It’s been thirty years since the iconic Nirvana album Nevermind was released, with an equally iconic cover. The album’s cover featured an underwater baby seemingly chasing a dollar bill on a fish hook. The baby on the Nirvana album cover was none other than Spencer Elden, who is now 30 years old. What’s more, Spencer Elden has decided to sue Nirvana over the image.
According to Spencer Elden and his lawsuit, the use of the image should be considered child pornography. As stated via Variety:
“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,” the lawsuit reads. “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.”
Spencer Elden has a variety of defendants listed in the lawsuit, and he’s asking for $150,000 from each of them. This includes surviving band members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic. The lawsuit also listed Courtney Love, who is the executor of Kurt Cobain’s estate. Aside from these names, Cobain’s estate managers Guy Oseary and Heathery Parry were also listed. Spencer Elden’s lawsuit also listed photographer Kurt Weddle, art director Robert Fisher, and even several record companies that were involved with releasing and distributing the album since 1991. Some of the record companies listed are even currently defunct.
The list of defendants goes even further, even claiming Chad Channing as part of the lawsuit. However, while Channing played drums for Nirvana before being replaced by Dave Grohl, he had nothing to do with the music on the Nevermind album. He also had nothing to do with the Nirvana album cover featuring Spencer Elden as a baby.
Nevertheless, Spencer Elden is eagerly moving forward with the lawsuit. He insists that his parents were only given $200 for the suit, and that they never received any money past that. What’s more, he says they didn’t sign any proper release form to use Elden’s likeness on the cover – and “certainly not of commercial child pornography depicting him.” He even said the cover made him look “like a sex worker” by the way he’s reaching for the dollar bill.
“Weddle took a series of sexually graphic nude photographs of Spencer,” the suit further reads. “To ensure the album cover would trigger a visceral sexual response from the viewer, Weddle activated Spencer’s ‘gag reflex’ before throwing him underwater in poses highlighting and emphasizing Spencer’s exposed genitals. Fisher purchased fishhooks from a bait and tackle shop to add to the scene. At least one or more film cartridges were exposed in a short period of time which included at least 40 or 50 different image shots of Spencer. Cobain chose the image depicting Spencer – like a sex worker – grabbing for a dollar bill that is positioned dangling from a fishhook in front of his nude body with his penis explicitly displayed.”
While Spencer Elden has expressed concerns over whether or not he was exploited in the past, he never before considered the image to be child pornography. In fact, there were times he seemed to celebrate the Nirvana cover – having recreated the image he took as a baby several different times in his life. He also had the emblem from the Nevermind album tattooed on his chest. Although he did apparently emphasize feeling left out by living band members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, and how his attempts to reach out to them have been ignored. No matter how you look at it, there certainly seem to be some consequences of publicizing the image of an unknowing child for the sake of shocking the general public.