Exclusive SMILER meets Maggie May

While working on our latest issue of SMILER [Issue 99] featuring two exclusive articles that includes a few unseen photographs from Rod in the early 60’s SMILER has made an amazing find, We came across the inspiration for Rod’s greatest hit ‘Maggie May’ and she is actually called Margarete!

While working on one article by Donna Parker about Rod meeting and staying with the crowd in Portsmouth in 1962 , memories started to flow and one of the guys remembered an older lady who Rod became friendly with after meeting her at The Matchams Park Ringwood Jazz Festival, she was all set to travel back to Pompey with the crowd but fell out with Rod at the last minute

Amazingly Margarete is still alive and well and still living on a canal barge in Hampshire at the age of 90, “Yes, I am Maggie May”, Margarete told SMILER

“I remember meeting young Roddy at that jazz festival, I wasn’t really into younger guys and he was around 13 years younger than me, he was so sweet and shy, and that hair. Still gets me going even today, I was wearing a low-cut top, they didn’t call be big mamma for nothing and young Rod couldn’t keep his eyes off, we were soon snuggling up in my tent”

After the festival Margarete was due to travel back to Portsmouth with Rod and his new friends but they had a fall out, “To be honest I think he got a better offer, but no matter what , he never forgot me.. did he?,” said Margarete

Sadly over the years Margarete has grew to hate the song “When Maggie May became a worldwide number one hit, and the story came out word soon got around it was about me, in fact I became a bit of a celebrity in Hampshire, but it soon began to get a drag, sometimes I would sleep with a guy for the first time and wake up in the morning , and off he would go ‘Wake up Maggie I think I’ve got something to say to you’ I got sick of hearing it! ..and that happened more than a few times”

At 90 Margarete says she has now given up on finding love “I am happy on my barge with my cats, I prefer a milk stout and a whiskey chaser these days, I think it helps keep me feeling young, but then again if Rod was to call around , he still has that mop of hair..you never know..ha ha”

Photo thanks to Margarete

Montage by Tommy Kevitt