‘Nevermind’ baby sues Nirvana over cover shot—alleges child porn

Spencer Elden, the baby on the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind, was photographed for the album underwater in a swimming pool with his genitalia exposed chasing a dollar on a fishhook. Non-sexualized nude pictures of babies are typically under law not considered child pornography.

Elden recreated the shot with a swimsuit on, to celebrate the album’s 10th, 17th, 20th and 25th anniversaries.

According to Variety, Robert Y. Lewis, Elden’s lawyer, argues that the image crosses the line into child pornography because the currency featured in the photo depicts the baby as “a sex worker.”

The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court’s central district of California stated, “Defendants intentionally commercially marketed Spencer’s child pornography and leveraged the shocking nature of his image to promote themselves and their music at his expense. Defendants used child pornography depicting Spencer as an essential element of a record promotion scheme commonly utilized in the music industry to get attention, wherein album covers posed children in a sexually provocative manner to gain notoriety, drive sales, and garner media attention, and critical reviews.”

According to Variety, Elden, now 30, is seeking at least $150,000 from each of the defendants, including Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, as well as Courtney Love, the executor of Kurt Cobain’s estate, Guy Oseary and Heather Parry, managers of Cobain’s estate.

The suit also named photographer Kirk Weddle and art director Robert Fisher. Original Nirvana drummer Chad Channing is also named as a defendant, even though he was replaced by Grohl in 1990, before the cover was shot or the album was recorded.

A number of record companies, some of which do not exist anymore, that released or distributed the album were named in the suit including DGC and Geffen imprints, which are now defunct, Warner Records, MCA Music and the Universal Music Group.

Elden’s parents were allegedly paid $200 for the image on the day of the shoot. The lawsuit also contends that Elden’s parents never signed paperwork allowing use of the image.

The lawsuit cited Michael Azerrad’s biography Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana, which claimed that DGC, a division of Geffen Records, wanted to use a different image, but Cobain insisted on the baby pic. Allegedly the rocker proposed a compromise which was obviously not used he suggested that he would consider covering the infant’s genitalia with a sticker that would have read, "If you’re offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile."