Ongoing History Daily: Nirvana squalor

Before Nirvana unexpectedly hit it big with Nevermind in the fall of 1991, everyone in the band was living way below the poverty line. If they weren’t living out of a broken down touring van, they had their terrible apartments.

Dave Grohl, who joined the band in 1990 at the age of 21, remembers “[W]e were pretty much living in squalor. I was living with Kurt in this tiny little apartment and there were just corn dog sticks and cigarettes all over the place.” Kurt also had some pet turtles—about half a dozen of them—that lived in a bathtub in the middle of the living room. This was fine until there was an intolerable build-up of turtle poo that really started to smell.

So how did Kurt fix that? By drilling a hole in the bathtub that allowed the poo to drain somewhere. It’s amazing Dave had the stomach to stick around.