It's Too Late to Die Young Now

"Rock journalism," Frank Zappa once harrumphed, "is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." Whatever, Frank. 'It's Too Late To Die Young Now' is both a memoir and a defence of rock journalism - a field mythologised and derided like few others. With good reason, according to Andrew Mueller - and he would know. Mueller began writing for the Australian street press while still in his teens, and by his early twenties was working for the legendary UK music weekly 'Melody Maker'. In a matter of a few years he went from a childhood bedroom dominated by a poster of Robert Smith to The Cure's tour bus. Nobody knew it at the time, but the period in which Mueller got to be a rock journalist - the late '80s to mid '90s, dominated by grunge and the Britpop response to it - turned out to be something of a valedictory hurrah for the music press. 'It's Too Late To Die Young Now' is basically 'Almost Famous' on a much lower budget, a heartfelt and hilarious eulogy to a life that seems even less probable now than it did at the time.