Rating: 
Summary: Interesting revelations, but poorly written
Review: I bought this book with great hopes, but about halfway through it I became thoroughly disgusted with Cross's writing. For a biographer, he takes too many liberties when filling in the unknowns in Cobain's life. For example, the bit about Cobain walking around the entire day after first getting laid, smelling his fingers. Please. Cross ruins a potentially good story with fabrications like this.
Cross also neglects to write about Cobain the artist. We learn nothing of his creative process, of his long hours spent practicing guitar, nothing from anyone he's played with. This is too bad because to understand Cobain's life, one must appreciate the role that art played in his life. You cannot remove the music from Cobain's life and tell the story of an ordinary man, because Cobain lived and breathed music for most of his life. Alas, we are left to figure out for ourselves when events in Cobain's life occurred relative to his musical achievements. The only glimpse we get into Cobain's art is when we learn about the woman who inspired several songs on Nevermind, a token account when considering the consistent brilliance of Cobain's songwriting.
The worst problem with this book by far is that Cross relied too heavily on Courtney Love's version of events. This leads to numerous errors in the book, for example, we are told that Love helped Cobain pen Pennyroyal Tea, but any bootlegger knows that Cobain first performed this song in late 1991, before he ever met Love. One can only wonder how many other inaccuracies sprout from Love's egocentric retelling of events, events for which there is only Love's side to the story. For this reason, I consider virtually one third of the book entirely worthless, since it is based on interviews with a person proven to lack credibility.
All in all, it's worth reading, but I don't consider it a worthy biography of Cobain. The John Lennon of generation X deserves a more professional biography, but for now we will have to make do with the shoddy journalism that plagues so much of the literature on Cobain.
Rating: 
Summary: Pure crap
Review: Cross is a jackass. He acts like he talked to Kurt himself and was his
best friend and knows everything about him. Cross talks about interveiwing the friends that talk about Kurt being suicidal but, what about the friends that said Kurt wasnt suicidal and was looking forward to the future? And we hear about how Kurt and Courtneys marriage was alittle rocky but for the most part ok. What about the fact that there was friends of Kurt who say how controling Courtney was to Kurt? And what about Kurts
and Courtneys marriage being rocky toward the end and how he talked about a
divorce and wanting to get custudy of Frances to a few of his friends? The information Cross got was mainly from CL herself, a very well known liar that admits she lies all the time and she does
and always has went all out to make herself look better then Kurt. The
book is tainted and I will never read this piece of crap, the book and
all copies should be brunt and read by nobody. Want a good book idea? Go and buy, "Who killed Kurt Cobain." Its a good book and deals mainly on the murder theroy of the Kurt Cobain case. In the end, screw Cross, dont waste your money on this book.
Rating: 
Summary: The best Kurt Cobain biography I have ever read.
Review: By far the best Kurt bio I have ever read out of 4 other books. It is so tasteful and professional and gives great insight into Kurt's life as a whole, not just as a rock star. It offers more of a psychological prespective than anyting I have read before. Read it!
Rating:
Summary: Is it better to burn out than fade away?
Review: I was lucky enough to find an autographed copy of this book for my boyfriend's 23rd birthday about two weeks after its release. While I did have to wait to read it until he was done, the wait was completely worth it. Some people may naysay Kurt's talent or just call him an idiot, this book shows both statements are false. I read The Rocket, the Seattle music weekly Cross was editor of for years until its demise, and am happy to report that 'Heavier than Heaven' is a great read for a fan of Cross, Cobain, or just someone who wants an absorbing portrait of a complicated, talented, and ultimately self-destructive man. I was thirteen when Kurt died, and I, like many of my generation, regard it as an event on the level of Jimi Hendrix's or Jim Morrison's deaths (say what you will about suicide, at least it wasn't death by vomit). I know that this review is a bit rambling, but the best I can say is that it's nice to find a biography a 'current' star that isn't either a pulp paperback rife with misquotes and blatantly wrong 'facts', or a flash-n-trash hardcover that purports to reveal the subject's secret weakness for young men and mountains of cocaine. Kurt comes across as an egomaniacal and incredibly emotionally fragile man who both carefully plotted his rise to stardom and subsequently rejected fame as it came to him. There's a great story in it about Kurt's admiration for Mark Lanegan, the lead singer for Screaming Trees, and how, for years, he said he was going to be in a band with Lanegan. Well, when he did finally meet Mark, the two of them got together to play and were both too polite/starstruck to criticize the other's playing. The project ultimately went nowhere (but Kurt does sing backup and play guitar on Mark Lanegan's solo debut 'The Winding Sheet'). If you ever stopped to get a better listen at a Nirvana song, try this book.
