"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

NOBODY'S BARGAIN

Bruce Springsteen's Human Touch
Uncut Legends, October 2004

“HUMAN Touch” is a muddled, uncertain, half-baked answer to a question which has tormented every rock singer who finds himself 40, rich, a husband and father. After a youth spent selling rebellion, romantic beatnikkery and escape – something which Springsteen did with rarely equalled gusto – what can be left for your muse to live on when you’re a respected and admired cultural figure, happy playing with the kids, in love with your wife, and your Harley is parked on the long gravel drive of an immense mansion which nobody in his right mind would ever wish to leave? Much of “Human Touch”, especially when played alongside its more realised younger twin, “Lucky Town”, has the weary, dogged feel of a man sweating to work up inspiration, like a misfiring baseball slugger trying to get his swing back by swatting at pitches fired from a machine. “A lot of it,” Springsteen has admitted, “is generic. It was definitely something I struggled to put together.” Only the most adamantine of Springsteen’s fans, and perhaps members of Springsteen’s immediate family, would deny that it sounds it.
It can be reasonably argued that the fourteen tracks on “Human Touch” contain among them the half dozen worst songs Springsteen has recorded. “Pony Boy”, the emetic nursery rhyme which closes the album, might have prompted appreciative gurgles from Springsteen’s new son, Evan, but would have inspired in more people an urgent desire to strap Springsteen down and play him “Born To Run” until he remembered what he was paid for – or slap him enthusiastically with a large cod. “Real Man” is a bellicose declaration of devotion possessed of all the charm of a rutting moose, and burdened with trousers-on-fire vocals and woozy Wurlitzers clearly inspired by Rod Stewart; the finger of blame must quiver, as much in sorrow as anger, at the generally admirable former Faces/Stewart keyboardist Ian McLagan, who played on “Real Man” (he’s misspelt “McLagen” in the credits, which does little to alleviate an overall air of half-arsedness). “Man’s Job” is another ostentatiously priapic swagger (“Lovin’ you is a man’s job, baby”), which could feasibly win the heart of its subject only if she’s the sort of woman impressed by how many press-ups her suitors can do. “All Or Nothin’ At All” is Springsteen doing a pastiche of Springsteen, and an unconvincing one at that – the whoah-hoing and hey-heying refrains with which he passes the time during the choruses sound phoned in. “Soul Driver”, despite the backing vocals of Sam Moore, is approximately as soulful as Huey Lewis, and features what sound suspiciously like pan-pipes.
The appalling nadir, and belief-beggaring choice as single, is “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)”, a leaden non-event over which Bruce grumbles about the lack of anything good on television. Though it would be an act of saintly charity, it might just be possible to interpret this wretched track as gentle self-mockery. Springsteen starts it with the starkly autobiographical couplet “I bought a bourgeois house in the Hollywood hills/With a truckload of hundred thousand dollar bills”; he and his second wife, backing singer Patti Scialfa, had indeed departed Springsteen’s native New Jersey for Los Angeles. The song’s plodding, bass-driven music reinforces the lyric’s evocation of complacent idleness, and the last verse sees Springsteen taking a pistol to the screen in the manner favoured by Elvis Presley in the years in which, stoned, obese and incontinent, he established the benchmark for pointless destructiveness by bored, decadent, millionaire rock stars. So, “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)” might indicate a commendable awareness of the depth of the creative bog in which Springsteen found himself, could even represent the stirrings of a conscience nagging him to turn the damn box off and do some work, already. But the song still sucks.
However, “Human Touch” is not an unmitigated disaster. There are three or four songs which, if swapped for some of the dead wood on “Lucky Town”, would have earnt their places on what would have been, if not a classic, then certainly a very good Bruce Springsteen album. The title track is lovely, its music a throwback to the synthesised melancholia of “Tunnel Of Love”, and the lyric one of Springsteen’s best. This is one of Springsteen’s most reliable narrative templates – the frustrated loner, dreaming wistfully of a kindred spirit lurking somewhere in the shadows of the night, previously seen in “Dancing In The Dark”, “Two Hearts”, and many others. The line “You know I ain’t nobody’s bargain/But hell, a little touchup and a little paint. . .” is, surely, a knowing inversion of the gorgeous, immortal, backhanded entreaty of “Thunder Road”: “You ain’t a beauty but hey you’re alright/And that’s alright with me”.
“I Wish I Were Blind” is an achingly eloquent song of sorrow, in which Springsteen’s beautifully delivered vocal is counterpointed by The Righteous Brothers’ Bobby Hatfield. “The Long Goodbye” and “Roll Of The Dice” could have been terrific E Street Band tear-ups, but Springsteen made this album without them. E Street keyboardist Roy Bittan does feature, and there’s no disputing the chops of the other musicians who play on “Human Touch”, but these songs miss that unmistakable, zestful E Street bounce: to play “Roll Of The Dice” after, say, “Hungry Heart” is to be briskly reminded that all great bands are more than the sum of their parts. The E Street Band couldn’t have redeemed the worst of “Human Touch”, but people who’d known Springsteen that long, and that well, should have been able to tell him when he wasn’t on form, and might have helped him wring something more from wherever the title track came from.
“Human Touch” is often derided, and generally quite rightly. It is worth dusting off, though – or, as is more likely, retrieving from the bottom of a cobweb-shrouded box in the dankest recess of the attic – especially as the technology which makes it bearable is now available. With the decent tracks installed on your iPod, your long-neglected copy of “Human Touch” may safely be shunted off to join the uncountable, unsellable other copies which have clogged second-hand record stores these last dozen years, and with which many Record & Tape Exchange employees have built handsome sheds.

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