Ongoing History Daily: Nirvana set fire to their van—on purpose

Being on tour as Nirvana must have been a pretty intense thing. There were all those nights where Kurt (and sometimes the rest of the band) smashed all their gear onstage. The label had granted the band a $750 equipment allowance when the band went on tour, but given the amount of gear that was trashed, that didn’t go very far.

Hotel rooms and dressing rooms also suffered, often using fire extinguishers in ways they were not intended. Then there was the time one of their tour vans almost went up in flames. Kurt, who was often keen on using destruction to alleviate his boredom, was giving an interview with a journalist and apparently got bored. So he set the van’s curtains on fire.

The flames were put out before there was some real damage, but the label was not impressed.