Last Sunday afternoon, tributes to Seattle music journalist Charles R. Cross saturated social media like feedback from a guitar solo by Jimi Hendrix. As the city's preeminent music historian, Cross spent decades writing venerated, deeply researched biographies on Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Heart (among others), and editing the vaunted music magazine The Rocket from from the mid-80s until it shuttered in 2000. In the wake of his unexpected death, grief mixed with gratitude in eloquent eulogies from the region's music journalists, musicians, radio DJs, nightlife luminaries, and Cross's many appreciative readers.
The most common phrase people have used to describe The Rocket is "the bible of Northwest music." The paper was the go-to publication for Pacific Northwest music news, a prodigious source of information and acute opinions, a facilitator for musicians to form bands, a comprehensive gig guide, and a cheat sheet for venue bookers to learn which local acts deserved stage time. The mag fostered an entire cultural ecosystem.
The shock that many Northwesterners experienced following the news of Cross's fatal heart attack on August 9 at age 67 resembled that resulting from the stunning, premature loss of producer and performer Steve Albini in May. Both vital personalities’ sudden absence has left their admirers bereft; they had presumed that Albini and Cross had many more years of enlightening productivity in their respective corners of the musical universe.
The Rocket was the chronicler of Seattle’s late-’80s proto-grunge scene and the breakout phenomenon that it became in the early ’90s. Cross was the first editor to give future superstars Soundgarden and Nirvana cover stories (and in Nirvana’s case, the classified ad that started it all), but his writers also championed less accessible but supremely talented local bands such as Love Battery and Hovercraft.
"For a lot of us Seattle music journalists, Charles was the blueprint,” KEXP staff reporter and podcaster Martin Douglas told me. “He showed a literal generation how to thoughtfully engage with local music, long before the Seattle music scene 'exploded' or became a 'cash cow.' He emblematized approaching bands in Seattle with an equal amount of curiosity—and he would separate what he felt was the wheat from the chaff accordingly. Local music is one of the most crucial corners of community. Music journalism is one of the most undervalued art forms in the world. In his work, Charles treated both like gold. Our community has suffered an incalculable loss."
Its influence reached beyond the cities of the Pacific Northwest. For Portland-based electronic-music producer Strategy (aka Paul Dickow), The Rocket was a lifeline to an isolated young music fanatic living in Moscow, Idaho. “Moscow, Pullman, and Spokane all had The Rocket distributed, so for anyone with a deeper interest in music you could see what events were coming, and caravans of people would head out to the ‘big city’ to concerts based on the listings contained in it. It was regionally important in a way that Portland's alt-weeklies are not.
“Reading The Rocket was crushing for me because the older kids who shared my outré musical tastes were not people who my mother wanted me driving six hours with. So I could trace a line through all the amazing shows I missed in the early ’90s through these Rocket issues, pining for bands I would not see for another 30 years, like Skinny Puppy and My Bloody Valentine.”
Current Light in the Attic record shop manager Travis Ritter told me that he held onto one Rocket issue from October 2000, which contained a record store guide. He says, "I learned about many record shops all up and down Interstate 5 as I was building my record collection."
Unfortunately for this music journalist, I arrived in Seattle in the fall of 2002—too late to experience The Rocket's imperial reign in real time. But in the years since, I've not heard anybody speak ill of the magazine (a remarkable feat for any publication, given that one of America's favorite pastimes is maligning the media.)
When I worked at Alternative Press magazine in the ’90s, copies of The Rocket would occasionally make their way to our Cleveland office. Reading it, I would envy Seattle for having a publication that scrutinized and boosted the scene twice a month with insight and humor. If every major city had such a support system, imagine how much healthier music scenes would be.
On top of that, Cross nurtured high-caliber writers such as Grant Alden (cofounder No Depression), Gillian G. Gaar (author of numerous music books), Adem Tepedelen (co-author of Stever Turner’s Mud Ride memoir), and Peter Blecha (founder of Northwest Music Archives), and cartoonist Matt Groening.
Here’s where one would say, “People didn’t realize how good they had it” during The Rocket’s existence. But it appears that Northwestern music heads did realize their good fortune. And to this day, they lament the magazine’s closure. It’s a testament to Cross' editorial vision and integrity over the decades.
Thankfully for posterity, Cross spearheaded—along with University of Washington ethnomusicology archivist John Vallier—the digitalizing of The Rocket's entire run. Vallier is a music-journalism instructor at UW, and Cross frequently visited his classroom, and Vallier was struck by his openness. On a recent visit, “he spent two hours speaking off the cuff, reading short passages from his memoir, and fielding questions,” Vallier said. “His unique combination of wry wit, in-depth knowledge, opinionated (but always well-grounded) takes on music, and genuine love for the analog days of yore resounded with the class. A number of students queued up afterwards hoping to chat with him one-on-one. He was busy and had somewhere to go, but he stuck around, unhurriedly connecting with and offering encouragement to each one.”
