SEATTLE SOUND: A Conversation with Charles R. Cross

Seattle is a place I have been obsessed with from an early age. Cameron Crowe’s 1992 film Singles (and its incredible soundtrack) is partly to blame for this. The Washington city is famous for many things: its coffee (Starbucks first opened for business in 1971 as a single store in Seattle’s historic, and also quite famous, Pike Place Market), its rainy weather, the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. Seattle is also noted for its famous people; the city is the motherland of the famous computer wizard and Chairman of Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates, the birthplace of rock legend Jimi Hendrix and the last place the late Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain, called home.

I finally got to visit Seattle in the summer of 2007. I was visiting my college friends in Vancouver and we planned a weekend roadtrip to take in “Rain City”. One of our first stops when we arrived was the Experience Music Project (EMP), a museum in Seattle dedicated to the history and exploration of popular music. EMP is especially famous for its permanent exhibition, the Northwest Passage, which is dedicated to the history of music in the Pacific Northwest, including bands from the grunge music genre, and the life and work of Jimi Hendrix. EMP is also known for its various exhibitions on popular musical acts, including Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and may more. The museum is also home to the Guitar Gallery, dedicated to the history of the guitar, and its massive sculpture entitled "Roots and Branches" (right), made largely out of musical instruments, especially guitars. It was such a great experience to get to see EMP and learn all about the history of Seattle music. The part of my trip that excited me the most, however, was getting to see the house that stands at 171 Lake Washington Boulevard E., the house where, on 5th April 1994, Kurt Cobain would take his own life.

There is a kind of morbid curiosity in seeking out Cobain's former house in the Denny-Blaine district of Seattle. It’s not just about being in the place where Cobain lived but also being in the place where he died. My friends and I knew only the address, driving up and down Lake Washington Blvd. E. for over twenty minutes before we found it. The large house sits on a blind corner on a winding road, lying just up the hill from the Western shore of Lake Washington. It is situated almost directly across the lake from the $100 million house later built by the aforementioned Bill Gates. Other famous neighbours included R.E.M's Peter Buck and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Standing outside the front gate of the three-storey mansion, it was hard not to marvel at how far Cobain had come before his death, far from his humble beginnings in the small logging town of Aberdeen in Washington. 

When I visited Seattle, the infamous greenhouse where Cobain had died was long gone. It was demolished in 1996, a year before Cobain’s wife, Hole frontwoman Courtney Love, sold the house. She was quoted as saying that the constant stream of distraught fans was too much for her to handle and that the building had become "bigger than the Space Needle." On the day that I stood outside Cobain’s former home, things were much quieter. Love sold the house to new owners in 1997 when she and Cobain’s only daughter, Frances Bean, moved to Beverly Hills in California. The new owners have done all they can to enforce privacy in their house, or at least what little they can in the former home of someone so famous. They have fenced or walled-off the property, as well as adding a tall security gate with an electronic call box. Security cameras are mounted at various points on the exterior of the house, which makes it quite impossible to get anything other than a limited view of the house. Believe me- I tried. Even climbing a tree in the neighbouring Viretta Park (or “Kurt’s Park” as it's more commonly called) didn’t help much (see my photo above left).

Though he was gone thirteen years when I visited his former home, Cobain’s legacy was still very much apparent. Viretta Park’s two benches are covered with the graffiti from fans who have visited the site in the years since Cobain’s death. The comments are an incredible read; some are words of love and respect, some words of anger from young people who feel huge loss and loneliness as a result of Cobain’s death. Some fans have left Nirvana lyrics, poetry and even verbal abuse regarding Cobain’s wife. There were also remnants of colourful wax from someone having burned candles at the time I visited. It was in this park that Love talked to the throngs of fans that gathered immediately after Cobain’s death. It felt both strange and surreal to be at Cobain’s former home, to sit in "Kurt's Park" and be just inches from the gate through which his lifeless body was carried out just thirteen years previous. My trip to Seattle wouldn’t have been the same without that experience, without seeing the last place that Cobain called home.

