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What's New Out now: My latest book, Won't Get Fooled
Again: The Who from Lifehouse to Quadrophenia, details the
Who's amazing and peculiar journey in the years during which they
struggled to follow up Tommy with
a yet bigger and better rock opera. One of those projects, Lifehouse, was never completed,
though many of its songs formed the bulk of their 1971 album Who's Next. The other, Quadrophenia, was as down-to-earth
as the multimedia Lifehouse was
futuristic; issued as a double album in 1973, it eventually became
esteemed as one of the Who's finest achievements, despite unavoidable
initial unfavorable comparisons to Tommy.
Drawing on material from several dozen interviews and mountains of rare
archival coverage and recordings, it's the definitive account of this
fascinating period in the Who's career, which saw both some of their
greatest triumphs and, in Lifehouse,
rock's most spectacular failure. Notes MOJO's four-star review of the
book, "Unterberger digs deep and deeper still through obscure press
cuttings and his own interviews with engineers, producers and fans to
make sense of it all. He does a grand job." Out recently:
My 2009
book, White
Light/White Heat: The
Velvet Underground Day-By-Day (now available on Jawbone
Press), is by far the most comprehensive book on the Velvet Underground
ever published. The 368-page volume details the group's recording
sessions, record releases, concerts, press reviews, and other major
events shaping their career with both thorough detail and critical
insight. Drawing on about 100 interviews and exhaustive research
through documents and recordings rarely or never accessed, it unearths
stories that have seldom been told, and eyewitness accounts that have
seldom seen print, from figures ranging from band members to managers,
producers, record executives, journalists, concert promoters, and fans.
The July issue of MOJO magazine
hails it as "an impressive means to reflect on the conundrum of what
could be the ultimate cult band...detailed and anecdote-packed"; Uncut magazine chose it as #4 in
its list of the ten best music books of 2009. White Light/White
Heat:
The Velvet
Underground Day-By-Day includes not only basic
nuts-and-bolts
facts, but also many behind-the-scenes stories as to how their songs
were written and recorded; how their strikingly original stage shows
were devised; how the band were perceived by reviewers at the time of
their 1965-70 heyday, not just in retrospect; and how the group as a
whole underwent a most improbable, incessantly unpredictable evolution
from the most avant-garde of bohemian origins into a highly accessible,
yet still boldly creative, rock band by the time Lou Reed left the
group he'd co-founded with John Cale in early 1965. Along
the way, many unreleased concert and studio
recordings are vividly described; many obscure and unlikely concerts
delineated; and many myths that have grown up around this most
legendary of all cult bands untangled and dissected. White
Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-By-Day also
features more than 100 illustrations, including reproductions of rarely
or never seen photos, concert posters, letters, and other
assorted documents and memorabilia. It's the ultimate history of the
band that did more than any other to break down barriers between rock
music and the avant-garde, incorporating electronic innovations,
experimental instrumentation and improvisation, and lyrics detailing
the realities of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll with greater skill and
daring than anyone else. Also available in French as White
Light/White Heat: Le Velvet Underground Au Jour Le Jour (on
Le Mot Et Le Reste) and in Czech as White
Light/White Heat: Velvet Underground Den Po Dni (on Volvox
Globator). Also, I wrote the 13,000-word liner notes to
the six-CD
super-deluxe edition of The Velvet
Underground & Nico, released in October 2012. Rock history
courses: From June 18 to
July 30, I'll
be teaching a seven-week
non-credit community education course on
"The Golden Age of San
Francisco Bay Area Rock: The Summer of Love" (the mid-1960s to the
early
1970s, for the most part) on the Kentfield, California campus of
the College of Marin. Meeting on Tuesday nights
from 7pm-9pm during that time, the roots and heyday of the San
Francisco Sound will be explored in depth via both common and rare
audio recordings by greats like Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead,
Janis Joplin, and Santana. It will also investigate how the Bay Area's
unique counterculture, promoters such as Bill Graham, and venues like
the Fillmore created a scene in which experimental and idiosyncratic
rock music could flower. The course will also detail its roots in
folk-rock; the integration of jazz, ethnic, blues, and avant-garde
influences into psychedelic rock; and how San Francisco rock continued
to evolve in the 1970s, into funk, punk, and beyond. Registration will
be
available (for course #65053) around mid-to-late May through the College
of Marin
Community Education website. Also from June 17 to July 29,
I'll
be teaching a seven-week
non-credit community education course on the Beatles on the Indian
Valley campus of
the College of Marin in Novato, California. Meeting on Monday nights
from 7pm-9pm during that time, it will be an in-depth overview of the
history of the most popular and influential rock group of all time.
