US album release: Vertical Man by Ringo Starr – 16 June 1998

Tuesday 16 June 1998 | Album Release | Mercury Records, United States

On Tuesday 16 June 1998, Ringo Starr released Vertical Man in the United States — his eleventh solo studio album, and his most commercially successful release in years. The album peaked at number 61 on the US Billboard 200, a respectable showing for a record that had been made with genuine ambition and an extraordinary cast of collaborators. The UK release followed on 3 August 1998, where it peaked at number 85 on the official albums chart.

Vertical Man arrived at a particular moment in Ringo Starr's solo career — a moment of renewed energy and creative confidence, shaped in part by the experience of the Beatles Anthology project (1995–96) and the reconnection with his former bandmates that it had involved. The album is not a nostalgia exercise. But it carries the warmth of a man who had recently been reminded, in the most public way possible, of what he had been part of.

The Album: Vertical Man

Vertical Man was produced by Mark Hudson, who had become Ringo's primary creative collaborator in the mid-1990s and would remain so for several albums. Hudson brought a rock-solid production sensibility and a genuine understanding of what Ringo's voice and personality required — not the overproduced sheen of some of his earlier solo work, but something more direct, more energetic, and more fun.

The album's title track, Vertical Man, sets the tone: a driving rock song with a hook that sticks, delivered by a drummer who had spent thirty-five years proving that he was one of the best in the world. The rest of the album moves through rock, pop, and the occasional ballad, with Ringo's voice — warm, slightly rough-edged, unmistakably itself — at the centre of everything.

The single La De Da followed the album's US release on 20 July 1998 — a characteristically Ringo title, playful and unpretentious, for a song that is exactly what it sounds like: a good-time rock and roll record made by someone who genuinely enjoys making music.

The Collaborators: A Who's Who of Rock Royalty

One of the most striking things about Vertical Man is the list of people who contributed to it. Ringo had always attracted collaborators — his warmth, his lack of ego, and his genuine musicianship made him someone that other musicians wanted to work with — but the Vertical Man sessions brought together a particularly remarkable cast.

Paul McCartney contributed bass and backing vocals to the track What in the… World — a reunion of the Lennon-McCartney-Starr rhythm section, minus one, that carried an obvious emotional charge in the post-Anthology period. McCartney's bass playing is immediately recognisable: melodic, inventive, sitting in the pocket with the ease of someone who had been playing alongside Ringo for decades.

George Harrison contributed slide guitar to the track King of Broken Hearts — his last recorded contribution to a Ringo Starr album before his death in November 2001. Harrison's slide guitar is one of the most distinctive sounds in rock music, and its presence on Vertical Man gives the album a particular poignancy in retrospect.

Other contributors included Alanis Morissette, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, Tom Petty, Timothy B. Schmit of the Eagles, and Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots — a cross-generational gathering that reflected both Ringo's standing in the rock community and the genuine affection in which he was held by musicians of every era.

The Anthology Context: Why 1998 Mattered

To understand Vertical Man, it helps to understand what had happened in the three years before it. The Beatles Anthology project — the documentary series, the three double albums of outtakes and rarities, and the two new Beatles recordings (Free as a Bird in 1995 and Real Love in 1996) — had been the most significant event in Beatles history since the band's break-up in 1970.

For Ringo, the Anthology had meant spending extended time with Paul McCartney and George Harrison, working together in the studio for the first time in decades, and confronting the full weight of what The Beatles had been and what they had meant. It had also meant a renewed public profile: the Anthology had introduced The Beatles to a new generation of fans, and Ringo's warmth and humour in the documentary interviews had reminded the world why he had always been the most universally liked of the four.

Vertical Man arrived in the slipstream of all of that. It was not a Beatles record. But it was made by a man who had recently been reminded, in the most vivid possible way, of what he was capable of when surrounded by the right people. The presence of McCartney and Harrison on the album is not incidental. It is the sound of three old friends making music together, one more time, in the knowledge that the opportunities to do so were becoming fewer.

Ringo Starr's Solo Career: The Longer View

By 1998, Ringo Starr had been making solo records for nearly three decades. His debut solo album, Sentimental Journey, had been released in 1970 — a collection of pre-rock standards recorded with orchestral arrangements, a deliberate contrast to the direction his former bandmates were taking. Beaucoups of Blues followed later the same year, a country album recorded in Nashville that demonstrated Ringo's genuine affection for American roots music.

The commercial peak of his solo career had come in the early 1970s, with the albums Ringo (1973) and Goodnight Vienna (1974) — both of which featured contributions from all three of his former Beatles bandmates, making them the closest thing to a Beatles reunion album that the 1970s produced. Ringo in particular was a genuine commercial and critical success, producing the US number one singles Photograph and You're Sixteen.

The years between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s had been more variable — a period of personal difficulties, inconsistent output, and the kind of commercial decline that affected many artists of his generation. The formation of the All-Starr Band in 1989 had revitalised his live career, giving him a format — a rotating cast of rock musicians, each performing their own hits alongside Ringo's — that suited his personality and his strengths perfectly.

Vertical Man was, in that context, a genuine return to form: a studio album that sounded like it had been made with enthusiasm and care, by someone who had something to say and the collaborators to help him say it.

Chart Performance: US and UK

In the United States, Vertical Man peaked at number 61 on the Billboard 200 — Ringo's best US chart position for a studio album since the 1970s. The Billboard 200 measures album sales across all genres, and a top-100 position in 1998 represented a genuine commercial achievement for a rock album by an artist in his late fifties.

In the United Kingdom, where the album was released on 3 August 1998, it peaked at number 85 on the official albums chart. The UK performance was more modest, reflecting both the different commercial landscape for rock music in Britain in the late 1990s and the particular challenge of breaking through in a market dominated at that moment by Britpop and its aftermath.

Neither chart position represents a commercial blockbuster. But both represent something more valuable: evidence that Ringo Starr, at 57, was still making records that people wanted to hear.

Mark Hudson: The Producer Behind the Album

Mark Hudson's role in Vertical Man cannot be overstated. Hudson — a musician, songwriter, and producer who had worked with a wide range of artists — had developed a close creative partnership with Ringo in the mid-1990s that would produce several albums. His approach was to build records around Ringo's strengths: his drumming, his personality, his ability to deliver a lyric with warmth and conviction, and his gift for making other musicians feel comfortable and creative in the studio.

The production on Vertical Man is clean and direct — a rock record that sounds like a rock record, without the over-elaboration that had sometimes characterised Ringo's earlier solo work. Hudson understood that the best thing he could do was get out of the way and let the music breathe.

Key Facts: 16 June 1998

• Date: Tuesday 16 June 1998
• Release: Vertical Man (US)
• Label: Mercury Records
• Album number: Ringo Starr's eleventh solo studio album
• Producer: Mark Hudson
• US chart peak: Number 61, Billboard 200
• UK release date: 3 August 1998
• UK chart peak: Number 85, Official Albums Chart
• Lead single: La De Da (released 20 July 1998)
• Notable collaborators: Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Alanis Morissette, Steven Tyler, Tom Petty, Timothy B. Schmit, Scott Weiland
• George Harrison's contribution: Slide guitar on King of Broken Hearts — his last recorded contribution to a Ringo album

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