Without a doubt, Seattle is most famous for being the birthplace of the music style known as “grunge”, which was made famous by Nirvana as well as by local bands such as Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam, hence the term “Seattle Sound”. Since the grunge era, Seattle has always been a vibrant hub of American music, hosting a diverse and influential music scene which many influential bands, labels and music venues call home. The record label Sub Pop- the first to sign Nirvana and Soundgarden- is also based in Seattle. One person who is particularly familiar with the city’s rich music history is music journalist and author Charles R. Cross.

Charles R. Cross was born in Virginia, where he spent much of his childhood. When his father became a professor of psychology, the family travelled to a variety of university towns, including Richmond, New York, Connecticut and lastly Washington, where Cross attended high school. He later graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle with a degree in Creative Writing. While in university, 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 seven books, including the New York Times bestseller Heavier Than Heaven, 2005’s Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, the fascinating and revealing "illustrated biography" Cobain Unseen and his most recent release, Led Zeppelin: Shadows Taller Than Our Souls. Cross is also Associate Editor of Backstreets Magazine, an internationally circulated quarterly that focuses on Bruce Springsteen and related Jersey Shore artists, which he also founded in 1980.

Cross’s interest in music stemmed from a very early age, taking in a range of music genres or, as he himself says, “everything that was around at the time”. Asked what he listened to in particular, he named Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Carole King, James Taylor, the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen as the acts that had the most influence on him growing up. Being a huge fan of rock, Seattle was immediately a place Cross felt comfortable. In one of his many articles that he wrote for The Seattle Times, Cross wrote, "Seattle has always had more of an appetite for hard rock than other cities". When I questioned him on this he stated that this was because “it's a blue-collar town with shipyards and Boeing plants- that kinda blue-collar fan has always liked to rock”. In particular, writing about Northwestern bands has always been hugely important to Cross. Since he first began writing about music, he has been compelled to write about the bands that he truly loves. When I asked him who were his favourite bands to write about or interview, he answered: “Well, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Nirvana, definitely, but I also loved the Walkabouts, the Screaming Trees, and other underrated bands”.

Another thing that Cross has always been interested in is biography, especially writing about the lives of people in music. His biographies on Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain peel back the facade of the public personalites of both men, exploring them layer by layer, and provide true insight into their lives. Heavier Than Heaven, for example, has been described as one of the most revealing and intimate accounts of one of music’s most influential figures. When I asked him what first drew him to the literary genre of biography in particular, he replied: “I have always loved biography and reading things like the Charles Lindbergh biography by A. Scott Berg and Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller definitely influenced me. And of course Peter Guralnick's Elvis books...”

When I spoke to Cross, he was fresh from reviewing the Soundgarden reunion gig at the Showbox at the Market in Seattle for Rolling Stone. When I asked Cross about the show, Soundgarden’s first since their break up in 1997, he said it was “exciting”. “There was a sense of spontaneity”, he added, “that suggested anything could happen”. Cross also commented that although it was a “great show”, it also made him feel “sad” that we will “never see a Nirvana reunion show”.

In the city that Cross calls home, it is impossible not to be reminded of the fact that Nirvana, one of the greatest and most influential bands the world has ever seen, are no more. As he stated in the opening chapter of Heavier Than Heaven, Cross lives less than a mile from Stan Baker Shooting Sports on Lake City Way, the store where the Nirvana singer and guitarist purchased the shotgun that was used in his death. I asked Cross if that was unsettling, to which he replied: “It can be creepy. I guess it can be both haunting and inspiring depending on the weather”. Regardless of the weather, Seattle is rife with reminders of Cobain and Nirvana, from the aforementioned Stan Baker’s and independent record label Sub Pop to the many music venues scattered around the city where the band played whilst trying to make it big.