Using both common and rare recordings and video clips, the course will
trace their artistic evolution from the dawn of their career in the
early 1960s through their breakup about a decade later. The development
of the numerous styles they pioneered and mastered will be explored in
detail, from the relatively simple Merseybeat of their first recordings
through the folk-rock, hard rock, psychedelia, and progressive art rock
they delved into as the 1960s progressed. The Beatles were among the
most important agents of social change of the 20th Century, and the
course will also examine their massive effect on the popular music and
culture of their era. Registration is available (for course
#65054) around mid-to-late May through the
College
of Marin
Community Education website. On Saturday, June 15 from 2pm-4pm, I'll present "The Golden Age of Soul Vol. 3" at the Western Addition Branch of the San Francisco Public Library at 1550 Scott Street. This will feature entirely different clips from the previous two soul programs I did at this branch, including performers such as Mary Wells, Jackie Wilson, Major Lance, Jimmy Cliff, Little Eva, the Four Tops, and Les McCann & Eddie Harris. There will also be different clips by performers that were spotlighted in the previous two programs, such as Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Sly Stone, and Stevie Wonder. Admission is free. On Wednesday, June 19 from 5:30pm-7:30pm, I'll be showing rare film clips by San Francisco Bay Area folk-rock and psychedelic rock performers from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s at the Mission Bay branch of the San Francisco Library at 960 Fourth Street. Included will be footage by Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother & the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Santana, Moby Grape, Country Joe & the Fish, Sly & the Family Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Grateful Dead, the Beau Brummels, and the Youngbloods. Admission is free. On Wednesday, June 26 from 6:30pm-8:30pm, I'll be showing rare film clips by San Francisco Bay Area folk-rock and psychedelic rock performers from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s at the Bernal Heights branch of the San Francisco Library at 500 Courtland Avenue. Included will be footage by Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother & the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Santana, Moby Grape, Country Joe & the Fish, Sly & the Family Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Grateful Dead, the Beau Brummels, and the Youngbloods. Admission is free. On Saturday, June 29 from 2:00pm-4:30pm in Koret Auditorium at the San Francisco Main Library at 100 Larkin Street, I'm presenting two hours of rare Rolling Stones film clips from the 1960s and early 1970s. This will be on the 50th anniversary of the month on which the Rolling Stones released their first single. Admission is free. On Wednesday, July 17 from 6:30pm-8:30pm, I'm presenting two hours of rare Who film clips from 1964-1974 at the Park Branch of the San Francisco Library on 1833 Page Street. Admission is free. On Sunday, July 21 from 2pm-4pm, I'll be showing rare film clips by San Francisco Bay Area folk-rock and psychedelic rock performers from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s at the Presidio branch of the San Francisco Library at 3150 Sacramento Street. Included will be footage by Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother & the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Santana, Moby Grape, Country Joe & the Fish, Sly & the Family Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Grateful Dead, the Beau Brummels, and the Youngbloods. Admission is free. On Saturday, July 27 from 3:00pm-5:30pm at the Potrero Branch of the San Francisco Library at 1616 20th Street, I'm again presenting two hours of rare Rolling Stones film clips from the 1960s and early 1970s. (This is the same program as the one I'm presenting at the Main Library on June 29.) Admission is free. Flashback magazine: I have numerous articles and reviews in the first two issues of the new rock history magazine Flashback, which is now out and available. My full-length articles are on the band Montage (a vehicle for chief Left Banke member Michael Brown after he left the group), the resurgence of vinyl in the reissue market, and archiving rock magazines of the 1960s and 1970s. Also I did lengthy reviews of the John Fahey box set, the Kinks BBC box set, the Phil Ochs documentary DVD, and the book dedicated to Syd Barrett's artwork, among other items, sometimes with interviews with the people involved. Ordering/availability information is on the magazine's website, www.flashbackmag.com. On the air: On Thursday, February 11, 2010, I was one of the guest experts speculating about what the Beatles would have sounded like if they had managed to stay together for one more album on WAMU (88.5 FM) in Washington, DC. The program's archived at wamu.org/programs/the_beatles_one_more_album. A five-minute excerpt of my radio interview about The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film with Beatles expert Ken Michaels can be heard at KenMichaelsRadio.com. On-line: I was
interviewed
on-line, taking questions from both conference hosts and readers,
about Won't Get Fooled
Again: The Who from Lifehouse to Quadrophenia from June 23 to July 7 on The Inkwell, the on-line conference that's part of the WELL website. To
read the discussion, click on Richie
Unterberger, "Won't Get Fooled Again." For my other interviews about my books on the
Inkwell, click on Richie Unterberger, White
Light/White Heat (from May-June 2009); Richie
Unterberger, "The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film" (from
November 2006); Richie
Unterberger: "Eight Miles High" (from September-October 2003); and Richie
Unterberger, "Turn! Turn! Turn!" (from September-October 2002). Elsewhere, you can read Derk
Richardson's
review "Turn! Turn! Turn!" by in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Bay
Area's
