You immediately recognize the song when you hear it’s opening guitar riff.
Come as You Are would be the final top 40 hit for Nirvana’s career and the lyrics would take
on a whole new meaning following the death frontman Kurt Cobain’s death. But the song’s
reputation was also tarnished over accusations of plaigarism. But the story’s runs much deeper
than that and that's what we’re going to explore what happened in today’s video.
Ahead of Nirvana entering the studio in early 1991 to record Nevermind they would send producer
Butch vig a demo tape featuring a handful of songs including come as you are. The song
was recorded pretty quickly with the Cobain’s guitar solo being completed in just two takes,
while the vocals were done in three takes. Nirvana Drummer Dave Grohl would look back at how frontman
Kurt Cobain approached songwriting for the band telling VH1’s We wanted them to be almost like
children’s songs; we would tell people they were intended to be as simple as possible,”“Kurt’s
focus was the melody – he used to say that the music comes first and the lyrics come second.”
Ahead of Nevermind’s release the label and their management assumed that the first single
‘Smells Like Teen Spirit” would be and i quote a base-building alternative cut while the second
single which was planned to be come as you are which they assumed would cross over to other radio
formats. However, when Smells Like Teen Spirit became a massive hit, the album’s second single
served a different purpose simply being used to maintain the band’s popularity, but for frontman
Cobain had second thoughts about releasing Come as You Are as the band's second single.
Nirvana’s manager s Danny Goldberg would recall In the 2000 book, Eyewitness Nirvana:
The Day-By-Day Chronicle, , “We met to discuss what [Nevermind‘s] second single would be.
We couldn’t decide between ‘Come as You Are’ and ‘In Bloom.’ Kurt was nervous
about ‘Come as You Are’ because it was too similar to a Killing Joke song [‘Eighties’],
but we all thought it was still the better song to go with. And, he was right,
Killing Joke later did complain about it.” Nirvana’s 1991 track Come as You Are
sounded like a slowed down version of the Killing Joke’s 1985 track Eighties. “
Killing Joke guitarist Geordie Walker still harbored some resentment years later
telling Guitarist magazine that the group were and i quote ​“very pissed off about that”
saying“It’s obvious to everyone. Our publisher sent their publisher a letter saying it was,
and they went, ​‘Boo, never heard of ya!’ But the hysterical thing about Nirvana
saying they’d never heard of us was that they’d already sent us a Christmas card!”
But Killing Joke opted not to file a lawsuit at the time citing person and financial reasons.
It likely would have been an expensive endeavour and it wouldn’t have been an easy case
because the Killing Joke track eighties bore some resemblence to the damned’s 1982 track ‘Life Goes
On.The members of Killing Joke would deny being familiar with the Damnd’s 1982 track. But the
story doesn’t end there. Two other songs by lesser known bands makes use of a similar sounding riff.
A band called Garden of Delight had a song called 22 faces that was released in october of 1984,
6 months after killing joke released eighties as a single.
But there’s more to the story, we have to go all the way back to 1966 and listen to the equals song
baby come back. According to music journalist Alex Smith, Killing Joke openly admitted to
knowing about the riff from the equals and being influenced by it for their song eighties
The beef between Nirvana’s former members and Killing Joke was water under the bridge
as Killing Joke frontman Jaz Coleman sang their song Requiem with Foo Fighters at a handful of
gigs in the years that followed. In 2003 Dave Grohl would perform drums for Killing Joke’s
new album at the time The Death and Resurrection Show & Killing Joke bassist Paul Raven would tell
Rolling Stone of the whole controversy over come as you are and eighties revealing “Yeah,
Dave and I had a few laughs about that over the past year or so. He mentioned it to me when I met
him backstage at Pantera a couple of years back. Coming as you are would be released as the second
single from Nevermind in March of 1992, "Come as You Are" peaked at number 32
on the Billboard Hot 100. It remained on the hot 100 charts for 4.5 months
while it also peaking at number 3 on the billboard mainstream and modern rock tracks chart.
A music video would be shot for the single. Previously Cobain had had a
horrible experience filming the music video for Smells Like Teen Spirit
after fighting with director Samuel Bayer. For the group’s second music video Cobain wanted to
go with a different director working with kevin kerslake who would go on to direct the band's
videos "Lithium", "In Bloom", and "Sliver",for the band. When it came time to film the video
Cobain was in awful shape The band was about to head out to australia on their tour and Cobain
was going through withdrawals.. As he was going through withdrawals the video didn't show too
many shots of Cobain’s face with drummer Dave Grohl remembering ​he “looked bad, grey. He just
looked sad, because he wasn’t using.” So let me know your guys thoughts in
the comments section below, do you hear a similarity. Do you guys see a similarity in
the songs or not and we'll see you again on rock n' roll true stories. Take care.