Cross and Nirvana's path first intersected in 1989, when The Rocket, which Cross was editor of at the time, did the first cover story on Nirvana. Witnessing first-hand their transition from underground band to being one of, if not the, most famous bands of all time is something that very few people can boast about. When I asked him what his first impressions of Nirvana were, Cross answered: “I liked them because of their pop side. I, like everyone else in Seattle, thought Mudhoney would be the bigger band at the start. I think one thing that’s important for people to remember is that early on the band were pretty darn ragged. They toured America five times before they became famous. I certainly had followed the band very closely and saw them live a number of times. I loved the early band stuff, was a big fan of the material from the beginning”. I also asked Cross about his first encounter with Cobain: “I was editor of The Rocket, which at the time was the music magazine in Seattle. Kurt had actually used our magazine on at least three different occasions advertising for a drummer. Every time Nirvana would lose a drummer, he’d come in the office and place an ad- ‘Band seeks drummer’. So, I knew him casually from the scene”. It was clear Cross had much interaction with the Nirvana frontman during his rise to fame but I was eager to find out what kind of relationship he had with Cobain. “Even as his biographer and someone who knew Kurt, I wasn’t his best friend. And I was editor of a music magazine. We were always gonna have the kind of relationship where he was gonna be sort of suspicious. He clearly respected what I did. I had the benefit of a biographer of going through Kurt’s personal effects and things. He kept copies of my magazines and articles that I had done among his stuff. That, I guess, is the ultimate compliment that a music star could pay a journalist. So, I was respected in the world he was in”.

Cobain’s death in 1994 affected people all over the world and will continue to be remembered as one of the most devastating days in music history. Naturally, I asked Cross where he was at the moment he heard that Kurt Cobain's body had been found. “I was in my office at The Rocket. I knew before it went public; I was one of the first people to find out. I had contributed to a radio show here in Seattle and when the electrician who was working at Kurt's house found his body, that electrician's company called the radio station. I think the infamous words were, ‘You're gonna owe me some great Pink Floyd tickets for this news.’ That radio station called me before they went on air to see if they could confirm it because they knew I was sort of closer to that scene than they were. So, I remember hearing the news to this day. My reaction was, ‘No. It can't be Kurt.’ But at the same time, it's part of the denial. I knew it was him. Everyone in the Seattle scene knew he had struggles. I kept hoping that the body that was discovered would not be Kurt, that it would be mistaken and instead would be one of his drug-buddy friends. And of course, that wasn't the case. It was heart-breaking to get the news, just like it was for everybody who was a Nirvana fan”.

While researching and writing his books on Cobain, Cross was given access to the Cobain estate, allowing him the opportunity to sift through intimate pictures and personal items, many of which he included in Cobain Unseen. I asked Cross about this experience. “Courtney controls the Kurt Cobain estate, which basically by an estate, is a bunch of stuff in a storage locker. But she trusted me. When I wrote my 2001 biography of Kurt, which pre-dated Cobain Unseen, she gave me access to his material. Cobain Unseen somewhat grew out of discussions around [the first book] where I kept saying, ‘the stuff in Kurt’s locker is amazing stuff. You ought to let the world see it...he was an amazing artist.’ At one point she came to me and said, ‘OK. You can do the book.’ So, I was given access to the archives, with no parameters put on the use of Kurt’s stuff”. I also questioned Cross on whether it ever felt like he was delving too deep with his work, if he ever felt uncomfortable going though Cobain’s things, to which he replied: “There were things I left out. With every book, what you leave out is just as important as what you put in”.

In his journals, which were first printed in 2002, Cobain’s struggles were clear for anyone to see, or to read about rather. He certainly had his personal demons. He battled with a chronic, undiagnosed stomach problem, he struggled with addiction and he was tormented by the pain of his past, particularly his parents’ divorce. He also battled constantly with the pressures of fame, the idea of being completely exposed and feeling like he was losing most of his privacy by moving further and further into the spotlight. I was particularly interested in two contradictory statements Cobain wrote in his journals: "Don't read my diary when I'm gone" and "Please read my diary...Look through my things, and figure me out". I asked Cross which of these statements did he think was the most truthful and did he ever battle with the question of whether or not Cobain would have wanted his thoughts, words and drawings to be made available to the world. “I did, yes, but Kurt left his diaries out open on his coffee table so that said something to me. One of the more difficult things as a biographer was looking through Kurt’s journals and seeing how often he would write about his addiction and essentially beg God to please help him with it. He did not want to continue to suffer and basically wrote in his journals, ‘God, I will do anything. Please, please, please help me.’ Unfortunately, that help did not come”.

