Soon after Michael Azerrad first published the touchstone Nirvana biography Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana in 1993, his subject’s future was cut much too short. Now, in honor of its 30th anniversary, Azerrad is bringing the book up to date with The Amplified Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, a “super-expanded” version that’s out October 24th.
Come As You Are was already celebrated upon its release, written in close collaboration with Nirvana and even co-signed by Kurt Cobain as “the best rock book [he’d] ever read.” But just seven months after the biography was published, Cobain died by suicide, completely re-contextualizing the stories Azerrad had just told — and designating Come As You Are as the only book about Nirvana to ever feature original interviews with all three band members.
The Amplified Come As You Are is something like a “book within a book,” splicing Azerrad’s original writings with new essay-like annotations written with three decades of hindsight. Now, the biography not only delineates Nirvana’s career up to their tragic disbanding, but it also explores how and why their legacy remains so strong notwithstanding.
“Rereading Come As You Are for the annotated edition, I began to notice some patterns that I hadn’t noticed when I was in the thick of writing the original version,” Azerrad says in a press release. “Maybe I was too young to see them; maybe I was looking the other way because I was smitten by my subject; maybe I had to work too fast to notice such things. The idea behind The Amplified Come As You Are is to comment on my 1993 book: to illuminate what’s there, and mine it for insights on Nirvana, its members, and the time in which the band existed.”
The Amplified Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana are ongoing. See the cover for The Amplified Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana below.
This year also marks the 30th anniversary of Nirvana’s In Utero, which is getting a massive reissue on October 27th that includes 53 previously unreleased tracks.
