Ooh La La
Faces
Ooh La La is the fourth and final studio album by the English rock band Faces, released in March 1973 via Warner Bros. Records and produced by Glyn Johns at London's Olympic Studios between September 1972 and January 1973. It arrived at a moment of considerable internal tension: Rod Stewart's solo career had exploded with "Maggie May" and "You Wear It Well," and his diminishing commitment to the band was evident throughout the recording sessions — he missed the first two weeks entirely, and the remaining members were left to carry much of the creative work. As keyboardist Ian McLagan put it, the album became "Ronnie's album," referring to bassist Ronnie Lane, who stepped into the creative void with an expanded songwriting role that fundamentally shaped the record's character. Despite this fraught backdrop — and despite Stewart's infamous post-release declaration to the press that it was "a bloody mess" and "a stinking rotten album" — Ooh La La reached number one on the UK Albums Chart in April 1973, knocking Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy off the top spot, and remains one of the most warmly regarded records in the Faces catalog.
Musically, the album marks a departure from the full-throttle raucousness of its predecessor, A Nod Is as Good as a Wink... to a Blind Horse, in favor of something more introspective and emotionally varied. The first side opens in characteristically raunchy Faces fashion with the Stewart-Wood rocker "Silicone Grown," followed by the UK hit single "Cindy Incidentally" and the stomping pub-rock belter "Borstal Boys," which Ultimate Classic Rock called "one of the Faces' very best revved-up rockers." But it is the second side, shaped largely by Lane's songwriting, that gives the album its distinctive emotional depth — the gentle folk-inflected "Flags and Banners," the quietly devastating ballad "Glad and Sorry," and the closing title track, written by Lane and Ronnie Wood and sung by Wood himself (Stewart and Lane both reportedly found it awkwardly out of their vocal range), which has become the most enduring song in the Faces canon. Its chorus — "I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger" — distills a lifetime of earned regret into a deceptively simple, sing-along line that has lost none of its poignancy in the decades since.
Ooh La La
Faces
Ooh La La is the fourth and final studio album by the English rock band Faces, released in March 1973 via Warner Bros. Records and produced by Glyn Johns at London's Olympic Studios between September 1972 and January 1973. It arrived at a moment of considerable internal tension: Rod Stewart's solo career had exploded with "Maggie May" and "You Wear It Well," and his diminishing commitment to the band was evident throughout the recording sessions — he missed the first two weeks entirely, and the remaining members were left to carry much of the creative work. As keyboardist Ian McLagan put it, the album became "Ronnie's album," referring to bassist Ronnie Lane, who stepped into the creative void with an expanded songwriting role that fundamentally shaped the record's character. Despite this fraught backdrop — and despite Stewart's infamous post-release declaration to the press that it was "a bloody mess" and "a stinking rotten album" — Ooh La La reached number one on the UK Albums Chart in April 1973, knocking Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy off the top spot, and remains one of the most warmly regarded records in the Faces catalog.
Musically, the album marks a departure from the full-throttle raucousness of its predecessor, A Nod Is as Good as a Wink... to a Blind Horse, in favor of something more introspective and emotionally varied. The first side opens in characteristically raunchy Faces fashion with the Stewart-Wood rocker "Silicone Grown," followed by the UK hit single "Cindy Incidentally" and the stomping pub-rock belter "Borstal Boys," which Ultimate Classic Rock called "one of the Faces' very best revved-up rockers." But it is the second side, shaped largely by Lane's songwriting, that gives the album its distinctive emotional depth — the gentle folk-inflected "Flags and Banners," the quietly devastating ballad "Glad and Sorry," and the closing title track, written by Lane and Ronnie Wood and sung by Wood himself (Stewart and Lane both reportedly found it awkwardly out of their vocal range), which has become the most enduring song in the Faces canon. Its chorus — "I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger" — distills a lifetime of earned regret into a deceptively simple, sing-along line that has lost none of its poignancy in the decades since.