Rating:
Summary: very well put together and insightful
Review: I think this is the most interesting biography i've read. The author has obviously done a lot of research into the life of his subject. I have also read Never Fade Away, Who Killed Kurt Cobain, and Kurt Cobain. I think this is the best one out of all of those. I felt that Cross chronicaled Kurts life without making any kind of judgement or criticism for his behaviors. He seemed to tell just the facts like an impartial observer. I think this is important when writing a bio because the authors own morals have nothing to do with telling of their subjects actions. Christopher Sandford who wrote Kurt Cobain I felt did seemed to judge Kurt through out the book and he made a lot of accusations making Kurt seem like a monster. The text also read very dry and Sanford kept on comparing Kurt to Jimi Hendrix. Cross on the other hand was able to show the many sides of Kurt. The sensative artist, the child of divorce, the tortured addict, and the loving father. He was all of these things but will go down in most peoples memories as a pop tunesmith that gave rock a kick in the ass when it most needed it. I do have one grip though that he made his death seem like an open and shut case of suicide and detailed what Kurt was thinking and doing right up until the gun went off. He didn't delve into any of the evidence that points to homicide. I would recommend reading this book along with Who Killed Kurt Cobain that does just that.
Rating: 
Summary: Courtney Bashers
Review: I thought maybe for once looking at the reviews of people who can actually read; I might find a more intelligent perspective on the many things I've read to patch together Cobain and Loves lives. But what I find is typical Courtney bashing. It is so boring,can you people not accept that they were MARRIED. IN LOVE. And that no matter how much you want it to be true, he was not murdered by the woman he loved, he killed himself. It is sad, MOVE ON. Go find a new scapegoat, like maybe the selfish,lovable, and deeply complicated man who pulled the trigger.
This book is great- I would also suggest "Come As You Are" by M. Azzerad and "Courtney Love: The Real Story" by Poppy Z. Brite
Rating:
Summary: Cobain biography transcends rock opera cliche
Review: This article was printed first in Mean Street Magazine:
In "Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain," Charles R. Cross shows a three-dimensional Cobain, complete with sharp edges and unexpected crevices. In doing so, Cross has taken the musician's life from the cliched realm of rock opera to reality.
The author is uniquely suited to his subject. Former editor of "The Rocket," Cross has an encyclopedic knowledge of the musical climate that shaped Cobain. More importantly, Cross also grew up in Washington State. Reared on the incessant rain, heartbreaking beauty and financial depression of the rural Pacific Northwest, Cross evokes Cobain's childhood in Aberdeen with the lyric beauty of Truman Capote.
Cross does not let his masterful writing obscure his subject, however. The book explores Cobain's life with razor-sharp insight and hindsight. Cobain began experiencing excruciating stomach pain and depression after his parents' vitriolic divorce. One anecdote finds the nine-year-old writing on his wall: "I hate Mom/I hate Dad/ Dad hates Mom/Mom hates Dad/ It simply makes you want to be so sad."
This book also explores Cobain's bouts of poverty and homelessness, his drug abuse, and a preoccupation with the macabre that have been genetic (a spate of suicides mar both sides of his family tree). We see Cobain as a drug and shame-addled adolescent, taking sexual advantage of a "half-retarded girl" and impressing his art teacher with precocious drawings. We see Cobain as a high school drop-out, demonstrating a death-wish so tangible one friend later described him as "the shape of suicide." We see him don the protective armor of "Kurdt" Cobain, a dark alter-ego who ingested more heroin than food. And finally, we see Cobain kill himself at the height of fame and the beginning of his daughter's life.
