I seem to recall reading Come as You Are in 2002. Possibly 2003. In either case, before Our Band Could Be Your Life, which has been referenced across at least a dozen posts on this blog over the past 17 years. Is this better than that? Hard to say. They are very different items. It is quite clear however, that this is the far more personal of the two. OBCBYL is like a seminar with a syllabus, a gloss that can either lead towards deeper investigation, or casual indifference. While Azerrad has done other work, it is hard to say anything else comes close to these complicated, entertaining, uneven and yet ultimately canonical texts.
OBCBYL is the follow-up to Come as You Are, coming about 8 years later, and the band at issue looms large throughout, even as they post-date the proceedings. The prologue is essentially about them, and the Mudhoney and Beat Happening chapters might as well be, too. As with the Sonic Youth one and Dinosaur Jr. one, for other reasons not connected to their homebase. Fortunately they were not on SST, though they wanted to be, badly. There are twinges of both Husker Du and the Replacements—the shambolic outrageous excess flanking the sensitive songwriter potentially destined for stardom, or superstardom; the unquestionably punk three-piece that openly nurtures its pop instincts. The guitar master that might actually have been their drummer; the impossibly arch and artsy noise rock band that said it was OK to be on a major label if you retained your control over the finished product. The blue-collar/white-collar dichotomy of the Pacific Northwest scene, an unmistakable “sound” and an adjacent circle of insider-tastemakers intoxicated by the freedom to play unprofessionally and actually without any semblance of skill or knowledge at all. And the purity tests inherent in the identity of unwitting (and generous) figureheads, and those unafraid to lambast anyone that does not accord with their impeccably defined aesthetic. Or the band that actually opened up for them at the end, and that they saw themselves turning into a poppier version of, in the unwritten chapter of their career cut too short. One can only strain to find a connection to Mission of Burma, and yet Bob Weston separates them by just two or three degrees.
Basically, if I read Come as You Are before OBCBYL,
I don’t remember much about Azerrad in the context of the former. And yet here
I say this the more personal of the two. Really, I can’t recall the experience
clearly, I just can’t. I remember liking it, thinking it was really good. But
then I also remember reading the Everett True biography of the band and
considering that possibly superior.
In any case, the Everett True biography is very good. And I would say it was difficult to say which of the three was the best. I can't recall much about Heavier Than Heaven at all to be honest, except that it was worthwhile, and all I can remember about True's Nirvana is that he is totally BFF with Courtney Love. It didn't make it any less revealing but it is just the prism to see it through. And while there's a prism for this too, it's fair to say this now "Amplified" version is the most comprehensive and meaningful history of the band in print.
***
It was actually Weird Al that introduced me to the band. I saw the video for "Smells like Nirvana" before the one for "Smells Like Teen Spirit," but not by long. I had heard vaguely about them, but I was about 8 years old, and my world revolved more around video games than music. My older siblings liked them well enough, but not obsessively. One or two out of the three had Nevermind. It's possible one more of them saw Nirvana live, but all I really hear about are early shows by Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins, or the last Grateful Dead show before Jerry Garcia died (at Soldier Field).
Ironically enough, there is a short section here that contrasts the two icons:
"Despite Kurt's disparaging Grateful Dead T-shirt, he actually had a lot in common with the Dead's leader Jerry Garcia. Like Kurt, Garcia resisted all the attention and power that came with being the figurehead of a really huge, culturally resonant band. 'I did a lot of things to sabotage it,' Garcia said in an interview clip in the Grateful Dead documentary Long Strange Trip. 'You don't want to be the king, you know?'" (477)
The comparison is longer than that, but this is going to be a long review, as you can already tell. We will need to limit the excerpts.
It will be hard, because that is a good example of what makes this book special and why it came into being. Kurt died in 1994 and while Azerrad did write an additional chapter after his death for a later printing, he did not revisit it for a long time.
