Out now: My new 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.

On-line: I was interviewed on-line, taking questions from both conference hosts and readers, about White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-By-Day from May 27 to June 10 on The Inkwell. The Inkwell is an on-line conference that's part of the WELL website, and these discussions are readable (whether you're a member of the WELL or not) on-line by clicking the link to The Inkwell, then clicking on the sentence "More conversations with authors" (the first sentence in the right column), and then clicking on the topic title "Richie Unterberger, 'White Light/White Heat".

Also, I was interviewed on-line about The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film from November 1 to November 14, 2006 on The Inkwell. I was previously interviewed by The Inkwell about Eight Miles High by veteran rock journalist Ed Ward from September 19 to October 3, 2003, and interviewed by The Inkwell about Turn! Turn! Turn! from September 27 to October 11, 2002. These discussions are still readable (whether you're a member of the WELL or not) on-line by clicking the link to The Inkwell, then clicking on the sentence "More conversations with authors" (the first sentence in the right column), and then clicking on the topic titles "Richie Unterberger, 'Turn! Turn! Turn!'"; "Richie Unterberger, 'Eight Miles High'"; and "Richie Unterberger, 'The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film'". 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.

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 #25 (Summer 2007) of the (mostly) 1960s rock-centered magazine Ugly Things 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.

Also in Ugly Things, 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 September 2007 issue of Record Collector has my feature on Fairport Convention's original woman singer, Judy Dyble, drawing from an extensive recent interview with her. The August 2005 issue of Record Collector 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.

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.'"

On this site: Newly added pages of reviews of winter 2009-10 reissue albums (entirely different pages of 2000-2009 album and book reviews are still accessible).

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.