But "Heavier Than Heaven" is not an unmitigated weep and gore-fest. Cross paints Cobain as an ambitious man who sought fame as vigorously as he decried it. This drive led him to perform 100 shows in 1989 alone. Cobain could also be funny. Once at a party, Cobain happened upon a gold record earned by the soft-metal duo "Nelson." He declared the award "an affront to humanity" before destroying the plaque in a microwave.
Cobain could be a nerd, proudly wearing a Sammy Hagar shirt to school after attending the concert his freshman year, then shoving it in a drawer after discovering punk a few months later. And Cobain could be tender; he was limp with relief when a sonogram showed his unborn daughter would be unharmed by her parents' drug use.
Like an expert chef, Cross lays out the ingredients of Cobain's explosive sound: creativity, trauma, and a force that make it seem inevitable that Cobain explode onto the post-'80s musicscape. Then, the book is over, as abruptly and abortively as Cobain's life. "Heavier Than Heaven," destined to earn a place among the best rock biographies, is a hell of an epitaph. A+
Rating:
Summary: "He Wanted To Get Fu&$ed Up Into Oblivion" --Krist Novoselic
Review: Suspectedly named for an English tour with grunge fatass Tad, HTH was spellbindingly excellent. Contributing to HTH's more resembling a novel is definitely Cross' exploitive writing, wherein he sensationalizes the most arduously trivial details of Cobain's life into the most ruthless of near-mythmaking, usually supplemented by disingenuously flowery, melodramatic atmosphere-setting. Although Cross' ploy is offensively blatant of shortchanging readers, such insincerely affected language is rooted in engrossing tales, like Heroine (pun fully intended!!!!).THE major malfunction die-hard Cobain-lovers endure is not accepting how susceptibly soulless their idol was, mentally AND physically. I read through reviewers' complaints who-like people who're fanatical about something-decidedly didn't read HTH, just misused the reviews to push their agenda of Cobain-worship, which opposes Cobain's culpableness for his indictments in HTH. I cannot tolerate in the slightest those "reviewers" who deride HTH's validity based on allegations that research was "questionable", or Love dictated most of the book's information from "e-mails". That fraud's plain derogatory!!!! If one goes to the sources appendix, e-mails from Love appear only handfuls of times, with the information's bulk coming from face-to-face interviews with dozens and dozens of independent people. Actually, Cross dictates Love as commendable for watching out for Cobain. It's humiliatingly clear what those saps are experiencing: chronic inability to confess Cobain was FLAWED AS HELL, coming from abjectly romanticizing dependency on Cobain. Ghastly impressionable people suffer this when needily affixing themselves to figures in subservient ways. The interviewees were Cobain's family, friends, associates and handlers, succinctly, people knowing him most intimately, thus having the most credibility. Accusations of people distorting their accounts of Cobain for their personal ulterior-motives is anxiously desperate, but ultimately irreparable, wishful thinking. From certain jarring, invasive exposes, readers see how (not to provoke Cobain-lovers; misconstrue at your own peril) practically functionally retarded Cobain was. One should doubt the memories' reliability of the confidants interviewed, for their recounting retreats to 4-31 years ago. Nonetheless, assembled with Cross' portrait of Cobain's behavior subserving precisely the typification of suicidal junkheads, it's unchallengeably feasible that Cobain was crippled with near-retardation from his toxically hazardous lifestyle, and the interviewees are accurate. Grisly chronicles of Cobain so stunted in the lowest fundamentals of development that he LONGED TO GET HIGH ON ANYTHING, be it aerosol cans, home-grown weed, or just animalistic insobriety. Ghoulish stories of Cobain so stultified in learning derogatively basic survival-skills that he relied on his "woman", Tracy Marander, to house him-she paid rent, support him-only she worked, and feed him. The worst iniquity's that Cobain was unlawfully treated to EVEN MORE perks, getting laid REGULARLY by Marander!?!?!!?? Cross quoted someone in HTH saying, "Women wanted to 'protect' Kurt." Woah, is THAT why scores of misdirected-loyalty "reviewers" keep defending Cobain-despite scorching involvement-because they "want to protect Kurt"???? Before Nirvana's mainstreaming, Cobain squandered days after dropping 10th Grade retiring to bed and rising late, watching TV, and "practicing" guitar while living in a dissuasive, one-bedroom dump