"A gung-ho Candide with a taste for places it is wiser to avoid. . . the reports collected in 'I Wouldn't Start From Here' are graphic, comic, bemused and properly contemptuous of faith and ideology."
- Jonathan Meades, Books of the Year, Evening Standard

"An utterly sui generis report from the world's plague-spots."
- Michael Bywater, Books of the Year, New Statesman

"I can think of no more entertaining companion on a perilous journey than the ever hopeful, wildly optimistic yet clear-thinking Andrew Mueller."
- Rory MacLean, The Guardian

"A tour-de-force of hilarious, harrowing and ultimately enlightening reportage that will remind readers of the work of P.J. O'Rourke, Jon Ronson and David Foster Wallace."
- The Washington Times

"Unafraid to portray the world's warring people not just as victims and sufferers of legitimate grievances, but also as bloody-minded bastards and ill-informed fools."
- The Kathmandu Post

"A mix of dark humour and incisive political discourse."
- CNN Go

"His sardonic, self-deprecating perspective makes for unstuffy company."
- The Los Angeles Times

"Peppered with trenchant observations that reflect a nimble, cut-to-the-chase practicality, Mueller's interviews with everyone from terrorist warlords to international peacemakers are refreshingly irreverent yet astute."
- Booklist

"Travel writing in the danger zone that maintains its hipness and humanity."
- George Dunford, Books of the Year, Readings Monthly

"An addition to the genre founded by P.J. O'Rourke's 'Holidays In Hell', but it is one that pushes the boundaries."
- The Australian

"Mueller is the embodiment of what can happen with a fire in the belly and a desire to write out loud."
- Australian Book Review

"Mueller's travel writing is as incisive and entertaining as anything he's ever written about music."
- TNT

"A joy."
- Financial Times

"Delightfully laconic."
- The New Statesman

"Alternately chilling, funny and surprising, there's some great reportage here as Mueller struggles to reach an understanding of the world, quizzing the highest minister and the lowliest peasant."
- The Glasgow Herald

"His acerbic wit is matched by true empathy. . . we need this kind of gonzo journalism more than ever."
- Wanderlust

"Mueller spins what could have been the grimmest geopolitics into the finest black comedy. Like a print version of 'The Daily Show'."
- FHM

"Lively reporting from a gently humorous narrator."
- Chris Ayres, The Times

"Touching, often blackly comic reportage."
- GQ

"Brilliantly observed, articulate, often funny and immensely readable."
- The List

"Snappy, self-deprecating and sometimes outright hilarious."
- The Age

"Indelibly humorous and heartfelt."
- Sydney Sunday Telegraph

"An instructive ricochet between cities and continents and war zones."
- Time Out

"He brings to his material the mixture of rage and earthy irony that is the mark of a great satirist
. . . rewarding, thought-provoking and ludicrously funny."
- PopMatters

"Mueller's book is an excellent example of why today's brave, lucid hacks are forced to admit fear and confusion."
- South China Morning Post

"His reporting is sharp, his experiences terrifying and funny."
- Melbourne Herald-Sun

"If you enjoy your international affairs and politics with a good dose of cynicism and black humour, then this book is one to read."
- Brisbane Courier-Mail

"Often laugh-out-loud funny, the writing is utterly engaging."
- Launceston Sunday Examiner

"Mueller's irreverent reportage from abroad is fundamentally a clever cover for the author's ruminations on race, religion, revolution, rock'n'roll and other important issues since September 11, 2001."
- The West Australian

"As hilarious and sardonic a host as this ridiculous world of ours demands."
- Shortlist

"Mueller busies himself with finding the odd, the surreal and the laughable as much as the shocking and upsetting."
- New Zealand Herald

"A real eye for surreal moments of black humour. . . Mueller's work here digs much deeper than the standard newspaper travel essay."
- Sydney Sun-Herald

"His best story, about his brief, bizarre jailing in Cameroon, reads like a 21st century 'Goon Show' script."
- Good Reading

"A rollicking ride through some of the world's scariest scenarios."
- Kalgoorlie Miner

"A strikingly funny book about some seriously unfunny places."
- Perth Sunday Times

