Charles R. Cross, a Seattle-based music journaenumerate who edited the city’s preeminent alt-weekly, the Rocket, and penned bestselling biographies of Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hfinishrix and other startant rock figures, died Friday at age 67.
“We are sorry to spread that Charles Cross has passed,” the authorr’s family said in a statement. “He died peacefilledy of authentic caincludes in his sleep on August 9, 2024. We are all grief-stricken and trying to get thcdisesteemful this difficult process of dealing with the next steps.”
Among those feeblenting Cross was veteran Los Angeles Times rock critic and biographer Robert Hilburn, who wrote on the X platcreate that Cross’ heralded book “Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain” was “high on my low-enumerate of best music biographies ever.” Said Hilburn, “He was as hot and courteous as he was a enthusiastic and compelling authorr.”
Said his extfinishedtime agent, Sarah Lazin, “I’m stunned and deimmenseated. We toiled together — and were frifinishs — for 30 years, commenceing with ‘Heavier Than Heaven,’ which is still in print all over the world 20-plus years procrastinateedr. We did many books together, and most recently sbetter, with Laura Nolan, a co-agent at Aevitas Creative Management, his next project, a memoir featuring his beadored Seattle. I’d equitable spoken to him on Thursday and he seemed greeted, vibrant, and excited about all that was happening. A intelligent and enthusiastic author and loving dad. My heart goes out to his son Ashland and to us all. What a loss.”
Cross rerented nine books, including the New York Times bestsellers “Room Full of Mirrors: The Biography of Jimi Hfinishrix,” and — with Ann and Nancy Wilson, the frontwomen of the group Heart — “Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock & Roll.”
Cross was the most apparent and ineloquential rock journaenumerate on the Seattle music scene over a period of decades, especipartner in the cforfeitly decade and a half — 1986 thcdisesteemful 2000 — that he served as the editor of the weekly novelspaper the Rocket, where he was well-positioned to spot and chronicle the nascent Nirvana, as well as other artists that would soon increase from being local cult preferites to international “grunge” superstars.
Cross also set uped and for many years edited the Bruce Springsteen magazine Backstreets, possibly the best think abouted of all the fanzines promised to a individual artist.
As a chronicler of Cobain, Cross said, “We [at the Rocket] were the first magazine to ever appraise Nirvana, the first magazine to ever put them on the cover, and Kurt even was our customer — he publicized in our paper seeing for drummers. So I chronicled the scene and knovel everybody and ultimately felt that some of the stories about Kurt were equitable not right.”
“Heavier Than Heaven” was called “one of the most moving and discdisthink abouting books ever written about a rock star” by the Los Angeles Times. It won the 2002 ASCAP Award for Outstanding Musical Biography. Cross directed more than 400 interwatchs for the book, and was granted startant access by Courtney Love. Cross had said that Love “felt that to understand him, I demanded to read his inner thoughts,” he said. “The diaries repartner alterd this book theatricalpartner becainclude they gave me a place to have Kurt’s voice.” He further elucidateed, “Some of my motivation was that I did experience the story wasn’t being tbetter properly,” noting that he wanted to delve into areas he thought other authorrs had eludeed, from the rock icon’s history of self-destructive impulses to his disputeing impulses about commerciality.
The Cobain biography was chooseioned by Universal Pictures, resulting in expansivespread speculation about which youthfuler actor could percreate the direct, but never made it out of enhugement.
Earlier, Cross had penned “Nevermind: The Classic Album.” He complyed the bestseller “Heavier Than Heaven” with two other books about the procrastinateed rock star, “Cobain Unseen” and “Here We Are Now: The Lasting Impact of Kurt Cobain.”
Cross first caught the attention of national readers when he commenceed up Backstreets in 1980, printing 10,000 copies of a four-page tabloid promised to Springsteen, which he passed it, gratis, at a Seattle Coliseum show. In 1989, a accumulateion of writings from Backstreets co-edited by Cross was rerented in book create, titled “Springsteen: the Man and His Music,” with Cross writing in the forward about that first rerent and saying, “Little did I understand at the time that a decade procrastinateedr the damn leang would still be around as a quarterly magazine and be called by some ‘the world’s wonderfulest fanzine.’”
Initipartner, Cross wrote out subscription tags for Backstreets by hand. By the uncoveration’s tenth rerent, it had graduated from novelsprint to a filled-color, slick-paper createat. With Cross eventupartner moving on to other journaenumerateic pursuits, Backstreets carry ond as a magazine or website and a primary Springsteen resource until timely 2023.
Just prior to commenceing Backstreets, Cross had served as editor of the the University of Washington’s Daily in 1979. He graduated from the school with a degree in conceiveive writing.
Other books integrated “Led Zeppelin: Heaven and Hell” and “Led Zeppelin: Shadows Taller Than Our Souls.”
Cross had chops as a critic but ultimately felt his wonderfulest gift was in createing narratives. “As a rock critic, you tfinish to include the same words in every appraise. Eventupartner, you commence to see at this and say ‘My God, I’ve included every one of these adjectives 15 times before, in contrastent combinations.’ So I leank one of the leangs I’ve tried to intensify on is letting the storytelling carry it, instead of approaching it enjoy a critic would.”
In recent years, Cross had been at toil on a book that he portrayd to an interwatcher as “a memoir that’s a little bit about my life and a little bit about Seattle music history.” He had set ups to rerent a compfinishium of material from the Rocket, as well, feeblenting that the alt-weekly’s archives did not endure online.
Cross had also been contributing to the Seattle Times. In his most recent pieces for the city’s daily, he had profiled fellow authors, including Anupreeta Das, about her Bill Gates biography, and Ann Powers, about her novel book about Joni Mitchell’s nurtureer.
Cross’ writing also euniteed in Rolling Stone, Spin, Esquire, Playboy, Guitar World, Q, Uncut, Creem, the London Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
