Richie Unterberger Interview
Richie Unterberger is the author of numerous rock history books, including volumes on the Beatles, the Who, the Velvet Underground, and 1960s folk-rock. He teaches courses on rock and soul music history at several San Francisco Bay Area colleges. His most recent book, published by Taschen in 2022, is San Francisco: Portrait of a City.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I started listening to rock music at the age of five in 1967, after I and the brother I shared a room with got a radio as a holiday gift. I’ve been a big fan of rock since then, starting like so many people did with the Beatles. From there I got into other groups like the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys, and by the time I was in high school, into great but somewhat lesser exposed vintage acts like the Kinks and the Yardbirds. In college I got into more cult acts like the Velvet Underground, and like so many future rock journalists, got a lot of experience listening to and playing records at my college radio station, WXPN in Philadelphia, which had a huge vinyl library.
The more I heard from rock history (and affiliated genres like soul, blues, reggae, and folk), the more I wanted to hear, and wanted to know. I began writing reviews right after college for a magazine specializing in independent/underground music, Op, and from 1985-1991 was managing editor of a similar magazine, OPtion. After working on some All Music Guides in the mid-1990s, the publisher, Miller Freeman, asked if I had ideas for books of my own. That led to my first book, 1998’s Unknown Legends of Rock’n’Roll, which covered sixty cult acts from the 1950s through the 1980s.