under unambitious hindrance. This isn't "artistry", or even "creativity"-which Cobain-lovers abusively misuse-it's an introvert who's unaccountable, reality-withdrawn, uncaring about his future, and possesses no bottom to incrementally hard recklessness. Cobain suspectedly had manic depression-because of the preceding facts, more like psychosis or something grim. Cobain is also scrutinized by Cross as a "world-class whiner". Despite his "lower-middleclass" origins, Cobain misbehaved like a spoiled brat, dissatisfied at everything in his life, even at a naively impressionable, young age. When Cross reconstructs Cobain's childhood, Cobain started to grow bleakly disillusioned at 12/13. Cobain's sinking into misanthropy basically resulted from his parents' divorce. Certainly disputable, since most products of divorce don't end up with their brains blown out over the linoleum, Cobain misused the divorce to quit constantly having morals, optimism, self-respect, aspiration, or even the most fundamentally low wants a person needs. I ruminate that NO ONE in Cobain's life ever practiced "tough-love" on him, setting rules for him to follow, or rebuking him as to how one behaves conventionally. If someone did this, Cobain would've not deteriorated unrelentingly to the point of defectiveness; people in his life knew he basically wasn't competent to care for himself, so they should've governed him much like states do with retards!!!! (...) Potentially crackwhore-like, she used to shoot-up, binge-drink and salaciously lust for younger men's sex when Cobain was young, depraving him!!!! For Cobain to estrange himself from Don, after Wendy incurred his initial difficulty of foiling the attention he craved by dating men, is remorseless, and maybe contributed to Cobain's coping ordeals. Another revelation was Cobain's insecurities. After 'JOURNALS', I was misled Cobain formed his ideas about women, government and punk music independently. Ignominiously, Cobain was just a disciple of Tobi Vail, who allegedly was a barbaric-psychotic feminist, where he [got]ideas like "punk rock being freedom" and women's rights!!!! Cobain was careening his whole life from feeling sensitively hurt if intimates rejected him; this was from the divorce. That's why Cobain was frighteningly mistrustful over the media, harassed MTV to play his videos, and PETRIFIED of audience acceptance of songs!!!! Joining insecurity is frailness. Cobain was perhaps the WORST-dutiful entertainer. Gruffly, since 1992, when there'd be concerts, Cobain was ALWAYS FIGHTING to cancel them!!?? He got so vindictively high-handed that he spurned his fans immoderately. Cross should be read with skepticism. Parts like the end-defrauded, "piecing-together" of Cobain's death are horridly speculative. The logical outcome one needs to arrive at from the documented confessions of Cobain feeling his daughter would be better off without him, his impenitent plans with Love to commit suicide if Frances was taken away and, near his end, his acclimatization to heroin that neutralized pain-killing effects, misleading him to worse abuse, is likely SUICIDE, DUH!!!! Cobain's enormously unmerciful chicaneries to reporters, purporting he was "over" his addiction, his daughter gave him a "stable" family unit and gave him "new lease" on life are pale, comparably.
Rating: 
Summary: I just don't know
Review: This book is one of the best books I have ever read. The (supposed)Details of kurt's life in this book is amazing. Its all beleive-able. But... It details Kurt's last hours of life and the thoughts in his mind when there wasn't any human contact even around him and also the fact the author has never met Kurt Cobain cast suspicion. In truth noone should be reading any books about him, only enjoying his music and his opinions on life, which can comfort and teach us about more important issues then his suicide or murder. I recommend reading this book about his suicide. Objectively. Then reading a book about his murder. Objectively.
Rating:
Summary: A truly phenomenal book
Review: This book changed my life. It's still unbelievable to me how much it influenced me, and the way I acted. I went through the exact feelings that Kurt went through, and are described in unbelievable detail in this book. Cross is a genious, and this is a clear demonstration of his phenomenal ability to influence the lives of Cobain lovers. I have read many biographies on this musical genious, but it is very hard for a book to impress me, this one very much did. This book is for anyone who wants to get more familiar with the life of the most influencial, and quite honestly, the greatest rock star to ever live, Kurt Cobain.
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