YOUNGER Sunnysiders may not get the name of this Queens Boulevard bar but its owners no doubt did. The name refers to an old chanty from the British city of Liverpool adopted by the Beatles as a bit of studio banter that wound up on their last released LP while they were still an active concern, Let It Be. At just 36 seconds long, it’s the second-shortest Beatles title, not approaching the 24-second “Her Majesty” which finished up Abbey Road.
The song’s lyrics have never been standardized but the Beatles’ version goes:
Oh, dirty Maggie Mae they have taken her away
And she’ll never walk down Lime Street anymore
Oh, the judge, he guilty found her
For robbin’ the homeward bounder
That dirty, no good, robbin’ Maggie Mae
‘Tis the part of Liverpool
They returned me to
Two pounds ten a week, that was my pay.
The “homeward bounder” was a sailor who had just returned to Liverpool; Maggie was a prostitute who robbed him; Lime Street is a main drag in the middle of the city on the west coast of England home to the Beatles. John Lennon knew it as a boy and it was in the repertoire of his first band, the Quarry Men.
Rod Stewart isn’t from Liverpool; he is Scots-English and from North London. But he rose to fame in the USA with the similarly titled “Maggie May” and has admitted that the Beatles’ song title influenced it. He has said the song is a true story of his loss of virginity with an older woman he met at a jazz festival in Beaulieu, in the south of England, in 1961.
The Faces accompany Rod Stewart as he lipsynchs the song on Top of the Pops.
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3/10/22