Ringo Starr is reissuing his star-studded 1981 Stop And Smell The Roses collection on April 22nd for Record Store Day. The album, which was his first release following John Lennon‘s 1980 murder, featured contributions from Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Keith Richards, Ron Wood, Stephen Stills, Al Kooper, and Harry Nilsson, among others.
The new double-vinyl package will feature the six bonus tracks featured on the CD release and is pressed with a “lava lamp effect clear red/white & 2nd Lava lamp effect on clear red/pink color vinyl.”
During his 1981 chat with Tom Snyder, Ringo admitted that recording an album piecemeal over the course of a year was unlike anything he had ever undertaken before: “With this, because we had George, who mainly stays in England, and Paul, who lives in England, but is willing to travel; we worked in France with Paul. And Stephen Stills is here but he likes to be in Hawaii. And Ronnie Wood — you might was well get them all in (laughs) right now. . . The thing is, we’d do a couple of weeks in France with Paul and then set up the next couple of tracks — whoever we could, sort of, do it with. So we went from Paul to, uh, Stephen Stills. Y’know, Harry and I did the backing tracks here, but we did the vocals in the Bahamas, ’cause it was a convenient place for us both to meet.”
Stop And Smell The Roses was released on October 27th, 1981 and stalled at a disappointing Number 98 on the Billboard 200 album charts.
The album’s lead single — the George Harrison-written and produced “Wrack My Brain” — marked Ringo’s final Top 40 single when it peaked at Number 38.
