Charles R. Cross, Seattle Music Journalist and Author of Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix Biographies, Dies at 67

Charles R. Cross, the Seattle music journalist and bestselling creator behind Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain and Room Filled with Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, has died. His household shared the information in an announcement, writing, “We’re sorry to share that Charles Cross has handed. He died peacefully of pure causes in his sleep on August ninth, 2024. We’re all grief-stricken and attempting to get via this troublesome technique of coping with the following steps.” He was 67.

Cross was an integral a part of Seattle’s music scene attributable to his work as a author, journalist, and fan. His profession started at The Rocket, Seattle’s free biweekly music journal, again in 1982. He served as editor from 1986 on via to the publication’s finish in 2000. Throughout his time there, Cross witnessed and helped propel the rise of grunge, watching as Kurt Cobain remodeled from a musician in search of drummers in The Rocket’s adverts part to the Nirvana frontman gracing the quilt of their publication.

In 2001, Cross revealed Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain, which turned a New York Occasions bestseller and received the 2002 ASCAP Award for Excellent Biography. Over the course of 4 years, Cross dug via greater than 400 interviews and was given entry to Cobain’s non-public journals, lyrics, and photographs by Courtney Love. He adopted up his writing on Cobain with 2008’s Cobain Unseen, a set of never-before-seen artifacts, journal entries, and photos from Cobain’s archive that Cross gained entry to whereas writing the preliminary biography. Years later, he additionally revealed 2014’s Right here We Are Now: The Lasting Affect of Kurt Cobain.

Again earlier than his Cobain biography, nevertheless, Cross set his coronary heart on one other musician: Bruce Springsteen. He based the important fanzine Backstreets Magazine in 1980. What started as a free zine handed out at a Springsteen live performance in Seattle that very same yr was a massively influential, 43-year-long mission highlighting the music, phrases, and lifetime of the Boss and the E Road Band. It prompted Cross to put in writing his first e-book, Backstreets: Springsteen, the Man and His Music, and launch it in 1989.

Cross went on to put in writing 9 books in complete, together with the 2005 bestselling biography Room Filled with Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, 1991’s Led Zeppelin: Heaven and Hell, and 2019’s Led Zeppelin: Shadows Taller Than Our Souls. He additionally co-authored Traditional Rock Albums: Nevermind: Nirvana with Jim Berkenstadt, and the 2012 Coronary heart e-book Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Coronary heart, Soul, and Rock & Roll with Coronary heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson. As a music journalist, Cross additionally contributed to an extended listing of publications, together with Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Occasions, Creem, Spin, and different Seattle newspapers.