(Chris Mundy with actor Kris Campbell 2007)
CHRIS MUNDY, TALKING 'BOUT MY GENERATION By Robert Love, Managing Editor
It's not really part of the equation to be friends with the people you interview," says contributing editor Chris Mundy, whose profile of Sugar Ray's Mark McGrath is his fifteenth cover story for ROLLING STONE. "It's the strangest possible way to meet someone. You know everything about them; they know nothing about you; you're going to spend the next five days with them. That's bizarre." "Occasionally," Mundy continues, "you can have fun. When I did the Brad Pitt cover [RS 96], Brad and I traveled around England and Scotland together, and it was just the two of us on a train, going from city to city. It was a fucking riot. It was one of those things where if we hadn't gotten along, it could have been really lousy." Mundy, who also profiles Everlast in this issue, started at ROLLING STONE in 1988 as an editorial assistant, fresh out of college. Appropriately enough, his first writing assignment was a story on "college bands" that included early profiles of the Pixies, Dinosaur Jr and Soundgarden. When college music morphed into grunge and then alternative, Mundy was ready. "I was sort of a huge advocate of grunge music before it broke open," he says. "That was all the music I listened to, and everyone playing it was my age. I knew half the people." (Those connections came in handy when Mundy co-produced the 1993 AIDS-benefit album No Alternative.) "Going on tour in Europe when Nirvana's Nevermind came out is probably my most memorable moment," Mundy says. "I was sitting on the side of the stage during the recording of half of Nirvana's live album From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah." Of course, Mundy's life hasn't been all grunge and no play. "Interviewing Sting was great," says Mundy. "I got sent to Paris, and you have to stay wherever Sting's staying, and he's not going to cheat himself. It's not such a bad thing to be doing when you're twenty-six years old."
Source: Rolling Stone; 03/18/99 Issue 808, p11, 1/5p
