"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

FULL METAL RACKET

AC/DC: An Appreciation
The Independent, November 2000

LIKE all the best rock’n’roll stories, it probably never happened. And, like all such time-served legends, the details change subtly according to who is telling it, but the essentials are constant and the truth it illuminates is important. It is said that, in the course of promoting one of AC/DC’s records, the band’s lead guitarist, Angus Young, was accused by some or other journalist of “having made eleven albums that all sound exactly the bloody same." “That’s just ignorant,” bristles the Angus Young of our pub fable. “We’ve made twelve albums that all sound exactly the bloody same.”
If this never happened, it should have. If it did, then Young is rare indeed among rock musicians in having such a lucid awareness of the essence of his own genius. As AC/DC prepare for a British tour in support of “Stiff Upper Lip”, their seventeenth album that sounds exactly the bloody same, it should be understood that it is precisely this rigid reductivism that makes them great. AC/DC’s 27-year-long creative stasis is not, as might be assumed, the result of chronically limited imagination. It is, rather, an acceptance that they got it right the first time they tried, and that there is little point in attempting to improve on perfection, though they have certainly repeated it: “If You Want Blood”, “You Shook Me All Night Long”, “Rock’n’Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution” and “Let’s Get It Up” will all echo down the ages like feedback.
Never recorded a ballad. Never hired a string section. Never written a lyric remotely relevant to the real world. Never grown up – and, for that reason, never grown old. Loved across all boundaries of fashion and music, and just as universally influential, AC/DC are the greatest rock’n’roll band on earth, the best there ever was or will be. The interior life of anyone who does not relish the prospect of seeing them live next week must look like Swindon on a damp Tuesday night.

THE manifesto to which AC/DC have remained faithful all these years is their 1975 debut album, “High Voltage”, which no home should be without. Three of the musicians who played on it are still with the band: the Glasgow-born, Sydney-raised, Young brothers, Malcolm and Angus, whose elder brother (and frequent AC/DC producer) George had already enjoyed success with The Easybeats; native Australian drummer Phil Rudd. On “High Voltage”, all the now-familiar elements are present and correct: the metronomic bass and drums, the ringing open chords of Malcolm Young’s rhythm guitar, the hyperactive soloing of Angus Young’s lead, and a swaggering, rasping vocalist (more or less reformed hooligan and fellow Scottish Australian Bon Scott, at this stage) delivering words that were roughly equal parts richly self-mocking braggadocio (“Gonna be a rock’n’roll star. . . I hear it pays well”) and puerile, if often hilarious, innuendo.
Even the look had already been decided upon. Malcolm Young still performs in the faded jeans and white singlet that would have been sensible for the sweaty Sydney pubs in which the nascent AC/DC learnt their trade (and has used only two Gretsch guitars from the outset.) Angus, more famously, persists with the school uniform that seemed funny at the time (he was just 16 when “High Voltage” was released.) On the cover, he is pictured clasping the Gibson SG he has not been seen without since.
AC/DC’s immutable devotion to their founding principles is best illustrated by their response to the death of Bon Scott, whose prodigious consumption of alcohol caught up with him in February 1980. A lesser band would have packed it in completely, or altered course substantially, or recorded a sombre, Proustian rumination on mortality by way of tribute to their fallen comrade. . . or, basically, given the slightest indication that they’d been knocked out of their stride. Not AC/DC. Within a year, they had hired a new singer, Newcastle-born Brian Johnson, who sounded exactly like Scott, and recorded and released the global chart-topper “Back In Black”, which included a track called “Have A Drink On Me”.
This awesomely single-minded constancy has been the key to AC/DC’s massive popular appeal, allowing them to transcend the shifts in musical fashion that often prove fatal to those foolish or uncertain enough to pursue them. It has also helped that AC/DC’s oeuvre is dazzlingly simple to deconstruct. Their canon is, fundamentally, a vast collection of rewrites of Free’s “Alright Now” and The Rolling Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash”, almost always rendered in the key of A. This ruthless boiling down of rock’n’roll to its barest bones makes AC/DC records irresistible to anyone learning to play guitar – it is no reflection upon Malcolm Young’s exemplary rhythm playing that a recognisable “Highway To Hell” is possible after barely an afternoon’s tuition.
By keeping it simple, and keeping it pure, and keeping it up for so long, AC/DC have become a touchstone for musicians representing every genre of modern music. Their influence is unsurprisingly discernible among modern heavy metal acts, especially Guns N’Roses and The Cult, but AC/DC’s reach extends much further, into the realm of alternative rock (the opening chords of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” could have been one of Malcolm Young’s choppy progressions) and hip-hop (The Beastie Boys’ incalculably important 1986 debut album, “Licensed To Ill”, was riddled with borrowed AC/DC riffs and shared a similarly juvenile lyrical sensibility). More anecdotally, the two furthest-gone AC/DC trainspotters this correspondent has ever encountered have been a Christian country singer, and a songwriter best known for dance-influenced pop.

A JOY forever though AC/DC’s albums are, the band are at their best on stage. Though the music is delivered with their customary rigorous lack of embellishment, they allow themselves some latitude with the visuals, creating what amounts to a glorious two-hour vacation from common sense. Previous AC/DC stage sets have included an exploding staircase, a wrecking ball, an immense inflatable woman (to illustrate “Whole Lotta Rosie”, AC/DC’s immortal tribute to the fuller-figured female) and a battery of cannons to accompany “For Those About To Rock”, without doubt the most stylish marriage of music and artillery since Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture”. If you don’t have a ticket, find someone who has a spare and marry or kill them as seems appropriate.
It is perhaps the most eloquent of all tributes to AC/DC that, despite being a long-serving veteran heavy metal band, they have never been the target of any cleverer-than-thou parody – there is not a trace of AC/DC anywhere in “This Is Spinal Tap”, and they, along with late-80s American noiseniks The Butthole Surfers, were the only band who ever elicited unequivocal admiration from Beavis and Butthead. Quite right, too: AC/DC are as pure, elemental and beyond criticism as the air we breathe and the water we drink. One forward-thinking municipal authority in Spain has already named a street after them; the debate about the vacant plinth in Trafalgar Square should go no further.

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