Respected music writer Michael Azerrad s authoritative biography of one of the late 20th centurys most influential groups tells how rock music was rescued by a band of badly-dressed, inarticulate twentysomething kids, and the price that one of them in particular paid for being dubbed the spokesperson for his generation. The advent of Nirvana, with its grassroots appeal and unpolished image, took the mainstream music industry by surprise: by the 1990s the spirit of youthful rebellion was assumed to be dormant, if not dead altogether. The bands raw, inarticulate screams of sheer rage were anathema to a business used to neatly packaged and disposable artists and material. Nirvanas not-so-secret weapon was, of course, its songwriter, Kurt Cobain , whose classic combination of angst, alienation, good looks, and killer pop instincts struck a responsive chord with an audience weaned on the threat of nuclear annihilation and AIDS. In addition to its evangelical hymning of the bands influence on a generation, COME AS YOU ARE also harrowingly documents Cobains ultimately fatal descent into depression and drug abuse, the latter frequently abetted by band associates terrified of the group losing its momentum.