Charles R. Cross, the Seattle-based author and music journalist who wrote definitive biographies of Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix, died Friday. He was 67.
His death was announced in a statement from his family, who said he died “of natural causes in his sleep.”
Cross was perhaps best known for “Heavier Than Heaven,” his profound 2001 account of the life and career of Cobain, who shaped rock history as frontman of Nirvana and who became one of the genre’s tragic figures when he died by suicide just months after the release of Nirvana’s third studio album, “In Utero,” in April 1994. The book, for which Cross conducted more than 400 interviews, won an award from ASCAP, the performing rights organization, and was described by former Los Angeles Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn as “one of the most moving and revealing books ever written about a rock star.”
Cross's other books include 2005's “Room Full of Mirrors,” about Hendrix, and 2012's “Kicking & Dreaming,” which he wrote with Ann and Nancy Wilson of the former rock band Heart.
In addition to his books, Cross has written about music for publications including Rolling Stone, Spin, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, Playboy, Q, Mojo, Guitar World, the Seattle Times and the Los Angeles Times. In 2021, he interviewed Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, for a Times article about the 30th anniversary of Nirvana’s hit album, “Nevermind.”
Cross began his career in music journalism in the late 1970s while working at the University of Washington's student newspaper, according to the Seattle Times; after graduating in 1980, he founded Backstreets, a highly respected Bruce Springsteen fanzine that continued to be published until 2023.
In 1986, Cross was named editor of Rocket, a weekly newspaper in Seattle, just as that city's music scene was beginning to attract national attention; he continued to edit the paper through the grunge explosion of the late '80s and early '90s (during which Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana became staples of MTV and alternative rock radio) until 2000.
Cross's agent told Variety that he was working on a memoir when he died. His book about Heart was being developed for a film by Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein.
