Spencer Elden was just a few months old when his parents got a call from underwater photographer Kirk Weddle, who asked if he could use their newborn baby as part of a photoshoot for nirvana nevermind album cover. At the time, Elden’s father helped with sets, custom rigging and props for photo shoots, which he is now suing the band for child p0rnography
Initially, Weddle tried to photograph babies at a swimming class, but none of those images fit what Geffen Records was looking for, so they wound up choosing one of the stills that Weddle took of Elden. Later on, a fish hook with a dollar bill was eventually added, to make it look as if the baby was swimming towards it. Elden’s parents were reportedly paid only $200, and the shoot lasted around 15 seconds.
In 2015, Weddle told TIME, “It was a great concept—a baby underwater, unable to breathe, going after money on a fishhook. After Nevermind was a big hit, they came back to me to shoot the band underwater.”
After the album’s surprisingly successful release, the image would go down in music history as one of the most recognizable album covers of all time, along with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and the Beatles’ Abbey Road.
In 2016, Elden lives in Los Angeles with his mother and focuses on making art and growing tomatoes. Over the past few years, his interest in art has developed after he interned for street artist Shepard Fairey, who has acted as a mentor. But Elden is still trying to figure out how he feels about Nevermind. “It’s a trip. Everyone involved in the album has tons and tons of money. I feel like I’m the last little bit of grunge rock,” Elden says, “I’m living in my mom’s house and driving a Honda Civic.”
Elden has never met the two surviving members of Nirvana, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic; he says that previous attempts to contact either musician weren’t successful. In 2013, TMZ asked Dave Grohl if he ever met the baby from the Nevermind cover and Grohl acknowledged that he hasn’t: “I’ve never met him. We weren’t there the day that they did the photo shoot, so I don’t know. I’ve seen him in magazines and stuff.”
Even though Elden has recreated the photo shoot a number of times and has a large tattoo that says “Nevermind” on his chest, he says he hasn’t fully come to terms with being on the album’s cover. “I got a little upset for a bit,” he says. “I was trying to reach out to these people. I never met anybody. I didn’t get a call or email. I just woke up already being a part of this huge project. It’s pretty difficult—you feel like you’re famous for nothing, but you didn’t really do anything but their album.”
Frustrated about never receiving any sort of compensation for Nevermind, Elden recently looked into pursuing legal action against Geffen Records, but was unsuccessful. “It’s hard not to get upset when you hear how much money was involved,” he says. (Nevermind has sold over 30 million copies worldwide.) “[When] I go to a baseball game and think about it: ‘Man, everybody at this baseball game has probably seen my little baby penis,’ I feel like I got part of my human rights revoked,” says Elden.
Though he’s occasionally bitter about the role he played in Nevermind, Elden admits, “I think it’s also me being carried away with it and thinking about it too much.” He likes the album artwork itself, describing the concept as “genius,” but draws the line at merchandising, including puzzles and mugs. “Nirvana’s cool, I guess—it’s just weird being a part of it.”
The Lawsuit
Spencer Elden, now 30, filed a lawsuit against Kurt Cobain’s estate and the band’s surviving members for violating federal child pornography statutes and sexually exploiting him.
The cover of Nevermind — released in 1991 by the Geffen/UMG label — shows a naked 4-month-old baby swimming underwater, seemingly towards a fish hook with a dollar bill attached. It is among the best-known album covers in rock.
Elden said he has suffered “lifelong damage” from having his naked body plastered on the triple-diamond selling album, and claims neither he nor his parents consented to the naked photo shoot, according to the federal suit.
Why the baby on Nirvana’s Nevermind album is suing now?
The lawsuit alleges the band, photographer and record label “intentionally marketed Spencer’s child pornography and leveraged the shocking nature of his image to promote themselves and their music at his expense”.
According to the suit, the defendants “knowingly produced, possessed and advertised commercial child pornography depicting Spencer, and they knowingly received value in exchange for doing so …
“Despite this knowledge, defendants failed to take reasonable steps to protect Spencer and prevent his widespread sexual exploitation and image trafficking.”
Elden also claims the band forced him to engage in “commercial sex acts” and that they went back on their promise to conceal his genitalia on the album cover.
“The permanent harm he has proximately suffered includes but is not limited to extreme and permanent emotional distress with physical manifestations, interference with his normal development and educational progress, lifelong loss of income earning capacity, loss of past and future wages, past and future expenses for medical and psychological treatment, loss of enjoyment of life, and other losses to be described and proven at trial of this matter,” the document read.
In 2016, Elden paid homage to the album that featured hit songs Smells Like Teen Spirit and Lithium by recreating the photoshoot in swimmers.
At the time, he explained: “I said to the photographer, ‘Let’s do it naked.’ But he thought that would be weird, so I wore my swim shorts,” Elden said of the shoot at the time.
“The anniversary means something to me. It’s strange that I did this for five minutes when I was four months old and it became this really iconic image.”
The infant’s family was paid $US200 for the 15-second plunge in the pool, which only happened because Elden’s dad was a friend of the photographer, according to a 2008 NPR report.
Despite seeming excited about the re-enactment, he now says said the original photo deeply impacted him.
“I’m pissed off about it, to be honest … I’ve been going through it my whole life. But recently I’ve been thinking, ‘What if I wasn’t OK with my freaking penis being shown to everybody?’ I didn’t really have a choice,” he told Australia GQ.
Elden is seeking damages and an injunction to seek the band from profiting from the hit album.