How a few notes connect Nirvana, Killing Joke and The Damned

There have been many songs connected by the same notes over the years. One of the most fascinating cases is that classic guitar riffs by Nirvana, Killing Joke, and The Damned are all eerily similar to each other. It’s never been clear how this happened, but it makes for some compelling reading and listening.

The story started in March 1992 when Nirvana released ‘Come As You Are’, the follow-up single to their breakout hit ‘Smells Like Spirit’. Noted for the watery tone achieved by playing the riff through an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone chorus pedal, it was the perfect successor to Nevermind’s era-defining lead single. Following the central chord progression featured in ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, the main melody of ‘Come As You Are’ is undoubtedly frontman Kurt Cobain’s most well-known flourish on the guitar.
However, according to Danny Goldberg, the head of Nirvana’s management Gold Moutain, Cobain was reluctant to release ‘Come As You Are’ as the second Nevermind single as he thought it was “too similar” to Killing Joke’s classic 1985 single ‘Eighties’.

In the 2000 book Eyewitness Nirvana: The Day-By-Day Chronicle, Goldberg explains: “We met to discuss what [Nevermind’s] second single would be. We couldn’t 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 [‘Eighties’], but we all thought it was still the better song to go with. And, he was right, Killing Joke later did complain about it.”

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How a few notes connect Nirvana, Killing Joke and The Damned
Arun Starkey
Thu 14 September 2023 19:00, UK
There have been many songs connected by the same notes over the years. One of the most fascinating cases is that classic guitar riffs by Nirvana, Killing Joke, and The Damned are all eerily similar to each other. It’s never been clear how this happened, but it makes for some compelling reading and listening.

However, according to Danny Goldberg, the head of Nirvana’s management Gold Moutain, Cobain was reluctant to release ‘Come As You Are’ as the second Nevermind single as he thought it was “too similar” to Killing Joke’s classic 1985 single ‘Eighties’.

As is heard, the riff of ‘Come As You Are’ is highly similar to that of ‘Eighties’ but much slower. It is claimed that whilst the members of Killing Joke did say that the Nirvana riff plagiarised elements of ‘Eighties’, they did not file a copyright infringement lawsuit. A 2003 article in Rolling Stone, the reason was attributed to “personal and financial reasons”.

However, there are conflicting reports. Kerrang claims that there was a lawsuit that failed, but other outlets state it was either thrown out of court or dropped to ease the pressure on Nirvana’s Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic following the suicide of Cobain in April 1994, which ended the band.

Killing Joke guitarist Geordie Walker outlined the band’s feeling towards being supposedly plagiarised when speaking to Kerrang in 1994. He said: “We were very pissed off about that, but it’s 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 they’d never heard of us was that they’d already sent us a Christmas card!”

Nirvana controversy with humour. He told the publication: “Yeah, Dave and I had a few laughs about that over the past year or so. He mentioned it to me when I met him backstage at Pantera a couple of years back.”

So where does The Damned fit into all of this? well, during a 2004 interview with Coleman, Jack Rabid from The Big Takeover claimed that the riff by The Damned’s Captain Sensible on ‘Life Goes On’ – a track found on 1982’s Strawberries – is similar to both ‘Come As You Are’ and ‘Eighties. The journalist even said that he thought Killing Joke “stole” the riff from The Damned and that Captain Sensible “should have sued Nirvana”.

Coleman claimed no knowledge of this. He said: “I’ve never heard that song! Well, how come they didn’t sue us, then? [both laugh] No, I didn’t know that! I’ll point that out to the boys in The Damned! Same song? Really? [Jack hums riff] Woah! Ah, what the hell! Regardless, I’m glad we called our song ‘Eighties’ so that we don’t have to play it again!”

Putting all of the rumours to bed, Coleman asserted that there was a court case but that they withdrew it following Cobain’s death. They felt awful for the late Nirvana leader’s young child, Frances Bean. He said: “After Kurt took his own life, we just thought of the little kid [Frances Bean] and… You know, the good thing about Geordie is that he’s not a materialist. He said: ‘Ah, I can’t be bothered with this anymore. There is a little kid without her dad.’ So we withdrew from the case. I guess that created a pretty good karma.”