(If you want to know how he spent the years following the publication of this book--which was enormously commercially successful--you will need to read it. Suffice to say, Azerrad's oeuvre is limited, and besides this and OBCBYL, he only co-authored another item reviewed on this blog, the Bob Mould memoir, which has a lot in common with this too, mainly in the way the subjects allow themselves to be totally vulnerable and unguarded. That may not actually be the case for Kurt. It appears he wanted to make himself seem more fucked up than he really was, or at least to take more extreme positions for public posturing to be seen as authentically punk. So when he said, for example, that he might be bisexual, it was probably just to throw his homophobic fans through a loop. At another point he says he'll kill himself if Azerrad includes his list of top 50 albums in the book, which Courtney had apparently scolded him over also, basically for trying to look cool with the list.)
Azerrad only has one other book as far as I am aware, and it looks like a humorous item on rock criticism and writing about music. I would read it if I wrote more about music on this blog, but I know I am terrible at that. For a time I thought I would be a better music critic than film critic, but experience has shown that I should have stuck with my original critical interests (probably not books but oh well). I still may read it, because he's definitely a figurehead in his own way, and I respect the limited oeuvre, only putting something out if it is truly worth doing.
At the time, however, this was "commissioned" by Courtney Love and Kurt, motivated by a desire to retain custody of their daughter and show they were not dangerous drug addicts that were incapable of raising a healthy child. (What's surprising about the original is how openly Kurt talks about using heroin, and at which specific flashpoints; I can't believe he wasn't more upset at Azerrad for some of the things printed, but he did apparently read the entire thing and give his blessing.)
The Amplified Come as You Are was then released in late 2023, and it justifies its existence on the nearly 30 years of history since Kurt left this world. The original text is here, in bold, and Azerrad's commentary follows in regular print. I do think this book might have "read better" with footnotes, but it's a minor quibble. The book is also repetitive (anytime a reference to suicide or self-harm in the original occurs, Azerrad's following present-day commentary will mention that it is hard to read, and he will scold himself for not recognizing warning signs; yet in this way too, the book is valuable in depicting how we might better support our loved ones that may be struggling with depression or other mental health challenges) and occasionally clunky (I will need to explain that later), and I was going to give it 4 stars on Goodreads because it really is not perfect (and neither was OBCBYL, upon revisitation). However, it is 609 pages long and there is simply so much here that it becomes an overwhelming emotional experience that washes over the reader. It's not perfect but it gets 5 stars for its audacity. It's as epic a story as can be told about any band, or person for that matter.
***
I almost feel like I should leave it at that. I'm not sure if this is better than True's Nirvana, but my sense is that previously, this was on par with that and Heavier Than Heaven; now, this is the definitive one, but perhaps a bit unwieldy if not having read the original. Still I think anyone reading Lolita generally understands that The Annotated Lolita is the superior read, and a similar logic applies here. I will say that the "2023 content" is not as sharply-edited, but this seems by design. Azerrad takes pains to acknowledge all the points where he was "dissembling" for the benefit of his subjects.
Perhaps the key to this book are the surviving members of the band, who have both gone on to interesting careers and induction in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, complete with live performances with Joan Jett, Kim Gordon, Lorde and St. Vincent filling in (all women, which Kurt would have liked I think, though see also Post Malone more recently). Grohl obviously continued his world domination, and also experienced deja vu tragedy, and his own personal drama, but he took the gravitas that came with being the Nirvana drummer and ran with it straight to the bank. God knows whether he has more money than Courtney Love (the book acknowledges the majority of publishing credit went to Kurt, and thus her by inheritance), but I have to think that is the case. Despite the Foo Fighters being elder statesmen at this point, they remain surprisingly popular, with younger generations discovering Nirvana and loving the them as the next best thing. (I did finally seem them live last year, after having been a fan for about 25, and Grohl justified the headliner status.) Courtney has not fared nearly so well, though Hole did put out one more very good album in 1998 (perhaps the moment Hole and Foo Fighters stood on equal ground), and she did turn in a few memorable cinematic performances. Some people think she killed him; this is crazy, but sure, being in a volatile relationship can take a mental toll on a person, too. She did not get along with them for a long time, but they have supposedly buried the hatchet, which feels kind of sweet to me. (Again, they've all written their own memoirs; she needs to do that, too.)
