The New York Times hailed his first book, Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary (Knopf/Vintage 1988), for bringing “new insight to the act we’ve known for all these years…” He has since authored Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary (Knopf/Vintage/Da Capo 1992/2002), Madonna: Illustrated (Hyperion 1992), and Fever: How Rock’n'Roll Transformed Gender (Picador 2005).
Since 1990, Riley has given hundreds of lively multi-media presentations at colleges and cultural centers like New York’s Chautauqua Festival on “Censorship in the Arts,” and “Rock History.” He gave a keynote address at BEATLES 2000, the first international academic conference in Jyvaskyla, Finland, and lectured as Brown University’s Critic-In-Residence in 2008.
In 2009, Emerson College appointed Riley assistant professor of digital journalism. His current projects include the RILEY ROCK INDEX.com, music’s metaportal, blog riley at the prestigious ArtsJournal.com, and a new speech on social media and Wikileaks, “Let Freedom Leak.” Click on “Browse” above for more pages.
Riley reviews John Lennon’s Letters on truthdig
Riley review RJ Smith’s James Brown bio, The One, on truthdig
- Quality Paperback Bookclub features an early softcover edition
Tim Riley, James Fusilli
Wall Street Journal video interview, December 10, 2011
November 24, 2011
Rolling Stone: Gimme Some Truth
New bio is the most reliable guide yet to Lennon’s messy life and musical genius (4 1/2 stars)
by Will Hermes:
“…the most reliable, least star-struck volume on Lennon to date… Riley is a keen critic, and his analysis is what distinguishes this bio… helps you hear the man’s music anew – and given its omnipresence, that’s pretty amazing.”
Morning Joe interview, October 14, 2011
“Lennon is potently descriptive… a critical tour de force…” [pdf]
See excerpts from Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary
Hey Tim,
Just wanted to tell you am excited about your new book and will get it when it comes out! Congratulations!!
best,
Nell
Hey Tim,
Glad to hear about the new Lennon book and looking forward to reading. Congrats on what looks like another major contribution!
I’m still in the Boston area, toiling away in the English Dept. at Merrimack College. Enjoy hearing your commentaries on NPR!
Not doing much new writing on pop culture these days, but still following Prince! Hope you know that the Popular Culture Association Conference (where we met about 100 years ago in Louisville, I believe) will be in Boston in Spring 2012. See
Cheers!
Marie Plasse
Marie, JUST got this!… great to hear from you. Watched Prince rock the Super Bowl with my two boys a couple years back… I’m teaching Journalism at Emerson, what a trip.
stay in touch… Tim
Dear Mr. Riley,
What’s the best email/route to contact you on to talk about a forthcoming Beatlemania exhibition planned for Russia.Your participation in this would be welcome but your site does not have contact details.
Kind regards,
Elena Nikiforenko
Dear Tim
I am greatly enjoying your Lennon book. I love in particular the way you get inside some of the songs and album themes and also the new light you shed on some of the Lennon myths, and I’m only halfway thru. However, I hope you don’t mind if I pick you up on a few inaccuracies for the next edition:
Scouse accent – this is nothing like the cockney accent! I am a Londoner, my wife is a Liverpudlian, we speak with very different accents, although to an American ear I guess they may sound similar.
Stuart’s bass guitar – although this was a Hofner, it was not the ‘violin’ style later used by Paul (as your early photos of the band clearly show).
Keith Richards’ bust: The Redlands house is in Wittering, Sussex, and not Richmond.
I hope you don’t mind me pointing these out. I am not a die hard fan, but maybe I’m reading the book from a British perspective.
Phil, very happy you’re enjoying the book, and thanks for these thoughtful corrections. Sutcliffe played a Hofner 333, and Paul played the violin-shaped 500/1 model, you are correct. I can’t explain how this slipped through all my expert copy-edits, but we’ll fix this in future editions alongside the proper Redlands locale. I refer to Scouse alongside Cockney as that’s another working-class tongue most Americans confuse, precisely your point. I hope my text clarifies how much Scouse owes to the Irish brogue. Tim
Here’s another “inaccuracy”: George Harrison didn’t play on the Mind Games or Walls And Bridges albums.
