song, Maggie only does three things - she lures the poor lad, steals his heart, and (most memorably) she wakes up.  Seems like an unfair assessment by Rod.

 

 

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The wind kicks up with the smell of rain
The kids are gone but the souls remain