A unique combination of musical analysis and cultural history, Tell Me Why stands alone among Beatles books with its single-minded focus on the most important aspect of the band: its music. Riley offers a new, deeper understanding of the Beatles by closely considering each song and album they recorded in an exploration as rigorous as it is soulful. He tirelessly sifts through the Beatles discography, making clear that the legendary four were more than mere teen idols: They were brilliant innovators who mastered an extremely detailed art. Since the first publication of Tell Me Why in 1988, much new primary source material has appeared—Paul McCartney's authorized biography, the Anthology CDs and videos, the complete Parlophone-sequenced albums on CD, the Live at the BBCsessions, and the global smash 1. Riley incorporates all the new material in an update that makes this a crucial book for Beatles fans.
NPR CRITIC, AUTHOR, PIANIST, and SPEAKER TIM RILEY reviews pop and classical music for NPR's HERE AND NOW, and has written for the HUFFINGTON POST, THE WASHINGTON POST, SLATE.COM and SALON.COM. He was trained as a classical pianist at Oberlin and Eastman.
In 2009, Emerson College appointed Riley Journalist-In-Residence, where he teaches Music Journalism and supervises the department's social media strategy.
Brown University sponsored Riley as Critic-In Residence in 2008, and his first book, Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary (Knopf/Vintage 1988), was hailed by the New York Times as bringing "new insight to the act we've known for all these years..."
A staple author in college courses on rock culture, he gave a keynote address at BEATLES 2000, the first international academic conference in Jyvaskyla, Finland. Since then, he's given lively multi-media lectures at colleges and cultural centers like the Chautauqua Festival on "Censorship in the Arts," and "Rock History."
His current projects include the music metaportal, the RILEY ROCK INDEX.com, and a major new biography of John Ono Lennon (2011).
