Every Picture Tells a Story

Written by Stewart and Ronnie Wood, the title track of the 1971 album tells in the first person of a singer who finds adventures with women across the world and returns home. Paris, Rome and Peking are among the places it names. It opens on the line about spending time feeling inferior, standing in front of the mirror. Wood plays electric guitar, twelve-string and bass, Pete Sears piano, Micky Waller drums and Ian McLagan organ, with Long John Baldry and Maggie Bell among the backing voices. Stewart has said he found the mandolin and violin players for this song and for Maggie May in a restaurant in London.

Tal Rosenberg of Pitchfork noted that Waller bashes off the beat while Stewart is not singing, and called the Peking ferry verse "a hideous and dated representation of Orientalism." A 1992 live version skips a verse. Greil Marcus calls it "Rod Stewart's greatest performance." In Rolling Stone's Album Guide Paul Evans paired it with Maggie May as the best hour of Stewart and Wood. It was released as a single in Spain, Portugal and Japan, backed with Reason to Believe, and Georgia Satellites covered it on their 1986 album. Cameron Crowe used it in Almost Famous.