"Every Picture Tells a Story" is a song written by Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood and initially released as the title track of Stewart's 1971 album Every Picture Tells a Story. It has since become one of Stewart's signature songs and released on numerous Stewart compilation and live albums, including The Best of Rod Stewart, Storyteller – The Complete Anthology: 1964–1990 and Unplugged...and Seated. It was released as a single in Spain, Portugal and Japan, backed with "Reason to Believe." It has also been covered by the Georgia Satellites on their 1986 album Georgia Satellites and by Robin McAuley on Forever Mod: A Tribute to Rod Stewart. Background and structure The lyrics of "Every Picture Tells a Story" form a first person narrative of the singer finding adventures with women all over the world but eventually returning home after having learned some moral lessons. Locations of his adventures include Paris, Rome and Peking. In his review of the album in Rolling Stone, John Mendelsohn noted that this song "does rock with ferocity via a simple but effective seven-note ascension/five-note descension riff that Waller cleverly punctuates with a halved-time bass-drum-against-snare lick." The rhythm is loose throughout most of the song, although it tightens in the coda. Stewart biographers Tim Ewbank and Stafford Hildred describe the music as "a mess — unbalanced and shoddily thrown together," although the "vocals pull the song out of trouble." Despite being a hard rock song, the song primarily uses acoustic instruments, although guitarist Ron Wood does use an electric guitar occasionally. Pete Sears played the acoustic piano. The song's music incorporates many elements. Toby Creswell describes the opening guitar theme as reflective and melancholy. As the guitar opening fades, the drums played by Micky Waller crash primitively before Stewart begins to sing. Greil Marcus also praises the acoustic guitar parts that are played after each verse and the drum roll after the first verse. According to Stewart, he found the mandolin and violin players for this song and for "Maggie May" in a restaurant in London. Maggie Bell and Long John Baldry provide energetic harmony vocals, including the line "She claimed that it just ain't natural" in response to Stewart's line "Shanghai Lil never used the pill." Allmusic's Sullivan describes the song as "just plain visceral -- so much so that [it is] better heard than described" and that it represents six minutes of "defining rock