Download Bio (512kb) Download Promo Photo (284kb) Charles R. Cross was born in Richmond, Virginia. He spent much of his childhood in Ashland, Virginia where for over one hundred years his family ran the local grocery store, H.J. Cross and Brothers. His father left the grocery business to become a professor of psychology, and the family traveled to a variety of university towns, as Dr. Herb Cross pursued advance degrees. The family lived in Richmond; Syracuse, New York; Storrs, Connecticut; and finally, Pullman, Washington, where Charles graduated from high school. He attended Parsons School of Design in New York, and Washington State University in Pullman, before graduating from the University of Washington in Seattle with a degree in Creative Writing. At the UW, he served as Editor of the Daily in 1979, and caused a whole lot of ruckus when he left the front page of the newspaper blank. The only type was a small line that read “The White Issue,” in deference to the Beatles’ White album. After college, Cross served as Editor of The Rocket, the Northwest’s music and entertainment magazine, from 1986 through 2000. The Rocket was hailed as “the best regional music magazine in the nation” by the L.A. Reader. Cross wrote stories on such seminal Northwest bands as the Sonics, the Wailers, Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, the Screaming Trees, and hundreds, if not thousands, of lesser known bands. In addition to The Rocket, Cross’s writing has appeared in hundreds of magazines including Rolling Stone, Esquire, Playboy, Spin, Guitar World, Q, Mojo, Salon, Spy, Uncut, NME, Request, No Depression, Revolver, Ray Gun, Creem, and Trouser Press. He has written for many newspapers and alternative weeklies including the London Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Oregonian, the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and Seattle Weekly. He has lectured and read at universities and colleges around the world, and has frequently been interviewed for film, radio, and television documentaries including VH1’s “Behind the Music.” Cross is the author of five books including 2005’s Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, published by Hyperion in the U.S., and Hodder in the U.K. His 2001 release, Heavier Than Heaven: The Biography of Kurt Cobain (Hyperion/Hodder), was a New York Times-bestseller and was called “one of the most moving and revealing books ever written about a rock star,” by the Los Angeles Times. In 2002, Heavier Than Heaven won the ASCAP Timothy White Award for outstanding biography. Cross’s other books include the national bestseller Backstreets: Springsteen, the Man and His Music (Harmony, 1989); Led Zeppelin: Heaven and Hell (Harmony, 1992); and Nevermind: The Classic Album (Schirmer, 1998). Cross lives near Seattle, Washington where his hobbies include collecting jukeboxes and pinball machines, bicycling, hiking, swimming, running, and chasing after his son Ashland. Ashland’s central hobbies include cranking up the stereo too loud — he prefers Johnny Cash and Jimi Hendrix — and riding his bicycle while his father runs besides him.