The only Faces song to feature a Ronnie Wood lead vocal
When he was recruited into the newest evolution of the Small Faces, Ronnie Wood had a specific role – lead guitarist. After Steve Marriott left the group to form Humble Pie, the rest of the band was tasked with finding a new singer and a new guitar player. They decided to split the duties, with Rod Stewart taking over as vocalist and Wood becoming the band’s new guitarist.
By 1973, Faces were beginning to crumble. Stewart’s solo career had eclipsed the success of the band, and even though the group had scored their first hit with ‘Stay With Me’ in 1971, Stewart was becoming increasingly estranged from his bandmates. The band’s final album, Ooh La La, would largely be split in two, with the first half being Stewart songs and the latter half being helmed by bassist Ronnie Lane. However, for the album’s title track, neither Lane nor Stewart would take the lead vocal, leaving Wood to receive his first (and only) solo lead vocal in the band’s canon of songs.
“‘Ooh La La’ was an idea of Ron Wood’s,” Lane told Dave McNarie in an interview on the-faces.com. “I wrote the words to that. I was just entering my ‘hating women’ stage, you know? Loving them and hating them all at the same time. I never realised when I wrote the words to ‘Ooh La La’ how relevant it was. Everything that I seem to write either comes true or is what’s actually happening, and I haven’t noticed it’s what’s actually happening.”
“When we played Rod ‘Ooh La La’, he said, ‘Don’t like it!’” McLagen later told MusicRadar. “He continued not to like it for 25 years until he recorded a version.” Stewart did indeed record his own solo version of ‘Ooh La La’ for the 1998 covers album When We Were The New Boys. Lane would also incorporate the song into his solo career.
“Anyway, Rod said, ‘It’s the wrong key for me’,” McLagan claimed. “He pointed to Woody and said, ‘You should sing that’. So, that’s why Ronnie Wood sang it. An odd choice perhaps, but he sang it so beautifully, I think.” The track would become Wood’s signature song, often being the one composition that Wood would sing live in concert for the next 40 years. After the Faces imploded after recording Ooh La La, Wood didn’t have to wait long to find his next project. Following a few solo releases, Wood was officially recruited into The Rolling Stones in 1975.
