Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain
Author ; Charles R. Cross
ISBN: 0786884029
Published : 2002
Pages : 432 pages
Format :epub
This is the first in-depth biography of the troubled genius Kurt Cobain. Based on exclusive access to Cobains unpublished diaries, more than 400 interviews, four years of research, and a wealth of documentation, Heavier Than Heaven traces Cobains life from his early days in a double-wide trailer outside of Aberdeen, Washington, to his rise to fame, fortune, and the adulation of a generation.
The art of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain was all about his private life, but written in a code as obscure as T.S. Eliot's. Now Charles Cross has cracked the code in the definitive biography Heavier Than Heaven, an all-access pass to Cobain's heart and mind. It reveals many secrets, thanks to 400-plus interviews, and even quotes Cobain's diaries and suicide notes and reveals an unreleased Nirvana masterpiece. At last we know how he created, how lies helped him die, how his family and love life entwined his art--plus, what the heck "Smells Like Teen Spirit" really means. (It was graffiti by Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna after a double date with Dave Grohl, Cobain, and the "over-bored and self-assured" Tobi Vail, who wore Teen Spirit perfume; Hanna wrote it to taunt the emotionally clingy Cobain for wearing Vail's scent after sex--a violation of the no-strings-attached dating ethos of the Olympia, Washington, "outcast teen" underground. Cobain's stomach-churning passion for Vail erupted in six or so hit tunes like "Aneurysm" and "Drain You.")
Cross uncovers plenty of news, mostly grim and gripping. As a teen, Cobain said he had "suicide genes," and his clan was peculiarly defiant: one of his suicidal relatives stabbed his own belly in front of his family, then ripped apart the wound in the hospital. Cobain was contradictory: a sweet, popular teen athlete and sinister berserker, a kid who rescued injured pigeons and laughingly killed a cat, a talented yet astoundingly morbid visual artist. He grew up to be a millionaire who slept in cars (and stole one), a fiercely loyal man who ruthlessly screwed his oldest, best friends. In fact, his essence was contradictions barely contained. Cross, the coauthor of Nevermind: Nirvana, the definitive book about the making of the classic album, puts numerous Cobain-generated myths to rest. (Cobain never lived under a bridge--that Aberdeen bridge immortalized in the 12th song on Nevermind was a tidal slough, so nobody could sleep under it.) He gives the fullest account yet of what it was like to be, or love, Kurt Cobain. Heavier Than Heaven outshines the also indispensable Come As You Are. It's the deepest book about pop's darkest falling star. --Tim Appelo
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.
