Rock and Hard Places: Travels to Backstages, Frontlines and Assorted Sideshows

By Andrew Mueller

Andrew Mueller is Australian by birth, a Londoner by choice, a wanderer by nature, and a journalist by profession. Unable to decide between being a rock critic, travel writer, or foreign correspondent, he hit upon the novel, if time-consuming, solution of trying to be all three at once. In Rock and Hard Places, published originally in the U.K. in 1999, now re-envisioned and updated and available for the first time in the United States, he travels to Lebanon with the Prodigy, comes to America with Radiohead, and goes all over the place with U2. He ventures to Bosnia Herzegovina with an aid convoy in the middle of the war, sees Def Leppard play in a cave in Morocco, and attempts to ask the Taliban not only what they think they're up to, but who they fancy for the World Cup. He flings himself head first down the Cresta Run, sits in Stalin's armchair, chases ambulances through Moscow, chases some kind of lost tribe in India, wakes up at least once in a park in Reykjavik, and strongly advises avoiding the seafood salad in Sapporo Airport. He's funny. Occasionally he makes a point.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1593762682
• ISBN13: 9781593762681
• Release Date: February 2010
• Publisher: Soft Skull
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Rock & Hard Places

I great read. Bought this book used from a bookstore in England via the net. It's in my re-read stack.

A mother's opinion

My only reason for commenting on this fabulous book is that PJ O'Rourke, not Bono (although he does appear between the covers) wrote the intro. You'd be lucky to find a copy of this book now - but if you like the style of the author - he contributed to the latest edition of World's Most Dangerous Places (also contributing a number of grey hairs to his mother's head!