Cafe Racer co-owner Jeff Ramsey also recalls Cross’s generosity during the 1992 opening of his Pioneer Square club The Colourbox. “I knew nothing about talent buying or booking artists,” Ramsey said. “I reached out to Charles and he invited me up to the Rocket office and we nerded out about all things local music. We went through the roster of local talent. He gave me his insights and predictions on which emerging artists were likely to do well. He was a wonderful advocate to have for a fledgling music venue.”
And that spirit continued through the decades. “During the pandemic when Racer was shut, we created Cafe Racer Radio, and Charles and I reconnected. He loaned me a pile of Rockets for a segment we have called ‘Back in the Day,’ which is essentially skimming old copies of The Rocket and sharing that information and music of the time to our audience,” Ramsey recalled. “Last Friday I put a box of Rockets in the car to return to him and was looking forward to the visit when the devastating news came. I will miss him.”
Nellis Records owner and Nirvana superfan Brad Tilbe cites Cross’s revered Kurt Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven as the only book that ever made him cry. During the seven years that Tilbe managed Light in the Attic’s retail store, Cross frequently visited and was eager to chat with Tilbe, happily answering his “oddball questions about Nirvana, grunge,” and Seattle's musical history.
Before working for The Stranger in the ’00s, Aaron Edge served as The Rocket’s assistant art director in the late ’90s. Edge remembers Cross as “a kind captain. He was patient with me as I learned my craft and appreciated the wild ruckus that was The Rocket art department. [Co-worker] Stewart Williams and I blasted music and yelled inappropriately on the regular. Charles would enter the room and settle us down—with charm and in fun—like that favorite uncle [who] would tuck ya in better than your own folks.”
Former KNDD and KEXP DJ Marco Collins was a key figure in helping to popularize grunge in the city while at the former radio station. “I know he documented the best parts of our Seattle music history, but when we got together, we talked about the new artists we were loving. Always evolving, that guy,” Collins said. “I discovered so many killer bands from that mag! It's funny, I remember being so competitive with it, feeling jealous when they found a cool band I hadn't heard of. I also would impatiently wait for each issue to see if they'd scored any interviews that I couldn't land. Being mentioned in The Rocket was a badge of honor—it really mattered.”
Experimental musician and renowned producer Steve Fisk (Screaming Trees, Harvey Danger, etc.) was initially skeptical of Cross’s musical tastes, not least because Charles founded the Bruce Springsteen fanzine Backstreets. Fisk noticed a lot of bitter envy among Seattle’s ’80s musicians when the city’s scene blew up in the early ’90s, and he thought Cross, as The Rocket editor, was partially responsible for that sentiment. “That was me being young and stupid,” Fisk admits. Later, Fisk and Cross wound up on the Grammy committee together for a few years, and several rewarding conversations ensued. “I wondered, 'What the hell is my problem? Charles Cross really loves what he's doing. He's a stand-up dude.'
Fisk grew to respect him as a musical authority in the region. “When somebody [wanted to know something about Seattle music], they would ask Charles. And for better or for worse, he acknowledged the mantle [of Northwest music authority], and he did the best he could with it. He was like Heart. He wasn't going to leave the music scene that he loved and devoted his life to.”
Cross’s editorial instincts skewed toward the popular, and his books’ subjects were some of Seattle’s biggest, most bankable icons. But Cross knew that he had an obligation to cover underground-rock artists, too. Fisk notes, “Charles developed his own voice, but because he got going young, his initial stuff was in the context of [Creem/Rolling Stone critic] Dave Marsh. Charles being a Springsteen head put him much more in the line of Cameron Crowe: a young writer with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of knowledge and somebody who had to tell the stories. He started off as rock's Woodward & Bernstein, and then slowly became The Northwest Guy. So, his arc was very interesting. He changed a lot. Being a dad made him more of a person and less of a rock fanatic.”
At the time of his death, culture critic Ann Powers told The Stranger that Cross was working on a new book, “sort of a biography of Seattle,” she said. “A cultural history of Seattle and Seattle music.”
His good friend Ben London, Sonic Guild’s executive director, says he and Cross had many talks about the project. “He was going to connect how what happened in the ’80s set the stage for [the grunge explosion] in Seattle in the ’90s,” London said. “I was reflecting this morning that there might be some real beauty in the interviews he was doing for the book because he had substantial conversations with a ton of people he knew and worked with over the years. So much of our music scene is defined by the victors, in the sense of artists who go on and have these big careers. But so many people have to work collectively to make that happen on different levels. None of that happens in a vacuum. And so Charles was a vital cog to all the success that those artists had in the late ’80s and ’90s. It just wouldn't have happened in the same sort of way without people like Charles working behind the scenes.”
With Cross's cultural contributions in the rearview mirror, members of the community are starting to feel the vacuum he left. Fisk hypothetically likened Cross’s death in the grand scheme of Seattle music history to losing Sub Pop founders Jonathan Poneman or Bruce Pavitt. “It's multilayered and very complicated. I didn't expect to get emotional, but yeah, I got really emotional. [Charles] was a sweet little guy, and he was just starting to tell his stories. He had 15 fucking books in him.”