While Azerrad may have "sugar-coated" Kurt in the original, here this may be the case for Novoselic, at least in discussion of his politics. There is no need to offend a friend, though I have to believe that Azerrad is not completely aligned in the same beliefs. In any case, Novoselic is praised, and while there are suggestions of his political engagement, Azerrad does not dissect them, and perhaps for good reason. At the end of the day, not all of us believe exactly the same things, but loving and taking care of one another can't be criticized, and that is all Krist seemed to do in the context of this story. It is absolutely true that he was essential to the band and everything it became, and there is no way it would exist without him. So he did already do great things with his life. And maybe he will be a rogue agent. Maybe he will style himself as a libertarian and "fuck things up from the inside" the way Nirvana wanted to with their major label and popular music more generally. I have to doubt anyone will believe he could be trusted. Though "In Bloom" may be directed at such types, they do not comprise the majority of the Nirvana fanbase, and while they are enormously popular, Novoselic would have had a better chance in say, 2016. I'm not aware if he is actually "anti-woke" (and I don't care to dissect that here, either; I'd prefer to believe he is still a fundamentally decent dude, and from what I understand his platforms are not nearly as inhuman as MAGA), but if anything is clear, Nirvana was "woke AF," though Kurt also would not believe in cancel culture. Really, there is probably no better book that could answer the question of WWKD than this. Anyone that is inspired to make art they feel passionate about will find a barometer for authenticity here.
***
Does this add anything to the cultural conversation around Nirvana? Time alone has done that. I knew Nirvana songs, the basics, but it wasn't until 2001 or 2002 that I fully immersed myself in In Utero and Incesticide and Bleach and the "deep cuts" off Nevermind. And I kind of wanted to get that smiley face Nirvana shirt, but they weren't as ubiquitous. It kind of felt "cool" to like Nirvana then because everyone was kind of burnt out on hearing about them, but no one had really acknowledged the depth of their catalog. The cultural phenomenon of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Nevermind was the story. Not how fucked up a thing it was to put In Utero out as the follow-up, or the total insanity of stuff like "Milk It" and "Tourette's," or the weirdness of "Hairspray Queen" or heaviness of "Aero-Zeppelin" or thinking about how much better Nevermind would have been with "Aneurysm" on it. No, the only thing that came was "You Know You're Right," which sure, was extremely exciting, and then the With the Lights Out box set. And we've gotten the 20 year and 30 year anniversary editions of the albums with many extra live tracks, and as the years go on the stature of the band grows, and now those smiley face Nirvana t-shirts are everywhere all the time. Nirvana is basically up there with the Beatles now, even as I think many people consider their music kind of simple and not that interesting. I think it was recently announced that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, now in their early-to-mid 80s, are going to do a Beatles reunion tour. When Krist and Dave to do that, with Post Malone or someone else, would I go? Probably but only if they were going to play the same type of weird show that Nirvana would have played, sabotaging the commercial aspect. Which feels sort of doubtful. At least we still have Pavement doing something wild and creative with their legacy.
***
Because Kim and Thurston are divorced and Sonic Youth is no more, and Fugazi has been on hiatus for 23 years, and Steve Albini is gone, and so is Grant Hart and for some reason Calvin Johnson has not even hinted that a Beat Happening reunion might be kind of cool--time reduces us all to nothing, and what we leave behind is all there will be. Black Flag vaguely sticks around in a kind of twisted variation that does not live up to its legacy, Mission of Burma pulled off a brilliant 2nd act to its career, Bob Mould continues to record and tour relentlessly, the Replacements played a few shows 12 years ago but don't seem interested at all in doing any more, and the Butthole Surfers did a similar thing. Dinosaur Jr and Mudhoney are sort of the last ones left standing. For that alone, they should be seen at every opportunity.
