Veteran music journalist Charles R. Cross, who wrote best-selling biographies of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix and founded the long-running Bruce Springsteen fan magazine Backstreets, died Aug. 9 of natural causes, per a statement from his family. He was 67.
During his 40-year-plus career, Cross was also the longtime editor Seattle music biweekly The Rocket and wrote nine books, including the 2012 Heart biography Kicking & Dreaming, which is being developed into an Amazon feature film directed by Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein.
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He is perhaps best-known for Heavier Than Heaven: The Biography of Kurt Cobain, which was a quick best-seller upon its 2002 release, and 2005’s Hendrix tome Room Full of Mirrors, which Vibe called one of the best music books of all time. Beyond his extensive chronicling of the Pacific Northwest music scene, Cross also wrote at length about Springsteen, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan and Sub Pop Records.
Further published credits include SPIN, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, the London Times, the Los Angeles Times, Playboy, Q, Mojo, Creem, Trouser Press and numerous Seattle-area publications.
“It’s impossible to imagine the music or community of Seattle in the ’80s and ’90s without Charles R. Cross,” former Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla wrote on X. “He influenced or enabled practically every story, relationship and musicians wanted ad in the city for decades. I’m eternally grateful. May his name be a blessing.”
In his own X post, longtime Los Angeles Times music critic Robert Hilburn said Heavier Than Heaven was “high on my shortlist of best music biographies ever” and remembered Cross “as warm and gracious as he was a passionate and compelling writer. Condolences to his family.”
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