Charles Cross

Charles Richard Cross (May 7, 1957 – August 9, 2024) was an American music journalist, author and editor who was based in Seattle. He documented the Seattle music scene as the editor of The Rocket in Seattle from 1986–2000.

Cross wrote three New York Times bestselllers, including the award-winning 2001 biography of Kurt Cobain, Heavier Than Heaven, and Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, which Vibe described as "one of the greatest-ever books on music". In addition to writing the 1989 Bruce Springsteen biography, Backstreets: Springsteen, the Man and His Music, he founded Backstreets Magazine, a periodical for Sprinsteen fans.

In 2004, while conducting research for the Hendrix biography, Cross discovered the gravesite of Jimi Hendrix's mother, Lucille Jeter Hendrix, in an abandoned section of Greenwood Memorial Park, where Jimi Hendrix was buried. Her gravesite was lost because the standard welfare marker of her day, an inscribed brick, was buried in decades of mud.

Cross died in Shoreline, Washington on August 9, 2024, at the age of 67.