"Smells like Teen Spirit" will continue to get played on the radio every single day, and "In Bloom," "About a Girl," "Lithium," "Comes as You Are," "Heart-Shaped Box," "All Apologies," "Dumb," and even "Polly," will also get tons of airplay for as long as radio exists (half a dozen other songs will pop up on occasion, too). About half of those are really good songs, but the vast majority of Nirvana's catalog will never be fully appreciated except by those that dive deeper. It's a worthwhile thing to explore. And the whole history is a good story, too. It really is straight out of a novel. Kurt probably understood that, and wanted to make it seem that way, too.
***
Azerrad did write another chapter after Cobain's death for an earlier 2nd edition of the book, and here too, he adds another chapter ("A Dark Constellation"), beyond his constant notes throughout the text. I forgot about this "epilogue" chapter ("A Sad Little Sensitive Unappreciative Pisces-Jesus Man") until I came to it, and I reflected all along how the ending of the book might be great, because it would really tell the story of the next thirty years.
It doesn't do that. There is one chapter that starts off with something like, "The last time I saw Kurt alive...." which was released as a teaser excerpt ahead of publication. It's a great piece of writing but it wasn't "new" to me. I think that only comprises about half of that chapter, however.
The main thing I recall is Azerrad's vague references to his "nemesis," which is kind of hilarious but also horrible. This is apparently a person in the Nirvana management camp, possibly at Gold Mountain or the record label DGC, that obtained an advance copy of Come as You Are and flipped out, and didn't like Azerrad being friends with the band. Later this person heartlessly blocks Azerrad from the invite list for the memorial service. I think Azerrad lays it out in a way where you could figure out who he's talking about:
"I felt like an idiot for doing those interviews--well, far beyond an idiot since I was brutally beating myself up for it and still am to this day. But I also thought that the punishment was almost pathologically cruel--everyone knew that Kurt and I had become friends. I'll never know for sure who made sure I wasn't invite to the memorial, but I have a pretty good idea: my nemesis, the same person I had to hide the Physicians' Desk Reference from a year and a half earlier." (568)
I'm not going to do that sleuthing. There are other fascinating "editorial" incidents, like the aforementioned Top 50 Albums list ("If it goes in the [book] then I might as well blow my head off, OK? It's something I may have to explain later but it's caused a lot of problems in my household [emphasis mine] and it's ree-fucking-diculous, I can't believe it. So whatever you do, don't print it, OK? Thanks." (578))
Again, the book is worth a read for many, many reasons, and it's a tough book to read for the underlying psychological torment that it mines, but it is also incredibly amusing and hilarious at times, generally whenever Courtney is mentioned:
"Over the phone, Kurt later confessed to me that the reason why he was so upset about that list was because Courtney was chastising him for including too many hipster indie bands and ignoring the uncool bands that had been so formative for him in Aberdeen: no Queen, the Cars, Black Sabbath, Cheap Trick, AC/DC, Kiss, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, all bands he had loved and that had an undeniable impact on this music Nirvana made. The list was revisionist image-making intended to burnish his indie cred. And Courtney called him out on it." (578)
Of course Steve Albini's comments are included profusely, and he did not think Courtney had a positive impact on the band:
"When I got back home to New York, Courtney called me, incensed. Kurt had told her that Steve Albini had called her a 'psycho hose-beast.' So I gave her the courtesy of a rebuttal. That's how I got her snappy riposte about Albini only preferring women who were 'from the East Coast, played the cello,' and so on. (I assume that was her description of whoever Albini was actually seeing at the time.) The next day, I received some flowers via messenger, accompanied by a little card apparently written in the hand of an older lady to who Courtney had dictated the following message:
We love you Michael--you mensch
Courtney & Bean
p.s. from Courtney: fuck Steve up the ass
I love how Courtney made it clear the foulmouthed part wasn't from Frances. (592)
Love her or hate her, like Krist, Nirvana would not have become what it did without her. Maybe that was not for the best. Maybe they would have faded into semi-obscurity, like the Melvins or Meat Puppets or Mudhoney, and maybe even still be playing today (unlikely as it seemed Kurt wanted to collaborate with Mark Lanegan and Michael Stipe, though of course also after Courtney's influence had been exerted). If you watch The Year Punk Broke, that is pretty much around the time they met and started dating, right when Nevermind was about to blow up in the Fall of 1991. So she really only impacted In Utero, but look, it's fair to say In Utero is their best, even if Nevermind plays like a Greatest Hits album with basically zero filler. Maybe Nevermind has better songs, but the production of In Utero is peerless. I never saw Nirvana live, of course, I only see live performances and get a sense of how they sounded differently from studio recordings. Albini always wanted to capture the "live sound" and he did that with Nirvana on this album--and they were such a tight live band--so to me, it captures what made them great and special.
