Mandolin Wind

Mandolin Wind was written by Stewart and first appeared on Every Picture Tells a Story. It later became the B-side of (I Know) I'm Losing You, and Mercury issued it as a single in its own right in mid-1977. The song mixes rock and folk and uses mostly acoustic instruments, with a prominent mandolin part. Stewart has said he always thought the mandolin a romantic-sounding instrument, and that his goal in life was to play the song and make it sound like the record.

John Mendelsohn wrote in Rolling Stone in 1971 that it was "nearly as good" as Maggie May. Tal Rosenberg of Pitchfork called it "Stewart's greatest song by a distance" and described Ronnie Wood and Martin Quittenton playing dual acoustic guitar parts, with Wood adding pedal and slide guitar. He read the lyric as a couple living together through a bad winter, and noted that Stewart has never said what a mandolin wind is. Christgau singled out the run from this song into Motown and then Tim Hardin as what did justice to everything Stewart was. The Everly Brothers recorded it in 1972 for Stories We Could Tell, and Earl Scruggs in 1977 for Strike Anywhere. Stewart sang it again on Unplugged...and Seated.