top weekly paper. Also, there is a transcript
of my July 17, 2002 interview on KPFA on "Dead to the World" in
Berkeley,
CA discussing Turn! Turn! Turn! on the website of the show's
host,
David Gans. And, I did an interview for Shindig! magazine about White Light/White Heat: The Velvet
Underground Day-By-Day, and
about my work in general for Rock the Net! On the best of 2004 lists: Eight
Miles High was chosen as #3 on Record Collector
magazine's
list of the Top Ten books of 2004. On the best
of 2007 lists: The Unreleased
Beatles: Music and Film won a 2007 Association for Recorded Sound
Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound
Research in the "Best Discography" division of the "Best Research in
Recorded Rock Music" category. On the best
of 2009 lists: White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground
Day-By-Day was chosen as #4 on Uncut magazine's list of the Top
Ten music books of 2009. In Ugly Things: Issue #31 (Spring
2011) and Issue #32 (Fall/Winter 2011) of the
(mostly) 1960s
rock-centered magazine Ugly Things have my mammoth
(30,000-word) two-part interview with Billy Harrison, guitarist
for the great mid-1960s band Them, Van Morrison's first group. Also in Ugly Things, issue #25 has my huge (30-page) story on the Music Machine, one of the greatest garage-psychedelic groups of the 1960s, and the group that had more depth and quality to their original repertoire than perhaps any other '60s band who are known primarily for one hit single ("Talk Talk," in the Music Machine's case). The article is based around lengthy interviews with two original members (bassist Keith Olsen and guitarist Mark Landon) who have rarely spoken about their experiences in the group, as well as two members of the second Music Machine lineup (keyboardist Harry Garfield and guitarist Alan Wisdom) who have never before discussed their stint in the band. Issue #23 (Summer 2005) has my similarly lengthy (20-page) story on the Belfast Gypsies. Including ex-members of Them, they were one of the finest overlooked bands of the British Invasion, their sole 1966 album produced by the legendary Kim Fowley. This is the first comprehensive history of this mysterious group ever to appear, the twisted stranger-than-fiction saga drawn from extensive interviews with Belfast Gypsies guitarist Ken McLeod, who consulted his original diaries from the mid-'60s to reconstruct the group's career. Excerpts from my interview with Kim Fowley about the Belfast Gypsies also appear in the article; for the full interview, click here. In Record Collector: The April and May
2013 issues of the British monthly magazine Record
Collector have my two-part article on the most interesting
rare San Francisco Bay Area rock records of the 1960s. The March 2011 issue of Record Collector has my lengthy article on the recently discovered Tim Buckley demos, from late 1965 and mid-1966, that were issued on the bonus disc on Rhino Handmade's deluxe edition of his self-titled debut album. I interviewed Larry Beckett (frequent Buckley songwriting collaborator, and drummer on the 1965 demos), Jim Fielder (bassist on the 1965 demos), and Elektra Records president Jac Holzman for the piece. Also, the May 2010 issue of Record Collector has my story on The T.A.M.I. Show, the legendary 1964 rock concert film featuring James Brown, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, the Miracles, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Lesley Gore, Chuck Berry, and others; I interviewed director Steve Binder for the article. The September 2007 issue has my feature on Fairport Convention's original woman singer, Judy Dyble, drawing from an extensive recent interview with her. The August 2005 issue has my 20-page article on the top 25 overlooked American folk-rock albums, with in-depth analysis of each LP and new first-hand interview material with some of the artists. In MOJO: The Hendrix & the Summer of Love edition of the MOJO Classic series, published in the summer of 2007, has my articles on Big Brother & the Holding Company and George Harrison's visit to Haight-Ashbury in the summer of 1967. The Greatest Album Covers of All Time edition of the MOJO Classic series, published in spring 2007, has my article on psychedelic LP sleeves. Also, the January 2005 issue of MOJO has my lengthy article on Donovan, and the July 2004 issue of MOJO has my lengthy article on the 1972 Wattstax Festival, the largest American soul concert ever staged.In Oxford American: The 12th annual Oxford American Southern music issue, which came out in late 2010, has my article on Judy Henske & Jerry Yester's 1969 cult psychedelic album Farewell Aldebaran (an entirely different piece than my chapter on Henske and Yester in Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll). Turn! Turn! Turn! influences Johnny Cash?: From the November 2004 MOJO cover story on Johnny Cash, where producer Rick Rubin discusses the last album Johnny Cash recorded, American V: A Hundred Highways: "Rubin, meanwhile, had been discovering a new fascination with early '60s American folk music. 'I had just read the book Turn! Turn! Turn! [by MOJO's own Richie Unterberger] and I started getting very excited about a bunch of people like Tim Hardin, Joan Baez. I sent Johnny some of these songs. Whether he liked the song or not, it would always spark his memory and he'd say, "That made me think of this other song, and I like this one better." One example of that was the song "Four Strong Winds." Johnny said he remembered the version by Ian and Sylvia." Author Sylvie Simmons goes on to write: "I sat and watched Cash record 'Four Strong Winds' in his bedroom in Hendersonville -- a beautiful, vulnerable version. He also recorded Tom Paxton's 'Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound.'" Book Buying Info: All of my books are widely available at both
independent
booksellers and chain bookstores throughout North America, as well as
many
such outlets overseas. To order on-line via amazon.com, click on the
appropriate
book cover below.
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