"Not bad for a guy from Wagga Wagga."
- The Wagga Wagga Advertiser

Rock & Hard Places "Andrew Mueller's piece about my band's tour with The Hold Steady is my favourite thing ever written about us. The fact that he is a war correspondent (though he claims otherwise) and music journalist and
approaches both with a similar slant makes him one of the most interesting
writers out there to me."
- Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers

"The most important critical anthology on popular music from a single author in a long time, its humour and insight equal with collections by Nick Tosches or Robert Palmer."
- KEXP Seattle

"Take one part P.J. O'Rourke, a healthy dose of Lester Bangs and a dash of Hunter S. Thompson, and you've got Andrew Mueller."
- Bookgasm

"Sharply observed and wittily constructed."
- Honolulu Star-Advertiser

"New edition of the rock classic."
- NY Press

"Mueller's humour makes for some enlightening reading."
- Biloxi-Gulfport Sun-Herald

"Sharp, witty and sarcastic."
- Chicago Tribune

"Really rather good, in a barnstorming, country-punk sort of way. . . a highly capable ensemble."
- The Quietus

"A more than capable debut - allusive country-tough songs."
- Uncut

"The Blazing Zoos are undoubtedly fun, but they also have depth. . .
everything from Mueller's extensive use of brackets to the band's loving
recreation of classic country riffs bespeaks sincerity."
- Americana UK

KICKING AGAINST THE PRIX

A defence of Formula 1
The Guardian, June 2005

NOTHING illustrates the gulf between sports fan and sports commentator more starkly than their reactions when something, in the sport’s own terms, goes wrong. In recent memory, the two most obvious examples were the aborted start of the 1993 Grand National, and Eric Cantona’s assault on a Crystal Palace fan at Selhurst Park in 1995. In both cases, the huffing and puffing of commentators was drowned out by the incredulous, delighted laughter of fans across the nation.
A few weeks ago, the 2005 US Grand Prix joined this roll-call of infamy/hilarity. After doubts were raised about the tyres produced for the event by Michelin, seven of Formula One’s ten teams withdrew after the parade lap, leaving just six cars on the grid: two each from Ferrari, Jordan and Minardi. A farcical and hilarious procession followed, Ferrari’s peerless Michael Schumacher ambling home ahead of team-mate Rubens Barrichello, with the Jordans and Minardis greeting the chequered flag later that day. It could only have been funnier, frankly, if Schumacher had hit Barrichello as he emerged from the pit lane on lap 51, instead of narrowly avoiding the collision which would have taken both Ferraris off, and put at least one Minardi driver on the podium for the first time in that team’s utterly undistinguished history.
It probably wasn’t as amusing if you were one of the paying spectators, but as anyone who attends a Grand Prix is as deranged as people who go to Glastonbury, their views needn’t concern us (F1 is the definitive televisual sporting event: teams and journalists at the track watch most of the races on screens). However, the pompous, spluttering garment-rending of the F1 establishment was ridiculous. The US Grand Prix was, truth be told, F1 in excelsis: dramatic, if for unusual reasons, theatrical, overblown and altogether glorious folly.
Nevertheless, curious numbers of people are convinced that the US Grand Prix represented the terminal whimper of an institution suffocating beneath its own foolishness. They are deeply wrong, which is why the Guide is choosing the weekend of the British Grand Prix to defend F1 against the grievances most often held against it.

Michael Schumacher always wins
This criticism has been at large since the most stereotypical German of all time embarked on his fabulous winning streak. Schumacher has won seven World Championships, including the last five on the bounce. It beggars belief that any serious sports fan could be upset by this. The opportunity to watch such singular genius is the greatest privilege ever extended to the spectator. People who complain about Schumacher’s dominance would, 70 years ago, have whined “God, not another triple century by Bradman. Cricket is soooo boring.” Or, to switch the same weird, bitter attitude to another field of human endeavour, “Another great album by The Beatles. Yawn-o.”

There’s no overtaking
What are you, five? Granted that last weekend’s French Grand Prix was hardly an advertisement for the sport – it’s mildly surprising none of the drivers fell asleep – but F1, like all worthwhile pastimes, is more rewarding for the scarcity of its gratifications. It is because overtaking manoeuvres are so unusual that they’re so exciting, to say nothing of the mortal stakes involved as a driver probes for position, times his run, and bets his life on his own reflexes and the capacities of the svelte machine beneath him. Anyone unstirred by that is welcome to NASCAR, where the bristly-moustached hillbillies driving their ungainly bangers round and round in bloody circles for hours overtake each other all the time, as if anyone, bar hooting yokels in baseball hats, cares.

