(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros. Records)
Wed 18 February 2026 11:15, UK
“Instead of getting married again,” Rod Stewart, a fellow who has slid a ring onto a bride’s finger thrice, once said: “I’m going to find a woman I don’t like and just give her a house”.
Since delivering that unfortunately stale pun, however, he has matured his stance on the subject and subsequently proclaimed: “I’ve been out with some extremely beautiful women who have had no sex appeal whatsoever. It really is a lot more than skin deep.” In a way, that might be the most romantic thing the ‘Hot Legs’ singer has ever said.
These quotes are not merely clever, if not somewhat questionable, quips but also stark indicators of how open the gravel-voiced, tight-trousered rocker really is. He, quite frankly, couldn’t give a shit, and he’s pretty clear about that. Thus, it seems fitting that his biggest hit and magnum opus is a track that hints at the momentous moment that the self-proclaimed sexy Scot lost his virginity.
“‘Maggie May’ was more or less a true story about the first woman I had sex with at the Beaulieu Jazz Festival,” he told Q Magazine. Detailing in a typically earnest fashion that the whole thing was over “in a few seconds”. Since then, he claims to have slept with so many women that he has lost count before settling down with Penny Lancaster in 2007. But it was his debut bout of lovemaking that motivated him to write his signature song.
He expounds on this story in his comical memoir – a memoir that also sees him denounce ‘that’ sailor rumour – Rod: The Autobiography, writing: “At 16, I went to the Beaulieu Jazz Festival in the New Forest. I’d snuck in with some mates via an overflow sewage pipe. And there on a secluded patch of grass, I lost my not-remotely-prized virginity with an older (and larger) woman who’d come on to me very strongly in the beer tent.”
He adds: “How much older, I can’t tell you – but old enough to be highly disappointed by the brevity of the experience.”
If you are inclined to do so, you can even visit this spot on the South Coast to this day. The festival was held at Palace House in Beaulieu, Hampshire. And while the official website for the stately home does state, “The New Forest and surrounding areas are rich in history and home to a number of country houses and gardens open to the public”, it fails to explicitly mention whether there’s a commemorative plaque where the beer tent used to be.
Alas, surely this sacred ground where a fateful entanglement that lasted all of a matter of seconds is demarcated at least in some mythical way that one of the many local Pagans could decipher?
After all, the encounter may have been fleeting but it was enough to wear Rod out, as he famously put it, and later write a masterful pop hit about it. He didn’t know the name of his mature lady lover but opted for the moniker of Maggie May. This title relates to the classic folk song ‘Maggie Mae’ that recounts the life of a Liverpool-based sex worker whose trade on Lime Street was renowned in Mersey beat circles.
However, there is no indication that money changed hands at the Beaulieu Jazz Festival, and Rod’s ‘Maggie’ was no more than a lusty cougar craving a romp with a sewage-covered younger fellow from Highgate upon the lush greens of Hampshire’s stately homes. Whether she even knows that she inspired a song that went on to hold the top spot for five weeks and find itself an eternal fixture of classic rock and road trip playlists remains a mystery.
The whole jazz romp shenanigan is not a tall tale from the Celtic fan, either. There is even footage of Rod as a ‘young fan’ at the festival below. While we can’t be certain where these shots lie within the sequence of events that day, the grin on his face and the awkward gate are rather notable. Either way, it seems that day may well have set the course for the rest of his life as his young mind conflated the marriage of rock ‘n’ roll and rolling around with a buxom beauty that has been a central focus of his back catalogue ever since.
Although his virginity tale might not sound ideal in the Bryonian sense, the track it spawned went on to reach 182nd in the US Billboard Charts all-time rundown (1958-2018), so it was a hell of a lot more successful than most people’s fumbling first attempts. It certainly beats a trip to the chemist, anyhow.