About the Author

Michael Azerrad is a rock journalist, author and drummer. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Mojo, Spin and the New Yorker. He frequently appears on television as a commentator on rock music and was most recently the editor-in-chief of the Talkhouse. He is the author of the books Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana and Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991.

Reviews

"Music journalist Azerrad provides an electric revision to his 1993 account of the defining band of the grunge movement. (...) The band’s myriad fans will be rapt." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Thirty years after its original publication, rock writer Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life) updates and nearly doubles the number of pages of his groundbreaking Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana. The author intersperses hundreds of new, detailed paragraphs throughout the original text to amplify and clarify the earlier material. Most satisfying, he adds a lengthy epilogue which deals with events that happened after the 1991 release of the album Nevermind, including Kurt Cobain’s last months and tragic death in 1994. New material includes the Nirvana tours and practice sessions that Azerrad attended; Cobain’s meeting with one of his heroes, William Burroughs; the telltale signs that pointed to Cobain’s self-destructive impulses and his eventual death; and the utter remorse that Azerrad and other insiders felt after Cobain’s suicide at age 27. VERDICT (...) Nirvana fans will want to read it. — Library Journal (starred review)

"Michael Azerrad has always demonstrated a passionate feeling for the ideas, the ambitions, that drive the notable moments of recent musical history. But this annotated edition of his earlier book, which was already a very successful biography, breaks out even further into high art. He's the perfect narrator, now, for a very important question, perhaps increasingly forgotten: why was punk important and how do we talk about it now? The urgencies of this question are everywhere in this powerful, uncertain, and profoundly human work. Azzerad's restless plunging onward, represents the further entanglement in deep, fraught, endangered wisdom." — Rick Moody, bestselling author of The Ice Storm and Hotels of North America

“Enriched with new anecdotes, insights and info-morsels, this super-expanded Michael Azerrad classic is a great story made even more gripping. Nirvana’s underground-overground arc becomes a prism for understanding an entire era of rock music and pop culture.” — Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84

"Essential for Nirvana fans." — Kirkus Reviews

"A fascinating examination of a band's rise and demise; life and death, personality flaws and mistakes and the ways in which someone in the public eye deals with them" — Culture Catch

“Veteran music scribe Michael Azerrad’s absorbing, admirable and deeply personal sequel to his acclaimed 1993 bio Come As You Are: The Story Of Nirvana. (...) [This] might be the most fully rounded portrait of the artist to date” — Tinnitist