This article originally ran in the November/December 1998 issue of American Songwriter
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While he may always be best known as one of four men who changed the face of modern music, make no mistake—Ringo Starr has made his own individual place in music history.
His latest album, Vertical Man, co-produced with Mark Hudson, showcases his songwriting talent and features an all-star lineup of talent, including Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Steven Tyler, Ozzy Osbourne, Brian Wilson, Scott Weiland (of Stone Temple Pilots), Alanis Morissette, Timothy B. Schmit and Joe Walsh (The Eagles), Dave Gibbs and Van Dyke Parks. It is his tenth album as a solo performer, and he’s sold more than 10 million albums thus far.
Although Ringo wrote a few songs while he was with The Beatles, among them “Octopus’s Garden,” he was in large part overshadowed by the other three songwriters in the group. As fans of the Fab Four remember, however, some of the group’s more popular songs were from the Ringo’s help. Hudson elaborates on this theme. “It’s kind of tough when your bandmates happen to be John Lennon and Paul McCartney, let alone George Harrison. You’re talking about three guys who are writing that maybe wouldn’t put slouch next to their name. And then there’s Ringo with a sort of simple way of looking at things.
“But we were talking after we started working on the project, and he said to me, ‘I wrote more Beatles songs than I got credit for.’ I asked him what he meant, and he said, ‘The title ‘Hard Days Night’ was actually mine, you know.’ And I said, ‘Really?’”
Hudson continues, “Ringo has his own way of talking, which is really cool. And so he explains it like, he would go in, and John would say, ‘It’s been a bloody long day,’ and he would say, ‘Yea. It’s been a hard day’s night.’ And John would say, ‘Oh, write that down.’ And Ringo would constantly do this sort of Ringo thing, just in conversations. Like in ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ the line wearing her face that she keeps in a jar by the door was a line from Ringo.”
And did that happen with Hudson and Ringo? “Actually, yes,” Hudson said. He and Ringo were working in the studio on a mix, and Mark was being very industrious about it. “And all of a sudden, Ringo goes, ‘Oh, Mark, don’t take it so seriously; it’s only a demo. Let it go, la de da.’
“La de da, like que sera? Next thing you know, it became his thing (and the album’s first single aptly titled ‘La De Da.’) And our whole relationship, just as people, like we’re talking right now, was always the forerunner of us writing a song. Isn’t that amazing? And it happened so many times.”
Starr proclaims he had the most fun working on this album of any he’s done. “We were not in a real studio (the album was recorded in Hudson’s studio in Los Angeles), but it was a real studio—the drums were in the cupboard, and in that cupboard one day we had Steven Tyler, Steve Cropper, Mark Hudson, Steve Dudas on guitar and myself, all in an eight-foot room… and it was fun. The whole atmosphere was like that all the way through. There were no red lights, and there was no glass surrounding me.”
All but two songs were written by Ringo, Hudson, songwriter Dean Drakal, and guitarist Steve Dudas. The other two? “Love Me Do” and “Drift Away.”
“It was really the first time I’ve been involved in one of my own records,” Starr admits. “Before, I’d just pick out other people’s songs that were vaguely trying to say what I wanted to say. On this project, we are really trying to say what I want to say, thank you very much!”
Starr says the album started out simple, but “If you listen to it, you can hear it evolve. It’s just very, very, well, not complicated, but more interesting as it goes on. That’s how it happened, and I’ve never had so much fun.”
The songs on the project work around a theme that is close to Ringo’s heart. “There’s one line which I think encapsulates the theme, Starr says. “And that is, let’s all get well together. That’s sort of what the album is all about.”
“I’m a grateful human being, and the album talks somewhat about that. I do feel that we should all get well together,” Starr continues. “I think we should have understanding, love, and peace. I’m trying to promote that now. If there is a message—I don’t particularly like messages, because everybody takes whatever they can from whatever—that’s what the album is about.”
And the title? “I got it from a book that my stepdaughter, Francesca, had won at school. I was flipping through it and I saw this quote ‘Let’s hear it for the vertical man, there’s always so much praise for the horizontal one.’ And I thought, ‘That’s a really cool thing, ‘let’s hear it for now, not for later.’ We’ve lost so many great players through the years, but all of us on the record are still standing, as Elton John says.”
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
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