1971 · Behind the Songs
An acoustic farewell built on mandolin, memory, and a musician whose name nobody wrote down.
On Every Picture Tells a Story (1971), “Mandolin Wind” sits at the quiet end of a loud album. Rod Stewart wrote it, and the arrangement is mostly acoustic instruments, with the mandolin carrying the tune across 5:33 of soft rock and country rock. Critics heard it right away: Rolling Stone’s John Mendelsohn ranked it nearly as high as “Maggie May,” Rock: The Rough Guide named it the album’s highlight, and AllMusic’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine later called it “unbearably poignant.” Stewart loved the instrument itself, once saying the mandolin sounded “very romantic” and that his goal in life was to play “Mandolin Wind” the way it sounded on the record, in a 1975 Creem interview.
The strangest footnote is who played it. The liner notes credit only “the mandolin player in Lindisfarne” — Stewart had forgotten the name. In 2003, Lindisfarne’s Ray Jackson stepped forward to claim the part, at least on “Maggie May,” while AllMusic’s Stewart Mason credits Martin Quittenton, whom the notes list only on acoustic guitar. The mystery never hurt the song: the Everly Brothers covered it in 1972 on Stories We Could Tell, Earl Scruggs cut it in 1977 on Strike Anywhere, and Mercury even pulled it as a 7-inch single in mid-1977. First released as the B-side of “(I Know) I’m Losing You,” it outlasted its A-side in memory — proof that Stewart’s roughest voice sounded best at its gentlest.