As well as writing about Cobain, Cross has written extensively on Jimi Hendrix. His book Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix provides an in-depth account of the life of the rock legend, capturing his 27 years almost perfectly. During his research for this book, which included interviewing over 325 people, Cross rediscovered the place where Hendrix’s mother, Lucille Jeter Hendrix, was buried which, oddly enough, lies only 40ft from where Hendrix himself now lies in Greenwood Memorial Park in Renton, Washington. The gravesite of Lucille Hendrix was lost because the standard welfare marker of her day, an inscribed brick, became buried in decades of mud from the area's notorious heavy rains. Cross delivered a moving eulogy for Lucille when a proper headstone was dedicated at the site. I asked Cross how it felt to uncover something so significant: “Eerie... My son was with me and he still talks about it and he was just a toddler at the time”.

Fans of their music will easily notice that Cobain and Hendrix had many things in common- they both were left-handed guitar players, they both died at 27, had four-year music careers and had battled drug addiction in their short lives. They also both lived in Seattle, a city with one of the most notable music scenes in the world. I asked Cross if he felt enough had been done to honour both men in Seattle. “The answer is no. The city should honour them more. In the UK, they’ve got their blue plaques; we should have something like that here”.

Interestingly enough, when I spoke to Cross, he mentioned that there were no "official" plans for any type of memorial for Nirvana in Seattle today. In fact, Viretta Park stands as the only real place that people can visit to pay tribute to the band and to Cobain. Fans who are aware that he was cremated will also know that some of his ashes were sprinkled around the magnolias, willow trees and rhododendrons in the Denny-Blaine neighbourhood, so they will visit Viretta Park to remember Cobain, particular on April 5th, the anniversary of his death.

The last thing I spoke to Cross about was how he thought Cobain should be remembered, to which he replied: “Well, I think first and most importantly, he will be remembered for those songs. I think that's the reason we're talking about him still today. The quality of that songwriting I think will last and has lasted. That is ultimately the way I think he will be remembered. I think he will be remembered for creating this incredible body of work. The circumstances of his death and all those other things matter far less now sixteen years later. It's truly those songs and that music that is his legacy. Kurt was very unique and that’s the thing I think we miss now so long after his death. The great sadness is that we can’t hear that voice again. That’s the thing I miss. It’s sad for anyone who’s a fan of the music. Kurt was the biggest rock star in the world the year before he died. Sixteen years later, I’m not sure there is another rock star who is as enigmatic and compelling. He remains one of rock’s legendary figures. There has not been one single figure that I think ranks with Kurt since his death. That’s not to say there aren’t people putting out great records and there aren’t people that I love their music, but there’s nobody that combines that personal charisma, the musical quality and most importantly the songwriting genius that Kurt Cobain had. That’s the reason I think his legacy has endured”.

Charles R. Cross still lives in Seattle. He continues to write for numerous publications, both Seattle-based and beyond, and is currently working on a biography of Bruce Lee, among other things. He also continues to read and lecture with his work and plans to visit the UK (and hopefully Ireland!) next year as part of his upcoming tour. You can visit Cross’ official website here. 

*Wayne Maguire is an artist based out of West Cork. You can find more of his incredible artwork on his official website, which you access here. His work is also available to buy from his online store.  

References:

Charles R. Cross Official Website
"Soundgarden Dig Deep for First Reunion Show" on RollingStone.com
Remembering Kurt Cobain by Gary James