It’s bad for the environment
F1 flits about the planet in private jets, pausing at various locales to hoover up all available local supplies of champagne and caviar. It is arguable that this is obscene in a world which is wracked by want, and choking on environmental irresponsibility, but only if you’re an idiot. F1, like any endeavour operating at the frontiers of technology, has benefits beyond its immediate remit, and F1 has helped deliver active suspension, traction control and anti-lock brakes to the car in your garage, as well as increased understanding of aerodynamics and computers. These advances by F1’s competing boffins make everyone’s cars safer and cleaner, doing more for the environment than any amount of recycling, and saving uncountable lives – maybe even yours, beardie.

It’s all about selling cigarettes
F1’s reliance on tobacco sponsorship is not edifying. Any self-respecting team, at the risk of giving people ideas, should look upon tobacco money as they would upon a cheque for giving advertising space on their jumpsuits to a landmine manufacturer. However, logos of cigarette manufacturers are disfiguring F1 less as more European countries outlaw them, and Bernie Ecclestone surely can’t relocate the entire series to third world countries whose disregard for their citizens’ health is matched only by their desire for the considerable money generated by a race. A study of the economic impact of the 2000 Melbourne Grand Prix, for example, concluded that it boosted the local economy by £56 million, a hefty stack even in prosperous Australia – so perhaps thought should be given to extending the schedule to Burkina Faso, Chad and Liberia.

The races are rigged
The outraged punters who shriek “Fix!” when a result is engineered – David Coulthard waving Mika Hakkinen through in Melbourne in 1998, Schumacher and Barrichello swapping places for Championship reasons, or just to set up a cool photograph – fail to grasp that F1 is a team game. It was to calm such fatheaded reactions that team orders were theoretically (if unenforceably) banned this season, though they shouldn’t have been – complaining when one driver allows a team-mate through is like complaining when a winger crosses to a striker rather than trying to score himself.

There’s too little sportsmanship
The last vestige of the gentleman racer departed F1 with the retirement of Damon Hill, a modest, decent man whose 1996 World Championship was a heartening triumph for the good guy – but not the stuff of which legend is made. F1 is a sport whose most revered icon, the late Ayrton Senna, clinched one of this three World Championships by deliberately ramming his rival, Alain Prost, at high speed – it was the last fixture of the 1990 season, Senna calculated that if neither of them finished the race the title was his, and so caused an accident at the first corner which could have killed them both. Schumacher possibly did the same to Hill, though in less treacherous circumstances, in 1994, and certainly had a go at shunting Jacques Villeneuve in an attempt to steal the 1997 title. In this and certain other respects, Formula One drivers have more in common with fighter pilots than with other athletes, which is precisely why they are such an invigorating spectacle for we couchbound gawpers.

They keep changing the rules
Here, the malcontents have a point. What was once the splendid chaos of a one-hour every-man-for-himself qualifying session has been needlessly tinkered with so it is now a thoroughly tiresome series of one-car drag races. The daft new rules forbidding routine tyre changes mean that pitstops, once a co-ordinated team effort requiring balletic timing and grace, now just look silly, as half a dozen blokes dressed like Martian stormtroopers rush out and stare at the car for a few seconds while someone tops up the tank. These are hopefully temporary glitches, which will surely be resolved by the power-brokers whose diplomatic gifts were so noticeable in Indianapolis the other week.

It’s all about money
Well, yes. Few are the drivers whose path to glory began with a billy-cart and a dream in the favelas of Rio, or the backstreets of Marseilles. Even F1’s underdogs are multi-million pound enterprises employing genius engineers, brilliant designers, and dashing playboy drivers. None of this is a bad thing: F1 is not just about the racing. Off the track, a soap opera of labrynthine complexity and startling viciousness is played out, charged with the superhuman unpleasantness that can only be created by the synthesis of bottomless money and demented ego, and this is why F1 is wonderful. Think of it as “Dallas” with occasional multi-car pile-ups.

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