27. Killing Joke - Eighties. 1984 Nirvanne, wary of the similarity between the main riff of Come as You Are and English post-punk band Killing Jokes 1984 single Eighties, Nirvana and its management were unsure about releasing the song as the second single from Nevermind. Danny Goldberg, head of Nirvanas management Gold Mountain, later revealed that [w]e couldnt decide between Come as You Are and In Bloom. Kurt was nervous about Come as You Are because it was too similar to a Killing Joke song . . . but we all thought it was still the better song to go with. And, he was right, Killing Joke later did complain about it. Nirvana biographer Everett True writes that Come as You Are was eventually chosen for release as a single because Goldberg favoured the more obviously commercial song. After Nirvana released the single in 1992, members of Killing Joke claimed the main guitar riff of Come as You Are plagiarized the riff of Eighties, but according to Rolling Stone magazine, they did not file a copyright infringement lawsuit, because of personal and financial reasons. However, conflicting reports, such as Kerrang!, have stated differently. Cobains death in 1994 effectively dissolved Nirvana and the conflict with Killing Joke. If there was a lawsuit issued that Kerrang! claimed, t was either thrown out of court, or it was dropped to take the burden off the remaining members of Nirvana and their management. However, the court that supposedly took the case was not named and many doubted that Killing Joke ever issued a lawsuit against Nirvana. An interview with Geordie Walker that same year[9] reassured the possibility of a said lawsuit, thus proving that the claim by Kerrang! was not a hoax. Walker stated: “ We were very pissed off about that, but its obvious to everyone. We had two separate musicologists reports saying it was. Our publisher sent their publisher a letter saying it was and they went Boo, never heard of ya!, but the hysterical thing about Nirvana saying theyd never heard of us was that theyd already sent us a Christmas card!
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 22:26:48 +0000
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