Rod Stewart / When We Were the New Boys / 1998
Ooh La La
wistful, rueful, tinged with weary humor
This is actually a Faces song (written by Ronnie Wood and Ronnie Lane) that Rod Stewart covered decades later, built around an old man passing down hard-earned, cynical wisdom about women and love to his grandson. The 1998 Stewart version reframes a song originally sung in a young man's voice as something closer to a genuine late-career reflection, since Stewart himself was now closer in age to the grandfather character than the grandson.
intergenerational wisdom regret disillusionment with romance masculine vulnerability the gap between experience and youth
Who's speaking
The narrator occupies two roles across the song: first the young man recalling his grandfather's warnings and dismissing them, then shifting into the grandfather's own voice passing those same warnings to a new grandson. The address is intimate and familial rather than romantic.
What happens
The song opens with the narrator remembering himself as a skeptical youth, hearing his grandfather's bitter pronouncements about women and romance and not believing them. A series of vignettes follows -- a dancer, a woman who offers less than she promises -- that illustrate exactly the pattern the grandfather described. By the final verse the narrator has become the grandfather figure himself, repeating the same warning to his own grandson, aware that the lesson can't actually be transmitted and must be learned the hard way.
How it's built
Verse-chorus structure with the chorus functioning as the emotional hinge rather than a payoff -- it's a lament, not a resolution. The verses are narrative and specific (can-can dancers, backstage dressing rooms, a withheld kiss), while the chorus pulls back to generalized regret. The song ends by abandoning words entirely for the repeated exclamation that gives the song its title, letting the music carry the feeling once the argument has been fully made.
Section by section
Opening verse
The narrator sets up the grandfather as an unreliable-seeming source of cynicism, establishing dramatic irony since the listener can guess the warnings will prove true.
First chorus
“I wish that I knew what I know now”
The chorus voices regret in the simplest possible terms, functioning almost like a proverb -- deliberately plain language standing in contrast to the more vivid verse imagery.
Can-can verse
“backstage back on earth again”
The shift from stage glamour to the dullness of the dressing room enacts the song's larger argument: that romantic illusion collapses once you get close to it.
Third verse
“you're just a boy again”
This line inverts the usual coming-of-age logic -- instead of romance making the narrator a man, it strips him back down to boyhood, reinforcing the theme of lost control.
Final verse
“poor young grandson”
The narrator now occupies the grandfather's position directly, mirroring the opening verse's address and confirming the cycle is unbroken despite everything learned.
Outro
The lyric dissolves into wordless exclamation, a kind of exhausted shrug that replaces further explanation -- the song has made its point and has nothing left to argue.
Craft
- circular structure
- The narrator begins as the skeptical grandson and ends as the world-weary grandfather, closing the loop and demonstrating the song's central claim that wisdom repeats across generations without actually transferring.
- extended metaphor
- The can-can dancer and her gray dressing room work as a stand-in for romantic illusion generally -- glamorous from the audience, diminished up close.
- refrain as thesis statement
- The repeated wish to have known then what is known now functions less as a hook and more as the song's flat thematic statement, restated rather than developed.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as being fundamentally about the impossibility of transmitting experience -- the narrator doesn't condemn women so much as describe a pattern of youthful naivety that each generation must live through firsthand. A less charitable but credible alternative reading hears real bitterness and a reductive view of women as manipulative, with the generational frame functioning as a excuse rather than an insight. Both readings are supported by the text; the song doesn't resolve the tension between rueful self-awareness and genuine resentment.
Context
Ooh La La was originally released by the Faces in 1973, written by guitarist Ronnie Wood and bassist Ronnie Lane, with Wood singing lead on the original because Stewart reportedly felt the song didn't suit his voice at the time. Stewart's 1998 version on When We Were the New Boys revisits a song he had initially passed on, which adds a layer of irony given the song's own theme of delayed understanding -- an artist returning in middle age to a song about wishing you'd understood things sooner.
Listen for
- the shift in who the narrator is addressing between the opening and closing verses
- the contrast between the glossy image of the can-can and the drab backstage description
- how the chorus melody stays essentially the same each time despite the narrative moving forward
- the wordless outro and whether it reads as resignation or release
- Stewart's vocal rasp, which adds a lived-in, weathered quality that suits the grandfather framing even though he didn't write the song
About Rod Stewart
Sir Roderick David Stewart is a British singer and songwriter. Known for his distinctive raspy singing voice, Stewart is among the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 120 million records worldwide.
b. 1945 / United Kingdom
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