Table of Contents
ANDREW MUELLER was born in Wagga Wagga, Australia, and lives in London, England. He writes about various things for various titles, including The Financial Times, Monocle, The Guardian, The Times, Esquire, Uncut, Australian Gourmet Traveller, New Humanist and, frankly, anyone else wholl have him. Another book of his, I Wouldnt Start From Here: The 21st Century and Where It All Went Wrong, was lauded as not bad for a guy from Wagga Wagga, by The Wagga Wagga Advertiser.
Andrew Mueller is also the singer, songwriter and rhythm guitarist with The Blazing Zoos, an incipient alt-country phenomenon who released their debut album, Ill Leave Quietly, in 2010. Mueller plans to spend the royalties generated by its success on an immense and triumphantly gauche Nashville mansion with rhinestone-studded gates and a guitar-shaped swimming pool. Or, a sandwich.
His hobbies include swearing at televised sporting fixtures, sighing at newspapers and the maintenance of a minutely annotated list of people wholl be sorry when hes famous. Form an orderly queue, ladies.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
ROCK AND HARD PLACES
Andrew Muellers piece on my bands tour with The Hold Steady is my favorite thing ever written about us... The fact that he is a war correspondent (although 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. The fact that he also is such a great storyteller and does so with such an acute (albeit black) sense of humor makes him that rare beast whose byline I seek out every month.
Patterson Hood from Drive-By Truckers
Andrew Mueller knows the best stories usually linger at the edges of the main event. No matter if it is a rock show or a war, Mueller finds the longest way there... This is just good storytelling. He conveys a sense of world-weary cynicism and sublime humor in the same paragraph and I imagine he has distaste for happy endings, even though he seems to keep living them, over and over.
Bill Carter, author of Fools Rush In and Red Summer
MORE PRAISE FOR
ANDREW MUELLER AND HIS RECENT BOOK
I WOULDNT START FROM HERE
The best foreign correspondent of his generation.
P.J. ORourke
His face has the same expression every time: comic disbelief. He cant believe its happened to him again... he thinks its the poor directions, the road maps or the unkind stranger that pointed him here. And where is here? Nowhere... its not who he likes to be lost, its just that he likes the company of the lost. Be very careful reading this book.
Bono
That perfect blend of investigation, humor, drama, and above all, insight into the global human condition.
Robert Young Pelton,
author of The Worlds Most Dangerous Places
A tour-de-force of hilarious, harrowing and ultimately enlightening reportage.
The Washington Times
His sardonic, self-deprecating perspective makes for unstuffy company.
The Los Angeles Times
A joy.
Financial Times
A gung-ho Candide with a taste for places it is wiser to avoid... graphic, comic, bemused and properly contemptuous of faith and ideology.
Evening Standard, Books of the Year
An utterly sui generis report from the worlds plague-spots.
New Statesman, Books of the Year
A mix of dark humor and incisive political discourse.
CNNGo
Peppered with trenchant observations that reflect a nimble, cut-to-the-chase practicality, Muellers 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.
Readings Monthly, Books of the Year
I can think of no more entertaining companion on a perilous journey than the ever hopeful, wildly optimistic yet clear-thinking Andrew Mueller.
The Guardian
Lively reporting from a gently humorous narrator.
The Times (U.K.)
Touching, often blackly comic reportage.
GQ
In the grand tradition of Mark Twain, though in a world considerably more hostile.
The Daily Truth
Brilliantly observed, articulate, often funny and immensely readable.
The List
An instructive ricochet between cities and continents and war zones.
Time Out
Muellers humour saves this book from being just another danger travel memoir.
The Book Show, ABC Radio National
Not bad for a guy from Wagga Wagga.
The Wagga Wagga Advertiser
For Mum and Dad
Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
DANIEL 12:4
Road (n): A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devils Dictionary
THE GREAT LEAP FOREWORD
Introduction
ZAGREB, CROATIA, AUGUST 2009
IT IS A fitting happenstance of deadline that Im writing this here and nowin Zagreb, Croatia, in between U2s two shows at Maksimir Stadium. As the thrillingly witty pun that serves as this books title suggests, the reportage gathered in this volume straddles, with varying degrees of chafing, the realms of rocknroll and conflict, and its a version of that same ungainly feat that U2 are attempting here. The two nights U2 are playing in Zagreb are their first shows ever in Croatia, and their first anywhere in the former Yugoslavia since they took their gaudy, glitzy PopMart circus to the shattered Bosnian capital of Sarajevo in 1997.
That these shows are essentially a long-delayed sequel to the Bosnian outing was acknowledged last night in Bonos introduction to One, U2s supremely versatile lament for the loss of love, faith or whatever youre (not) having yourself. The next song, hed said, means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Tonight, we want to play it for everyone in this region who has had their warm hearts broken by cold ideas. As the crowd recognised it, there was a palpable shift in the atmosphere: a warm summer night suddenly felt a few degrees chillier. Ive heard this song played dozens of times in dozens of cities, Sarajevo in 1997 among them, but it has never sounded better than it did last night, which is to say it has never sounded more wounded and reproachful, Edges scuffed-up guitar itching like an unresolved tension. U2 faded One into an excerpt from The Righteous Brothers Unchained Melody; in the Balkans of all places, the phrase time can do so much hit a note somewhere between a threat and a promise.
If this book is about any one thingwhich, just so were clear on this, it very definitely isntits about moments like that, when music steps beyond its boundaries of verse and chorus and becomes a soundtrack or accompaniment to something somewhat larger than itself.
