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 "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
 "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
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Bruce Springsteen's politics
Uncut Legends, October 2004
IN August 2004, a letter from Bruce Springsteen appeared in the New York Times, explaining his decision to join the Vote For Change tour – a rolling rock festival established with the explicit aim of mobilising the vote against George W. Bush in nine key marginal states. Much like the rambling monologues with which Springsteen habitually introduces his songs on stage, his letter went on a bit, but the salient point lay in the second paragraph: “For the last 25 years,” Springsteen wrote, “I have always stayed one step away from partisan politics. Instead, I have been partisan about a set of ideals: economic justice, civil rights, a human foreign policy, freedom and a decent life for all our citizens. This year, however, for many of us the stakes have risen too high to sit this election out.”
This passage is significant. It reinforces the truth that, until goaded into the Kerry camp by the misrule of Bush, Springsteen has avoided taking sides – though it would come as a surprise to discover that he’d ever voted Republican. The extract is indicative of Springsteen’s characteristic sincerity, which, on record and off, can verge on the pompous – although, in fairness, later in the letter there’s a joke about how Bush has “granted tax cuts to the richest one percent (corporate bigwigs, well-to-do guitar players)”. It also shows how seriously Springsteen takes the role that has been thrust upon him, that of America’s rock’n’roll conscience: the above proclamation, if uttered or written by anyone other than Springsteen who wasn’t trying to get elected, would sound risibly self-important. Imagined in Springsteen’s modest New Jersey mumble, it’s plausible, and this shouldn’t be surprising. Springsteen probably has a better idea of what is involved in running for office than most politicians. Politicians get out and travel, appeal to the better nature of the crowds who turn up, and try to persuade people to love them, every four years. Springsteen has been doing it most of his life.
Whatever else may be said about Springsteen, he cannot be accused of political monomania. He has performed or recorded or written cheques in aid of nuclear disarmament, Amnesty International, the anti-apartheid movement (he sang on “Sun City”, the all-star protest song organised by E Street Band guitarist Little Steven), famine (he appeared on “We Are The World”), Vietnam veterans, AIDS research, earthquake victims, Oxfam, more hospitals, clinics, churches, schools and soup kitchens than there is room to list here, the Xingu Indians of Brazil, and the Miners’ Wives of Durham (whom he dropped in on during the British leg of the monumental “Born In The USA” tour, and gave £16,000). It has even been reported that he offered to mediate in the 1994 baseball strike which scuppered that season’s World Series.
Some of the above could certainly be interpreted as evidence of the messiah complex which is an occupational hazard for successful rock stars. Many armchair psychologists have suggested that Springsteen’s frenetic do-goodery can be ascribed to catholic guilt – a motivation also ascribed to Bono, another compulsive philanthropist and campaigner. The truth, in Springsteen’s case as in Bono’s, is less complex. That is, that Springsteen, like Bono, is an essentially good chap who appreciates how lucky he has been, and is determined to – literally – spread his fortune around, and perhaps persuade his fellow Americans to share his interest in how their country is run.
Extraordinarily, there are those who take offence. Marilyn O’Grady, running for the Senate in New York in 2004 on the ticket of the New York Conservative Party - which, very unlike its British namesake, is a fringe organisation of querulous bible yahoos, gun nuts and witch-burners – ran a TV ad urging a boycott of Springsteen. O’Grady accused him of such high treachery as “criticising President Reagan” (which would have been fair enough, given Reagan’s dimwitted appropriation of “Born In The USA” as a patriotic anthem) and of being part of this curious American bogeyman called “the liberal elite”. The most surreal aspect of Ms O’Grady’s peculiar onslaught is that in terms of his discernible political outlook, Bruce Springsteen is hardly Che Guevara. He’s hardly even Steve Earle.
Springsteen’s songs, when they venture into the political, are generally rueful reflections on what has gone wrong, rather than anthems demanding change. Springsteen’s activism has always been rooted in an instinctive sympathy for the working schlub, trying to play by the rules, battling gamely against forces that he can’t comprehend, never mind surmount. The narrators of “The River” (“Lately there ain’t been much work, on account of the economy”) and Racing In The Street” (“Guys they just give up living/And start dying little by little, piece by piece”), the hopeless characters wandering the desolate landscapes of “Nebraska” and “The Ghost Of Tom Joad” are resigned, not angry. Springsteen’s empathy is rooted in the knowledge that the guy in “The River” is who Springsteen might have become, had he not been blessed with the ability to sell that man’s story millions of times over.
In 1994, accepting his Oscar for “Streets Of Philadelphia” – another despondent anti-anthem – Springsteen said “You do your best work and you hope it pulls out the best in your audience and some piece of it spills over into the real world and into people’s everyday lives and it takes the edge off your fear and allows us to recognise each other through our veil of differences. I always thought that was one of the things popular art was supposed to be about, along with the merchandising and other stuff.”
More spontaneous than his lofty letter to the Times, this heartfelt peroration is likely to remain the closest Springsteen will ever come to an authentic manifesto. He’s not a rebel, much less a radical; however passionate his loathing for George W. Bush, the most extreme recourse it drove him to was stumping for a different rich politician. Richard Ford once described Springsteen as “a small, well-intentioned mass movement”: one way of saying that Springsteen, like most of the people he sings about, is essentially no more or less than a basically decent guy doing what he can.
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