In his book 'In The Fascist Bathroom', Greil Marcus presents a table of rock deaths ranked, Top Trumps style, in accordance with their contribution to the genre whilst alive, and also the contribution they would have made had they not died. Sam Cooke and Buddy Holly comes out on top, though Marc Bolan, Jimi Hendrix and Tim Buckley also appear. Had he been writing later, then Kurt Cobain would have doubtlessly ranked high and Jeff Buckley higher. You get the picture.Of course, this is just so much speculation. Who knows what Buddy Holly would have gone on to achieve had he not boarded that plane in 1959? Would he have been as consistently innovative as he was throughout his 22 years and continued to churn out classic after classic, or would he have been reduced to a cabaret act on the chicken in a basket circuit, endlessly playing 'Peggy Sue' to a partisan audience of middle aged Teds? We'll never know.
To take the idea slightly leftfield, would the reputations of, say, Paul McCartney or Eric Clapton now be enhanced if both had fallen in front of a bus in 1971? It's not too harsh to say that neither have barely recorded a note worth hearing since then, and every subsequent 'Pipes Of Peace' or 'Wonderful Tonight' has only served to tarnish the hard won legacy of 'Eleanor Rigby' and Clapton's soloing on 'Parchman Farm'.
Which leads me nicely on to Roderick David Stewart and 'Maggie May'. Few artists in the genre can be said to have squandered their talent so completely as Rod. A series of ill advised, playing to the gallery releases left Stewart struggling to regain any credibility since...oooh 1975, leaving him stranded in time as some kind of novelty act to any eyes not old enough to have been with him at his peak. Dropping his name now will generally at best result in a wry smile and a caricatured mental image of pineapple hair with skin-tight leopard print pants; it begs the question as to what Stewart's legacy would have been had he retired in 1974?
Probably a lot healthier all told - for a start, he would have left a back catalogue (both solo and with The Faces) containing a plethora of self penned classics; 'Cindy's Lament', 'Gasoline Alley', 'Mandolin Wind', 'You Wear It Well', 'Three Button Hand Me Down', 'Stay with Me' - it's an impressive line-up that would have been left completely unsullied by the later horrors of 'Sailing', 'Ole Ola', 'Do You Think I'm Sexy?', 'Baby Jane' and the rest of it. And then there's 'Maggie May'. Because make no mistake, 'Maggie May' is Stewart at his peak.
Another self penned track, the "Wake up Maggie I think I got something to say to you" is one of the most instantly recognisable openings in popular music. And what he has to say is drawn as a vividly as any short story; 'Maggie May' is over five minutes long, doesn't have a chorus and yet feels half it's length. Ably backed with a chunky rhythm from The Faces, Ian McLagan's woozy Hammond binds the song and keeps Stewart's vocal on track and in key.....but never mind all that, it's nothing they haven't played a hundred times before or since; it's the lyrics that make 'Maggie May' so enjoyable.
Apparently autobiographical, Stewart describes his summer spent as an older woman's plaything and the attendant mixed feelings of being in love and in a relationship that's going nowhere with a sharp sense of realism (from the off, he only 'thinks' he has something to say to her). Though obviously a 'jack the lad', the 'you turned into a lover and Mother what a lover, you wore me out' might sound like every young boy's fantasy, but there's none of the 'nudge nudge wink wink' you might expect from his bedding an older woman.
Neither are there any cheap or spiteful put downs, even 'The morning sun when its in your face really shows your age' is followed by the qualifying 'But that don't worry me none in my eyes you're everything' - the obvious affection Stewart has for his characters gives a warm glow to what could have been quite a sad and sleazy tale (one hopes that Rod was a sixth former at the time' his "It's late September and I really should be back at school" would have been enough to have Ms May locked up and signing the register in modern days).
Neither ballad nor rocker, when all's said and done there's nothing you can do with 'Maggie May' except sit down and listen to it. And yet the listening rewards in the way a good book or film can reward, it gives a brief insight into the lives of others and invites empathy (or at least comment) with a scenario that's maybe outside your own experience. Literate and intelligent - Rod certainly has fallen an awful long way. The modicum of credibility he regained through covering Tom Waits is overshadowed by the tragedy that 'Maggie May' is proof positive that he's more than capable of writing that kind of stuff for himself.
sadly almost to a man (or woman), the major rock stars that managed to avoid the grim reaper became mere shadows of themselves as they matured. macca is perhaps the prime example of that by continuing to churn out an album every few years with the hype that it's his best since the beatles, before being completely forgotten about within months if not sooner. and i'd be surprised if anyone has gone to one of his gigs in the last 20 years hoping against hope that he'll play "pipes of peace" (despite it actually being a number 1 hit 20 years after the beatles took off). and i actually witnessed the crowd at a bowie outdoor gig leave the stadium in their droves for a convenient piss/drink/burger break once he had sated them with a few old classics before announcing "this is from my latest album". so the track record suggests that most if not all those that didn't make it to their dotage would have faded as a creative force too (i would have said a possible exception was eddie cochran as not only was he a talented songwriter and musician, but he also realised the value of recording production techniques and utilised that wherever possible - long before the days of multi-tracking, etc). however kudos has to go billy joel as one first division superstar still with us who realised when he was on the creative slide, and stopped recording original material accordingly. but that hasn't seemed to have affected his status as a performance draw - as appearing at the old trafford football ground later this year is proving!
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