Tim Riley

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About Tim Riley

NPR CRITIC, EMERSON COLLEGE PROFESSOR and AUTHOR TIM RILEY reviews pop and classical music for NPR's ON POINT and HERE AND NOW. His reviews appear widely in the NEW YORK TIMES, truthdig.com, the LA REVIEW OF BOOKS, the HUFFINGTON POST, THE WASHINGTON POST, SLATE.COM and SALON.COM. He earned degrees in classical piano from Oberlin and Eastman.

Since 2009, he has taught digital journalism at Emerson College in Boston. Brown University hosted 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..." In 2011, the New York Times hailed his John Lennon biography as a "critical tour-de-force..." His television appearances include the PBS Newshour, CBS Morning and Evening News, MTV, and the History Channel.

His current projects include the music metaportal, the RILEY ROCK INDEX, and a major new Beatles multimedia textbook (Oxford, 2019).

For a schedule of current appearances see http://timrileyauthor.com

Visit: timrileyauthor.com, @rileyrockindex

music's metaportal: the riley rock index bit.ly/rileyrockindex

https://timrileyauthor.com/what-goes-on-beatles-textbook/listening-guide-i/

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Tell Me Why: The Beatles: Album By Album, Song By Song, The Sixties And After Apr 29, 2009

by Tim Riley

( 67 )

$12.99

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.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life Sep 20, 2011

by Tim Riley

( 72 )

$16.99

In his commanding new book, the eminent NPR critic Tim Riley takes us on the remarkable journey that brought a Liverpool art student from a disastrous childhood to the highest realms of fame.

Riley portrays Lennon's rise from Hamburg's red light district to Britain's Royal Variety Show; from the charmed naivetÃ©f "Love Me Do" to the soaring ambivalence of "Don't Let Me Down"; from his shotgun marriage to Cynthia Powell in 1962 to his epic media romance with Yoko Ono. Written with the critical insight and stylistic mastery readers have come to expect from Riley, this richly textured narrative draws on numerous new and exclusive interviews with Lennon's friends, enemies, confidantes, and associates; lost memoirs written by relatives and friends; as well as previously undiscovered City of Liverpool records. Riley explores Lennon in all of his contradictions: the British art student who universalized an American style, the anarchic rock 'n' roller with the moral spine, the anti-jazz snob who posed naked with his avant-garde lover, and the misogynist who became a househusband. What emerges is the enormous, seductive, and confounding personality that made Lennon a cultural touchstone.

In Lennon, Riley casts Lennon as a modernist hero in a sweeping epic, dramatizing rock history anew as Lennon himself might have experienced it.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

What Goes On: The Beatles, Their Music, and Their Time Jun 21, 2019

by Walter Everett, Tim Riley

( 24 )

$15.65

In a stretch of just seven years, the Beatles recorded hundreds of songs which tower above those of their worthy peers as both the product of cultural leadership and an artistic reflection of their turbulent age, the1960s. Walter Everett and Tim Riley's What Goes On: The Beatles, Their Music, and Their Time blends historical narrative, musicology, and music analysis to tell the full story of the Beatles and how they redefined pop music.

The book traces the Beatles' development chronologically, marking the band's involvement with world events such as the Vietnam War, strides in overcoming racial segregation, gender stereotyping, student demonstrations, and the generation gap. It delves deeply into their body of work, introducing the concepts of musical form, instrumentation, harmonic structure, melodic patterns, and rhythmic devices in a way that is accessible to musicians and non-musicians alike. Close readings of specific songs highlight the tensions between imagination and mechanics, songwriting and technology, and through the book's musical examples, listeners will learn how to develop strategies for creating their own rich interpretations of the potential meanings behind their favorite songs. Videos hosted on the book's companion website offer full definitions and performance demonstrations of all musical concepts discussed in the text, and interactive listening guides illustrate track details in real-time listening.

The unique multimedia approach of What Goes On reveals just how great this music was in its own time, and why it remains important today as a body of singular achievement.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary Dec 29, 2010

by Tim Riley

( 9 )

$13.99

Ranging over 30 years of Bob Dylan recordings, films, and concerts, this updated edition includes a new epilogue that examines his 30th anniversary celebration and his 1998 Grammy Award comeback.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

Fever: How Rock 'n' Roll Transformed Gender in America Jul 29, 2014

by Tim Riley

$7.99

In Fever, music critic Tim Riley argues that while political and athletic role models have let us down, rock and roll has provided enduring role models for men and women. From Elvis Presley to Tina Turner to Bruce Springsteen to Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, Riley makes a persuasive case that rock and roll, far from the corrosive force that conservative critics make it out to be, has instead been a positive influence in people's lives, laying out gender-defying role models far more enduringly than movies, TV, or "real life."

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

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