Charles R. Cross, the prolific Seattle-based music writer, has died. According to a statement from his family, Cross passed away in his sleep of natural causes on Friday. Cross was 67.

Charles R. Cross, a Seattle native, founded the long-running Bruce Springsteen fanzine Backstreets, passing out homemade copies of the original four-page issue for free at a 1980 Springsteen show in Seattle. Backstreets kept running for 43 years before ending in 2023 as a protest against Springsteen’s high ticket prices.

In the early ’80s, Cross started writing for the Seattle alt-weekly The Rocket. He became editor and publisher in 1986, and he kept those positions until the newspaper ended in 2000. In his time at The Rocket, Cross covered the explosion of the Seattle grunge scene, putting bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden on the cover when they were still local underground stars.

Over the years, Cross published many books about music, including the 2001 Kurt Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven and the 2005 Bruce Springsteen biography Room Full Of Mirrors. A few years ago, Carrie Brownstein was tapped to direct an in-development Heart biopic based on Kicking & Dreaming, a 2012 book that Ann and Nancy Wilson co-wrote with Cross.