(Credits: Far Out / The Faces)
Tue 30 December 2025 11:56, UK
There were a few perfect songs released in 1973, and while I wouldn’t be so bold as to say ‘Ooh La La’ by Faces is the best, it is undoubtedly in the top one.
There isn’t a hair out of place on the softly poignant track. The chord progressions are beautiful, the performance is earnest, and the sentiments of youth being wasted on the young and the weariness of age are notions that continue to stir. In short, ‘Ooh la la’ is just about as humble and honest as masterpieces get.
The yin and yang of life unfurls in the sweet and simple song: the grandfather is a cynic who has let life’s hardships get the better of him, while the grandson scarcely reconciles that hardships are part of life and he ought to be prepared for them. That is pretty much a perfect paradigm of the human comedy.
And somehow, the Faces rattle it all off in three beguiling minutes with an effortlessly sinalong melody. The song captures the life-affirming essence of rock ‘n’ roll: writ large across its runtime is a clear feeling of a few working-class lads gathering around with instruments to express something true and touching.
Despite an initial degree of guardedness within the group, it became the titular track for the band’s fourth album, which, upon release in ’73, went on to top the UK charts. It closed the album and, indeed, the band’s studio output, disbanding shortly afterwards. Ooh La La was to be their last record as a solo career and other projects beckoned.
The Faces in their flared pomp. (Credit: Alamy)
In a fitting style, the song captures the crux of what they were about. Of all the bands of the era, you could stake a claim that the Faces carried the least pretensions and delusions of grandeur. Their songs were largely about working-class life in the form of hand-me-down suits, romances beset by missed busses, and a range of other everyday kindnesses and casualties. On this front, ‘Ooh La La’ defines them: wisdom with beer on its breath.
So, who sang vocals on ‘Ooh La La’ by Faces?
The band was in relative disarray at the time when Ooh La La was being written. Rod Stewart’s solo career was off to the flier, and that meant he wasn’t even present for the first two weeks of rehearsals, a fact that left Ronnie Lane reeling as his songs were already written and ready to go. This meant there was a degree of cantankerous bickering between the band’s two lead vocalists at that point.
‘Ooh La La’ heightened that tension. It was written largely by Ronnie Wood with help from Lane, but neither Lane nor Stewart was all that hot on the humble ditty once it came time to record it. Maybe they found it too meek amid the mounting macho tensions within the band.
This resulted in a couple of rather lacklustre vocal attempts by both of them, as keyboardist Ian McLagan would recall in the record’s liner notes, “It was too high or low for Ronnie – I can’t remember which… And Rod said it was in the wrong key for him.” Yet, it seems like it would’ve been perfectly suited to such an extent that most people think it actually is Stewart.
But their tiresome attempts were scrapped, and the producer, Glyn John, suggested that Wood lend a rare lead vocal to the song. It is the future Rolling Stones man’s vocals that made it to the eventual finished piece. This novel element almost adds to the earnest nature of the song. It is as though it was made for Wood all along, a product of a genuine dialogue he had had with his grandfather.
Wood remembers the band were “taking the piss out of me… Ahh, he can’t reach the notes… what a terrible barrage to work against.” The fact that it is now the group’s signature tune proves he had the last laugh. Eventually, Lane and Stewart would both release solo versions, and while they might have achieved commercial success, in truth, they just didn’t quite hit the same notes.
After all, we don’t listen to rock ‘n’ roll for perfection; we listen for the stories, and Wood’s rendition captures a tale as old as time.
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