The 1990s File Feature
Ooh La La
Rod Stewart's Recording of "Ooh La La" and Its Origins with Faces "Ooh La La" has one of the more unusual backstories in classic rock: the song was recorded …
01 The Story
Rod Stewart's Recording of "Ooh La La" and Its Origins with Faces
"Ooh La La" has one of the more unusual backstories in classic rock: the song was recorded by a band whose lead singer reportedly disliked it, sung by a guitarist who rarely took the microphone, and then covered a quarter century later by that same original frontman as a tribute to a bandmate who had died. The song's journey from a 1973 album closer to a 1998 pop hit embodies an entire arc of friendship, regret, and musical legacy.
The song was written by Ronnie Lane and Ronnie Wood for Faces, the English rock band that included Lane on bass, Wood on guitar, Ian McLagan on keyboards, Kenney Jones on drums, and Rod Stewart as lead vocalist. It appeared as the title track of the group's final studio album, Ooh La La, released in 1973 on Warner Bros. Records. The album arrived at a moment when the band was already showing signs of internal fracture, with Stewart's parallel solo career increasingly overshadowing the group's collective identity.
The circumstances of who sang the track became a well-documented piece of rock mythology. When the completed song was presented to Stewart, he is reported to have said he did not like it. Keyboardist Ian McLagan recalled the moment specifically: when the band played the song for Stewart, he responded with immediate dismissal, adding that the key was wrong for his voice. Producer Glyn Johns then suggested that Ronnie Wood attempt the lead vocal, a rare departure from the standard lineup of duties, and the result was the version that appeared on the album. Lane himself also recorded a vocal during the sessions, but Wood's version was ultimately selected for the record.
Despite Stewart's initial resistance, "Ooh La La" became one of the most beloved songs in the Faces catalog. Its wistful melody and the gentle, sage-dispensing narrative of the lyrics gave it a warmth that distinguished it from harder-edged rock material. The song's standing grew over the following decades through its frequent use in films and commercials and its inclusion on countless compilations of the period.
Ronnie Lane left Faces shortly after the album's release and pursued a solo career before being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1976. The disease progressively diminished his ability to perform, and he spent his later years in relative obscurity despite continued reverence from the rock community. Lane died in June 1997, prompting Stewart to finally confront his long ambivalence about the song he had declined to sing in 1973.
Stewart recorded "Ooh La La" for his 1998 album When We Were the New Boys, released on Warner Bros. Records. The album was conceived as a covers collection focusing on British rock and pop songs, and Stewart described his decision to include "Ooh La La" as a tribute to Lane, his former Faces bandmate. The irony of Stewart finally recording the song Lane had written, after spending twenty-five years not performing it, gave the cover a poignant dimension that went beyond simple nostalgia.
As a single, the 1998 version of "Ooh La La" performed strongly in the United Kingdom, reaching number 2, and it achieved meaningful chart presence in the United States as well, debuting on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 4, 1998, at position 48. The song climbed steadily over five weeks before reaching its American peak of 39 during the chart week of August 1, 1998. It spent a total of 20 weeks on the Hot 100, a substantial run that reflected both the strength of Stewart's commercial standing in the late 1990s and the genuine appeal of the song itself to a broad audience. The chart trajectory showed a patient climb followed by an extended stay in the middle reaches of the chart, the signature of a song that found its audience through sustained radio and television exposure rather than an explosive debut.
The single's success reintroduced the Faces catalog to a new generation of listeners and restored a measure of commercial attention to a song that had been a cult favorite for decades. Its performance on both sides of the Atlantic confirmed that the core melody and emotional content of Lane and Wood's original composition were durable enough to survive any number of presentations.
02 Song Meaning
Wisdom, Regret, and the Gap Between Experience and Youth
"Ooh La La" is organized around one of the oldest narrative devices in popular music: an elder figure attempting to warn a younger one about the pitfalls of romantic experience, and the younger one's inability to absorb that wisdom before living through the consequences himself. The song's central lyric, in which the narrator wishes he had known at a younger age what he knows now, encapsulates a form of bittersweet self-awareness that resonated deeply with listeners far beyond the Faces fanbase of 1973.
The song was written by Ronnie Lane and Ronnie Wood at a moment when Faces were approaching the end of their run as a group, and there is something fitting about a farewell album containing a song about the lessons that only experience can teach. Lane in particular had a songwriting sensibility that was more reflective and emotionally delicate than the rowdy rock image the band cultivated in their live performances and broader public persona. His collaborations with Wood on "Ooh La La" produced something that stood apart from the band's rougher material.
The grandfather-and-grandson framing of the lyric borrows from a folk and country tradition of using generational dialogue to convey moral insight. The elder speaker in the song is not bitter or judgmental; he is simply sad that he cannot transfer his understanding of romantic vulnerability to someone young enough to still be protected from it. This gentle, non-prescriptive approach to the theme gave the song a universal quality, making it usable in films and television scenes about nostalgia, regret, and the passage of time.
When Rod Stewart returned to the song in 1998, more than a decade after Ronnie Lane's health had declined and a year after Lane's death, the autobiographical dimension became impossible to ignore. Stewart had been the frontman who initially declined to sing the song, citing dissatisfaction with the key. Recording it as a tribute to Lane meant Stewart was publicly acknowledging both the song's quality and his own earlier reluctance to engage with it. The cover thus became, at some level, an act of belated recognition.
The song's repeated appearances in film soundtracks from the 1990s onward, including its memorable placement in the 1998 Wes Anderson film Rushmore, extended its cultural reach well beyond the rock audience. Each new context reframed its central theme of hard-won emotional knowledge, making it as much about the films' subjects as about any biographical reading of the original band. This capacity to accumulate meaning across different uses is characteristic of songs with genuinely strong central ideas rather than merely effective production.
For listeners encountering Stewart's 1998 version first, the song offered the pleasures of his mature vocal style applied to a melody that was already doing much of the emotional work. For longtime Faces fans, the cover carried the additional weight of a full circle narrative, connecting the band's end in 1973 with Lane's death in 1997 and Stewart's final acknowledgment of a song he had been wrong to dismiss. Both readings are valid, and the song's durability suggests it can sustain either without diminishment.
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