"So what does Albini think of In Utero? 'I like it far more than I thought I was going to,' he allows. 'I like this record way more than I've ever liked a Nirvana record. I find myself listening to it of my own free will, occasionally.'
'I think it's a far better record than they could have made under any other circumstances,' Albini continues. 'Is it one of my top ten favorite albums of all time" No. Is it in my top one hundred albums? Maybe.'
This is actually fairly high praise from Steve Albini. He's heard a lot, likes little of it, and can tell you exactly why, in the most acerbic and persuasive terms." (515-516)
Of course, Albini would pass away less than 6 months after this hit print. I recently followed Michael Azerrad on X. Sometimes he only gets 1 or 2 likes on his tweets. This makes me feel better as a person who generally gets zero. It's a dumpster fire, it's a horrible place, a marketplace of ideas for bigots and morons, but it is occasionally an intriguing window into the depths of human stupidity and evil people in general. But I also love Cubs twitter, and material on music is generally positive. As with Azerrad, a solid follow. Last year, Nirvana tweeted about Albini, unveiling a letter he wrote proposing to record In Utero for them (https://x.com/michaelazerrad/status/1788599002167927032). Azerrad did not take pains to express his appreciation to quite the extent I did, but he said pretty much everything in two posts and far less words.
You have to appreciate what he did. I do think there is a "trilogy" of high-quality Nirvana books and this is now the best of them. I'm not sure how many books have been written on the Beatles or the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin (though Hammer of the Gods has been waiting in the wings for a couple years now), but I would imagine more, and none of them as important as this.
Oh sure, John Lennon is probably more important than Kurt Cobain. The Beatles were short-lived, but Nirvana was even shorter-lived. Lennon lived another dozen or so years (weird to think about 1968 to 1980 and how different those seemed, but that came before I achieved consciousness so what do I know) and released critically-acclaimed solo work and still inspired rabid fandom. He didn't take his own life, someone else did, it's one of those deaths of the 20th century that looms large, not quite on the level of JFK or MLK or RFK, but just a step below--arguably, however, more important, because you chose whether or not to listen to the Beatles and him. I am not a big enough fan to write intelligently on the topic. I like them, but mostly just their crazy stuff.
Suffice to say, we clearly know who else died the same day, and by his own hand, and of course also a bandmate of Pat Smear (put Smear on the list with C. Love for "must write memoirs," as the only person who can one-up Dave Grohl). Kurt knew, obviously, and Bobby Pyn died even younger, with the shortest-lived band of them all. I've written about them before, and in fact find much of their output unlistenable, but do enjoy a handful of songs and deeply respect the thought that went into the lyrics because it's such a contrast; they were brash and unprofessional, barely knew how to play (though Smear did), and yet had these very intellectual lyrics that are difficult to hear. Of course Belinda Carlisle also drummed for them briefly and went onto her own fame. Their influence remains. They are still one of the most punk bands ever.
You couldn't say the same for Nirvana, because they got famous (for a similar reason that it's hard to accept Green Day or Blink 182 as punk--they're "pop punk" and no one should pretend otherwise, even if their hearts appear to be in the right place). And that frustration is at the heart of this book and Kurt's mentality in the second-half of their career as they blow up. And that is also what made them so special, to have a star that rejects the spotlight.
