Song of the Day 6/15: Rod Stewart, “Handbags and Gladrags”

Old-timers bitching about the feckless younger generation has been a constant throughout human history, and it always seems to find an eager audience. Consider this song, written in 1967 by Mike D’Abo, then the lead singer of British band Manfred Mann, chastising a teenage girl for skipping school and shopping for trendy styles.

For those who weren’t around for it, 1967 might have been the height of the youth culture spawned by the Baby Boomers — they hadn’t dropped the first word of the label yet. The media were full of songs and talk of psychedelia, flower power and free love — and here comes this musical lecture that sounds like it was written by Grandpa.

To be fair, it’s become something of a standard without ever having been a big hit. D’Abo produced its first release, by British blue-eyed soul singer Chris Farlowe, but it only reached No. 33 on the British charts. He played piano on the best-known version of the tune, by Rod Stewart on his debut solo album “An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down,” and when Stewart said he wanted to hear a woodwind in the arrangement, D’Abo added the oboe passage that opens the song. It wasn’t released as a single until after Stewart’s breakthrough with “Maggie May,” and it failed to chart.

Trumpeter Bill Chase gave the tune a jazzy reading on his eponymous debut album in 1971.

That might have been the end of it, but as I said, the sentiment has legs. In 2001 Britpop band Stereophonics recorded it — initially for laughs — and took it to No. 4 in the UK singles chart. That run was boosted by the then-new BBC sitcom “The Office,” though the show used a different version.

D’Abo wasn’t told about it beforehand, but when he finally met Ricky Gervais he asked why that song was chosen. “I suppose it’s because David Brent is sort of a sad character,” D’Abo suggested. “No,” Gervais said. “It’s because it’s the saddest song I’ve ever heard.” Gervais even sang a bit of it himself, in character as David Brent, over the closing credits of an episode in Season 1.