The Story Behind: "Come As You Are" by Nirvana

"Come As You Are" is a song by the American grunge/alternative rock band Nirvana. It was released as the second single from their second breakthrough album Nevermind in 1992.   

Recording

The song was one of the first that the band had put together on the demo tape that was sent to their producer Butch Vig. The recording took place in May 1991 at Sound City Studios in California.

The guitar tracks were recorded in two times, the vocals three times, while the drums and bass were done in one take. Cobain used two different pedals in the recording – Electro-Harmonix Small Clone chorus effect for the main riff and the Boss DS-2 Turbo Distortion for the solo and the chorus of the song. The vocals from Cobain were double tracked through the entire song, but made a mistake when he sang "And I don't have a gun" one bar too early after the guitar solo but decided to keep it anyway.  

The Lyrics

The primary theme of the song’s lyrics is about people and what they are expected to act like. Cobain wanted the lyrics to be confusing and with lines that countered each other: "As a friend, as an old enemy" and "Take your time, hurry up".

The line "Come doused in mud, soaked in bleach" was inspired by the campaign in Seattle that told heroin users to bleach the needles before use, in order to reduce the risk of HIV. The original line from the campaign was "If doused in mud, soak in bleach.", but was changed by Cobain to tell people that everybody should be accepted no matter what they look like.

The most famous line "I don't have a gun." is still a mystery to this day. Most people exclude the possibility of a suicidal meaning, and is mostly believed to be about guns that his dad owned, which were thrown into the lake by his mother, and were later sold by Cobain to buy his first guitar. 

Release

The song nearly wasn’t released as a single because Cobain thought that the main riff was too similar to the Killing Joke song Eighties, released in 1984. The company later convinced Cobain to release the song anyway despite the similarities. The band Killing Joke was not happy with the song by Nirvana, and wanted to file a lawsuit, which never came through. 

The song placed at number 32 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 9 on the UK Singles Chart.     

The Music Video

The video was directed by Kevin Kerslake, whom recorded many other videos from Nirvana, including Lithium, Sliver and In Bloom. Cobain told Kerslake that he wanted to compliment the artwork of the album with the video.

The first footage filmed were outdoor clips, shot in an outdoor park in Hollywood Hills, which were used in the background of shots in the video. The video itself features the band performing the song in a dark room, where falling water flows in front of the band distorting their faces, with clips of Kurt swinging on a chandelier and random clips of cells, a dog and a baby throughout the video.