Nowadays, you don't have the luxury to do that, most of the time. Those artists are an increasingly rare breed in this attention-deficit-influencer culture. Comedians post crowd-work on Tik-Tok. Actors generally have to take any work they can get. Writers toil helplessly and pray for Substack subscribers. Podcasts become ubiquitous and pray the same way over Patreon. Bands don't even use Bandcamp as much anymore. Spotify pays them pennies for thousands of streams. You have to tour to make money. I'm sure Taylor Swift made plenty of money before she re-recorded her own songs to own her catalog, and major label artists are probably doing just fine--but no one is making their label $50 million, the way Nirvana did (ok maybe Beyonce, maybe a couple others). Even though Krist and Dave made a lot less than Kurt because of publishing credits, they still basically got rich (if not rich, at least comfortable in the knowledge they no longer needed day jobs). Now that can sap creativity, and Azerrad does acknowledge that many In Utero songs were not actually written during the "downtime" in 1992 between tours, but in my opinion, it's their best work, because there is truly extreme pathos in it.
In short, 30 years later, it still sounds fresh, it's still relevant, and arguably even more relevant than it was back then. No one called Kurt a psychic (in the same way that, say, Mark E. Smith was sometimes considered) but the themes of Nirvana's music are evergreen, if not everlasting. The bigots have come back out in full-force. No one thought being "PC" was cool, but can you imagine a movie coming out titled, "Woke University?" People mocked the term "PC" but they inherently understood it made sense not to use such hateful and dehumanizing language. I've never, ever, ever, felt that "woke" was a good word, for grammatical reasons, and it's an easier target for backlash. It's remarkable that antipathy to the term has literally destroyed the entire world.
It's so sad, how things have devolved, but we have to take heart that the worst examples of hate are on X and generally espoused by entities that mask themselves in anonymity. It's cowardly, and the vast majority of real people in the world and not nearly so evil. Those voices are amplified in the interest of monetization. They need to get people riled up to make money.
Punk has always riled people up, but it has never been about money. At best, it has been about existentialism, self-actualization, and living an authentic and principled life where all one needs is "enough." Ian Mackaye may have a fortune of his own, but no one begrudges him that. (It is fair, however, to begrudge him for not bestowing the gift that is Fugazi back on the world that needs them more than ever.)
I'm not sure what else I can say about this book, or if there are any other parts worth mentioning. But you already know if you want to read it or not. You probably did before reading this stupid review. If you didn't however, and don't listen to Nirvana, I would encourage you to give them (and this) a chance. Just like I read Sontag before diving into her oeuvre, this would serve as a similarly-excellent primer. There is a good chance you will learn something new from it.
***
I guess I mentioned something about "clunkiness," and to end this review in a clunky way, have to follow through. Basically there's a line in OBCBYL about Husker Du's Flip Your Wig and the songs being hit singles in a world where battery acid flows through rivers (paraphrasing) that a friend of mine always found pretentious and risible (warmly, of course--we did actually see Azerrad play drums in King of France once). There are a few such moments here as well:
"The main riff is indeed pretty meat-and-potatoes but that bone-simple ascending vocal/guitar line redeems everything. In effect, Kurt devised a hook that clinches the song. Kurt was a Public Enemy fan--maybe he borrowed that hook from the squealing, upward saxophone glissando in PE's "Rebel Without a Pause."
It was ingenious of Albini to remove all the reverb on the vocal and add distortion as Kurt screams 'go away'--it suddenly sounds like he's imprisoned in a small closet full of coats and blankets, just horrific." (524-525)
I prefer to admire the imagery, because that kind of is exactly how "Scentless Apprentice" sounds. And now I kind of have to hear the Public Enemy song. Azerrad can identify the songs that Nirvana was ripping off with the best of them. He's an encyclopedia and a national treasure in his own right. Kurt did not live long enough to write a memoir but this self-mythologizing and painfully honest read is the closest thing we will ever get to that. His journals are out there, but that's a coffee table book and a cash grab; this is how he wanted people to see him. As the back cover of the book blurbs, he considered it "the best rock book I've ever read." For many other people too, it will be up there.
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