Maggie Mae

The track names real places (Liverpool, Lime Street), and it deals in the motifs of storytelling and character too. The telling is a vignette, one scene rather than a story, a habit that peaked in 1967. It uses pastiche (Traditional Merseyside folk tune).

'Maggie Mae' runs near 84 BPM in G major, and it is a folk and skiffle piece from first bar to last. Listen for the defining riff, a simple I-IV-V folk strum. Also, it does without bass, which almost nothing else of theirs does. Verse after verse and nothing else, which makes the song strophic, one of sixteen, such as 'Matchbox' and 'Mr. Moonlight'.

Captured live at Apple Studios during the Get Back rehearsals. The brief fragment was kept as a Liverpool nod to bridge two tracks on the album. McCartney is on the Martin D-28, his acoustic, something they had reached for on 'Across the Universe' eleven months earlier. It was the 2nd of the 30 songs they recorded in 1969, and the 185th of their career.

This track is a traditional song whose author nobody knows, and Lennon and McCartney share the lead. There is a role swap on it, McCartney on acoustic guitar, and it is on more of their 1968 records than any other year's.

The song came out with Let It Be on May 8, 1970, and it was never mixed for mono, which by then the Beatles had stopped doing. This is their 210th record, and the 8th of the 12 they released in that year.