Charles R. Cross, the New York Times bestselling author who wrote Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain and Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, died on Friday of natural causes, his family confirmed. He was 67.
“We are sorry to share that Charles Cross has passed. He died peacefully of natural causes in his sleep on August 9th, 2024,” the statement from his family reads. “We are all grief-stricken and trying to get through this difficult process of dealing with the next steps.”
Cross’ agent, Sarah Lazin told Variety that she had spoken to him the day before his death and “he seemed happy, vibrant, and excited about all that was happening. A brilliant and passionate author and loving dad. My heart goes out to his son Ashland and to us all. What a loss.”
“It’s impossible to imagine the music or community of Seattle in the Eighties and Nineties without Charles,” producer and former Death Cab for Cutie member 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.”
One of the most respected music journalists and authors, Cross started his career at Seattle’s revered music magazine The Rocket in 1982 and served as editor from 1986 through 2000, witnessing firsthand the rise of grunge in the Pacific Northwest. He also founded Backstreets Magazine, a quarterly Bruce Springsteen fanzine that covered Springsteen and the E Street Band alongside other Jersey Shore musicians.
Cross’ first book sprung from the zine, which he first passed out for free at a Springsteen concert in Seattle in 1980. Backstreets: Springsteen, the Man and His Music arrived in 1989. He followed it up with 1991’s Led Zeppelin: Heaven and Hell, an illustrated history he co-authored with Erik Flannigan and featuring photographs by Neal Preston. Co-authored with Jim Berkenstadt, 1998’s Nirvana: Nevermind (Classic Rock Albums) offered a behind-the-scenes story on the making of the album.
Cross authored nine books in total, including 2005’s Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix — which Vibe magazine called one of the best music books ever written — and the 2013 Heart biography Kicking and Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock & Roll, a New York Times bestseller that he co-wrote with Ann and Nancy Wilson.
“His passion and purpose was to make it his life’s work to celebrate and chronicle the beautiful, global renaissance that started with our local Seattle music scene,” Nancy Wilson wrote on Instagram. “Charley was the coolest rock litterati bookworm to ever be lucky enough to know. And all us cool rock people got to feel even cooler to know him and call him a friend.”
She added: “Always the cutest bespeckled nerd at the dance, we would talk for hours and hours about Heart for the book, but we couldn’t stop talking about the impact of the eruptive explosion of rock that wrastled its way out into the culture — like a prize fighter with guitars blazing and the searing war cries of singers like Kurt Eddie Chris and Ann …I truly loved Charley Cross. One of a kind class act. Rest in wit and wisdom, dear fine feathered friend.”
Cross contributed to a vast array of outlets, including Rolling Stone, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Creem, and numerous Seattle newspapers and magazines.
“He was as warm and gracious as he was a passionate and compelling writer,” music journalist Robert Hilburn said, adding that Heavier Than Heaven was “high on my short-list of best music biographies ever.”
Cross’ definitive biography of Kurt Cobain, 2001’s Heavier Than Heaven, landed on the New York Times bestseller list and won the 2002 ASCAP Award for Outstanding Biography. Cross worked on the book for four years and culled from more than 400 interviews, gaining access to Cobain’s private journals, lyrics, and photos with widow Courtney Love’s blessing, though Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl and Cobain’s mother Wendy did not participate.
Cross followed up Heavier Than Heaven with 2008’s Cobain Unseen, a collection of Cobain’s archive Cross gained access to while writing the biography. Culled from over 100 boxes in an “undisclosed” storage facility, Cobain Unseen stunned fans with never-before-seen artifacts, photographs, journal entries, and artwork.
“When I first went to visit it, it was the first time I my life my retina was ever scanned,” he told Rolling Stone. “It was like James Bond. The week Kurt died, Courtney had the sense to tell someone ‘put all this stuff away,’ and it had all been boxed up and never opened. I think I was the first person to open these boxes — and I cannot tell you how freaky that was, to open up a Rubbermaid container and inside were Kurt Cobain’s board games that had been put away.”
In 2019, Cross released an updated and expanded version of Heavier Than Heaven, released on the 25th anniversary of Cobain’s death. “The idea of an ‘anniversary’ edition of any biography tied to the death date of a historical figure admittedly focuses on their loss rather than their birth (Kurt’s birthday, February 20, is at least not far from his death date),” Cross wrote in the preface. “And yet there is something about the moment we lose a person, whether they were famous or not, that stays with us in a way no other date does.”