Also, Badfinger weren’t Scottish. The band that recorded “Come And Get It” were three-quarters Welsh, with a fourth member from Liverpool.
Dear Tim:
I fell in love with the Beatles (especially John) from the moment my 12 year old self saw them on Sullivan and the loving has never stopped. If anything, it has grown stronger as I realize how very, very important their music has been to me. Through bad times and good, their music was the one constant in my life. Songs like “Eleanor Rigby” and “In My Life” provoke a powerful reaction that has never wavered, no matter how many times I hear them, and I hope it never will. I absolutely loved your book – just when I felt I had read everything that there was on John Lennon, you pleasantly surprised me. Thank you for that, even though I had to put it down a few times because I could no longer read due to my tears. Your book has definitely given me new insights into the man. He certainly had his faults, as do we all, but no one can deny his amazing gifts which we fans are all the luckier for.
Abbey, thank you so much for your note. I can’t tell you how terrific it is to hear from readers, especially those so invested in this story. Tim
wow I can’t wait for this!
Just finished your wonderful biography. I grew up on the Beatles. I have been obsessed with their magic, even to the point of traveling with friends in 1975 to London where we visited EMI studio on Abbey Road. It still amazes me that such a plain looking building could have housed such musical magic.But, that being said, I loved your book. Congratulations.
Hello. I am in the middle of your incredible book, Lennon. Besides reminding me how astonishly prolific and wonderful the music was/is, your “…art of weaving…”(to borrow from Keith Richards and Ron Wood)the musical, political and cultural contexts in both the USA and UK with the personal evolution of Lennon and his contemporaries has me forgetting to blink as I soak it all in. As someone who said she was going to the library in order to get access to her mother’s Corvair to go to Lunken Airport in Cincinnati to watch the Beatles plane land (and then chase their limo to their hotel) your insight and perspective is helping me make sense of much of what just swept me away back then. Thank you
Loved”Lennon” Book and “Tell Me Why”. You show we can’t separate man from his art. Wen’t on own journey to find”John”, so met Cynthia, M.Pang, P.Sutcliffe, P.Best, Len Garry,
A.Williams,L. Harrison, etc. Also you might like my Ottawan/Russ. friend, Yury Pelyushonok’s book,CD”Strings for Beatles Bass” made into BBC film”How Beatles Rocked Kremlin”; glad to send copy. Alan
Tim: tried to reach you before, comment on great new Lennon book: You captured what must have been going on ,both within him and without him, as he was creating. His human contradictions have fascinated me as much as his art. But inspired me to get into music and create my own IMAGINE’s.
And you show Yoko’s influence. Met lots of people who knew him to try and understand who he really was. Changed all our lives. Including my Cdn./Russ.friend, Yury Pelyushonok, in his book,CD “Strings for a Beatles Bass”, made into BBC film
“How the Beatles Rocked Kremlin”( and we think it meant a lot to us!), in the land where rock was banned. We could send copy of. 50 years later,Lennon still challenges us. Alan
Tim, your book had such an effect on me, strangely sad but in a good way. Maybe can explain: just finished “Lennon” and happened to next read Cdn. David Gilmour’s novel/memoir” Perfect Order” and he expresses that same effect Beatles music had and has on him “Sadness, it has occurred to me, is an inexplicable response to great art. When I heard again the final, dramatic bars of “When I Get Home”, when John got to the hook, the hair stood up on my arms. That odd mixture of euphoria and sadness, of being still on the ‘outside’ of something terribly, terribly important. And that’s what your book did to me too. Alan
I’m enjoying the book too; good mix of ‘normal’ biography, psychological speculation and creative response to the music. The sections of Lennon’s childhood were all new to me and his life was more chaotic than I had thought for the one indisputably middle-class Beatle.
