The lawsuit said Cobain allegedly out of 50 or so photos “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.” The lawsuit also says Cobain and the band “wanted images of nude babies” for the cover and that “Cobain added a fishhook specifically to make the image more menacing.” Originally, the album was set to be sold with a sticker covering Elden’s infant penis and Cobain wanted it to say “If you’re offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile,” but those stickers never happened. The lawsuit also seems to place the brunt of the blame for the cover on the late Cobain, who originally wanted an image of a live birth happening in a pool to be on the cover - but that was deemed too graphic. The baby on the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind is all grown up and is now suing the band for alleged child pornography. “Neither Spencer nor his legal guardians ever signed a release authorizing the use of any images of Spencer or of his likeness, and certainly not of commercial child pornography depicting him,” the lawsuit said.
Rick Elden apparently consented to his kid being used in the photo shoot - he told NPR in 2008 the photo shoot happened in Pasadena where “we just had a big party at the pool, and no one had any idea what was going on.”īut the lawsuit claimed Rick Elden never formally agreed for the band to use his son on the cover. 'Its fun to lose and to pretend' might be in everyones thoughts, as the baby that was featured on the cover of Nirvanas famous 'Nevermind' album, now grown-up, is suing the band. The naked baby photographed on Nirvana’s breakthrough album Nevermind is now accusing the band of being child pornographers, claiming they told him to Come As You Are without consent. Weddle, the photographer, was a friend of Elden’s father Rick Elden and asked if Spencer could be in the photo shoot for $200. “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.Hollywood’s Notable Deaths of 2021 (Photos) Speaking to the New York Post at the time, he suggested that he was uncomfortable with his role in the shoot telling the newspaper. He most recently recreated the image in 2016 to mark the 25th anniversary of Nevermind.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Spencer Elden, now 30, alleges. Since appearing on the cover in 1991, Elden has returned to the shot on a number of occasions. The man who, as a baby, was featured on the cover of Nirvana s Nevermind album is suing the former band members, the estate of Kurt Cobain and several others over the famous naked photograph. The lawsuit accuses the defendants of “commercial child sexual exploitation of him from while he was a minor to the present day … defendants knowingly produced, possessed and advertised commercial child pornography depicting Spencer.” It is also alleged that Elden was never paid for his appearance and that his parents did not sign a release form for the image, which was devised by Cobain and art director Robert Fisher.Įlden states in the suit that he has suffered “lifelong damages” from his appearance on the cover, including “extreme and permanent emotional distress with physical manifestations."