Richie Unterberger is a US author and journalist whose focus is popular music and travel writing.

Life and writing

Having worked as a DJ at WXPN

WXPN

WXPN is a non-commercial, public radio station operated by the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia that broadcasts a music radio format called adult album alternative , along with many other format shows supported all with an indie slant...

 in Philadelphia, he started reviewing records for Op

Op Magazine

OP Magazine, based in Olympia, Washington, was a music fanzine published by John Foster and the Lost Music Network from 1979 to 1984. It was known for its diverse scope and the role it played in providing publicity to DIY musicians in the midst of the cassette culture...

magazine in 1983. From 1985 to 1991, Unterberger was an editor for Option

Option (music magazine)

Option was a music magazine based in Los Angeles, California.-History:Originally called OPtion, it, along with Sound Choice, were the dual successors to the earlier music magazine OP, published by John Foster and the Lost Music Network and known for its diverse scope and the role it played in...

.

Since 1993, he has been a prolific contributor to allmusic, the on-line database of music biographies and album reviews for which he has written thousands of entries. (Many of Unterberger's on-line contributions have also found their way into the print versions of Allmusics.) Unterberger contributes to various local and national publications, including Mojo

Mojo (magazine)

MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...

, Record Collector

Record Collector

Record Collector is the United Kingdom's longest-running monthly music magazine. It distributes both within the UK and worldwide. It started in 1979.-The early years:...

, Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

, Oxford American

Oxford American

The Oxford American is an American quarterly literary magazine "dedicated to featuring the very best in Southern writing while documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South."-First publication:...

, and No Depression. He has written liner notes to dozens of CD reissues for labels like Rhino, Collectors' Choice, and Sundazed.

Unterberger's books draw extensively upon first-hand interviews with musicians and their associates.

Travel writing; public speaking

Unterberger has given numerous talks on music and popular culture at public libraries throughout San Francisco, Berkeley, and San Mateo County, California. He is also a speaker at area bookstores, including The Booksmith

Booksmith

Founded in October 1976, The Booksmith is an independent bookstore located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. When first opened, the store was located at 1746 Haight Street, below the former I-Beam nightclub. In 1985, the store moved to its current location at 1644 Haight Street...

 in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco.

Unterberger has also written on travel, including The Rough Guide to Seattle (1998); and is co-author of The Rough Guide to Shopping with a Conscience (2007), a book about ethical products, investment, and related topics. He has traveled to more than thirty countries, and is an advocate of independent travel and alternative culture.

Family

His nephew, Andrew, formerly wrote for Stylusmagazine.com, and in 2007 was part of the winning team on VH1's World Series of Pop Culture. He has been a staff writer or featured contributor on a number of music or sports blogs.

Selected publications

His books include:

• 1998: Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll. Profiles of 60 under-appreciated cult rock artists of all styles and eras
• 1999: The Rough Guide to Music USA. A guidebook to the evolution of regional popular music throughout America in the twentieth century
• 2000: Urban Spacemen & Wayfaring Strangers: overlooked innovators and eccentric visionaries of '60s Rock. Another look at under-appreciated cult rock artists
• 2002: Turn! Turn! Turn!: the '60s Folk-Rock revolution. The first part of a history of folk rock
  Folk rock
  Folk rock is a musical genre combining elements of folk music and rock music. In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term referred to a genre that arose in the United States and the UK around the mid-1960s...
  
  
• 2003: Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock's flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock. The second part of the author's history of folk rock
• 2006: The Unreleased Beatles: music and film. An illustrated 400-page guide to the music the Beatles recorded but did not release, as well as musical footage of the group that hasn't been made commercially available. The Unreleased Beatles won a 2007 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research.
• 2009: White Light/White Heat: the Velvet Underground day-by-day
• 2011: Won't Get Fooled Again: The Who from Lifehouse to Quadrophenia. The book 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.

External links

• 2002 interview with Unterberger
• Richie Unterberger's Unknown Legends at www.richieunterberger.com
• Profile at Rough Guides // [ Allmusic.com] // IMDb
• Article about Richie Unterberger in the SF Weekly
• The WELL interviews on Turn! Turn! Turn! // Eight Miles High // The Unreleased Beatles