However, there are some bizarre errors that wouldn’t have passed if an English person had looked through the copy. The strangest is the assertion that Bevanite and Gaitskellite are Scottish accents! A Bevanite was a follower of Aneurin Bevan, the Labour politician, while a Gaitskellite was a follower of Hugh Gaitskell, another Labour politician of the tim…
Thanks, Joel. See corrections on the Errata page.
Tim,
This is an amazing read. A life long Beatles fan, I thoroughly enjoyed every line of this comprehensive narative. I couldn’t put it down. It reminded me just how much I have missed John Lennon over the past 30+ years.
My Best,
G Hall, Sudbury MA
Hi Tim,
Just finished LENNON, which is a tremendous contribution to the culture of the Beatles/Lennon. It gave me shivers reading again about his tragic death. I was the morning DJ opening my college radio station — WRUV in Burlington Vt — the morning after his shooting. The experience is burned into me like almost no other. People were hurting. He touched us somehow, just by saying ‘there’s nothing you can sing that can’t be sung ….’ If you are interested here is my essay about Lennon and that day — http://zerothreepercent.blogspot.com/2010/12/late-great-john-lennon.html
One detail you might want to raise with your publisher. The book has some stumbles (typos), which cut into the flow. Let me know if you want some ‘for instances.’ Great book and I don’t mean to be a nudge but figured you’d want to know.
Warm Regards,
David
David, check the Errata page to see if we’ve already caught some of these, and thanks. TR
Out of all the biograpies of John Lennon, this has to be one the most informative that I have read in years. I checked this out from our local library and have be engrossed in it ever since. This book is a must buy for all fans of Lennon and the Beatles. I recommend this to all music fans. Wm C Crabbe
Hi Mr. Riley,
My name is Bianca and I am a high school student. I have been assigned a research project on John Lennon and the lasting affects he made on the world. If you have the time, I would really appreciate it if you answered a few questions concerning him, and I feel that your input would be a great addition to my project. However, if you are not the right person that I should be talking to, do you have any suggestions as to who I should get in touch with? I understand that you may be very busy, but any form of aid will be really appreciated.
Thank you,
Bianca
happy to chat with you Bianca, send me email at triley60 AT gmail DOT com…
Bianca, Look at the Public Broadcsting Website and see if you can order a copy of an “American Masters” episode re: John Lennon or, better still, if it will be replayed soon on a PBS station in your area for free.
Tim, I just recently read your book on John Lennon and I discovered a mistake in the discography part of the book. When you listed the Beatles Anthology, you forgot to include Disc 2 of Volume 3 in the listing. You have Disc 1, but didn’t put the listings for “Abbey Road” and “Let It Be” for Disc 2. I thought might have been a Typo . Thanks for a great book otherwise. William Crabbe
How come you responded to Biancas question in a day and haven’t responded to my comments from March 8th?
Rick Velsor
Tim,
Errors errors errors. When Hendrix, as a lefty, turns his guitar around he put’s his base strings towards the top. To say ‘His patterns were hard to follow’ is bogus. They would just be mirrored to a righty.
Your other reference to the lefty /righty thing is when you talk about John and Paul facing each other in Mimi’s front hall or what ever, you say ‘guitars were going in all directions’ or some such nonsense. In actuallity, when they faced each other the guitars are again mirrored. This I believe is how John was able to learn guitar chords from Paul (rather than use the banjo chords he learned from Julia. You should read the stuff you get from other peoples books rather than just assuming it is all correct.
I’d love to hear your comments on the few that I have made. Again I ask how long does moderation take . It’s been almost a month since my first note to you. Is this not the best place for you to see these things?
Rick Velsor, still a fan
Just finished the book, learned a lot of stuff I did not know about John Lennon. Having grown up in Huyton, one error (page 74), Huyton is not across the river from Liverpool, it is a suburb of Liverpool just down the road from Wolton.
Thanks Neil, I think we’ve corrected this in all future editions, see errata page… TR