Some songs seem to age with their performers. Ooh La La is one of them. When Rod Stewart recorded it in 1998, he wasn't introducing a new composition but returning to a piece deeply connected with his own musical past: the Faces, the band he had fronted alongside guitarist Ronnie Wood and bassist Ronnie Lane.
The original Ooh La La appeared in 1973 as the title track of the Faces' final studio album. It was written by Ronnie Lane and Ronnie Wood, but there is an important detail often lost in the association with Stewart: Rod Stewart did not sing the original recording. Ronnie Wood provided the lead vocal, while Lane also recorded his own version. The song's most memorable line—looking back on youth with the knowledge that comes only with age—gave it a reflective quality quite different from many of the Faces' rowdier numbers.
Twenty-five years later, Stewart brought the song into his solo catalogue. His version appeared on When We Were the New Boys, released in May 1998, an album built largely around songs by artists who had influenced or inspired him. Ooh La La was chosen as the lead single and released on May 18, 1998, with Stewart himself producing the recording. Rhino's album documentation lists the track alongside covers of songs by Oasis, Primal Scream, Graham Parker and Nick Lowe.
There was also a personal reason for returning to it. Ronnie Lane had died in 1997, aged 51, after years of suffering from multiple sclerosis. Stewart's recording therefore functioned not simply as a revival of a Faces favorite but as a tribute to his former bandmate. The Los Angeles Times noted that Stewart performed Ooh La La in concert in 1998 specifically in tribute to Lane.
Stewart's interpretation retains the song's folk-rock character but gives it a fuller, more polished late-1990s production. The recording features musicians including John Shanks and Oliver Leiber on guitar, Kevin Savigar on accordion and Hammond organ, and Richard Page on backing vocals. The Corrs' Andrea and Caroline Corr also contributed penny whistle and bodhrán, while Sharon Corr played fiddle.
The lyrics are deceptively simple. At their center is the realization that youth is impossible to recover and that experience changes the way we understand the choices we made when we were younger. That is why the song feels particularly appropriate coming from an older Stewart: by 1998, he was effectively singing a reflection on his own journey through the Faces, his early solo career and the decades that had followed.
Commercially, the recording found a substantial audience. In Britain, Stewart's Ooh La La reached No. 16 on the Official Singles Chart on May 30, 1998, spending five weeks in the Top 100. In the United States it reached No. 39 on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 1, 1998, while its Adult Contemporary performance was considerably stronger, reaching No. 3.
There is a satisfying circle in the story. A song written by two members of the Faces, recorded without Stewart as lead singer, eventually became a solo Rod Stewart single—and, in doing so, became a musical farewell to one of the men with whom Stewart had shared one of the defining chapters of his career.
Ooh La La is one of those unusual songs whose meaning changes as its singer gets older. In 1973, it was already looking backward. In 1998, Rod Stewart's version made that perspective even more personal and transformed an old Faces song into a tribute to Ronnie Lane and to a musical era that was already history.
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