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. Today, Elden lives in Los Angeles with his mother and focuses on making art and growing tomatoes. When he took the 2016 picture, he seemed to express bitterness about not becoming rich from the use of his picture in an interview with Time Magazine: He repeated the picture in 2016, although without the dollar bill and thankfully with pants. The deep irony of the kid on this album cover coming back 30 years later, looking to cash in on a payday, was not lost on social media.
…’ beyond the $200 his parents were paid for it’, you say?
A possibly new contention in the lawsuit is that Elden’s parents never even signed paperwork allowing any use of the image. In previous interviews, he’s said he tried to get in touch with Grohl and Novoselic, on a friendly basis, but never got a reply. …What was a constant, in the past as now, is that Elden has said he was never compensated for the photo beyond the $200 his parents were paid for it on the day of the shoot. The cover art subject - who, like the “Nevermind” album itself, is now 30 - is asking at least $150,000 from each of the defendants, who include surviving band members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic Courtney Love, the executor of Kurt Cobain’s estate Guy Oseary and Heather Parry, managers of Cobain’s estate photographer Kirk Weddle art director Robert Fisher and a number of existing or defunct record companies that released or distributed the album in the last three decades.Ĭuriously, original Nirvana drummer Chad Channing is also named as a defendant who was part of the group at the time, even though he had been replaced by Grohl in 1990, before the album was recorded or the cover photography shot. The shoot lasted 15 seconds, and Elden’s parents made only $200, his dad told NPR in 2008. The fish hook with a dollar bill was later added digitally to the image for the cover. Instead of being treated as a rebuke of capitalism, Elden thinks the nude baby ‘chasing money’ portrays the kid as a ‘sex worker,’ which would take it outside the ‘non-sexualized” protections, especially if one is trying to get money from the album thirty years later. The case the lawyer has been making is that the dollar bill on the fishhook is, in fact, sexualizing the photo. Non-sexualized nude photos of infants are generally not considered child pornography under law. The image has generally been understood as a statement on capitalism, as it includes the digital imposition of a dollar bill on a fishhook that the baby appears to be enthusiastically swimming toward. The album cover depicts Elden underwater in a swimming pool as a then-infant with his genitalia exposed. Spencer Elden, the man whose unusual baby portrait was used for one of the most recognizable album covers of all time, Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” filed a lawsuit Tuesday alleging that the nude image constituted child pornography. Thirty years later, the kid on the cover is grown, and he is all lawyered up. The album that started their journey, for anyone who may not remember, was ‘Nevermind.’ In 2014, Nirvana was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.īut now, one plaintiff hopes the same album that launched them to stardom could lead them to one of the few kinds of infamy rebellious rockers would never willingly embrace. Naked people have little or no influence on society.- Mark Twainīefore it was famous for overpriced coffee and political rioters, the city was known as the birthplace of the Seattle sound known as ‘grunge,’ with none more famous than Nirvana.
… Despite this knowledge, defendants failed to take reasonable steps to protect Spencer and prevent his widespread sexual exploitation and image trafficking.Clothes make the man. In a complaint filed in the Los Angeles federal court, Elden alleges his "identity and legal name are forever tied to the commercial sexual exploitation he experienced as a minor, which has been distributed and sold worldwide from the time he was a baby to the present day."Īccording 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. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Spencer Elden, now 30, alleges the band violated federal child pornography laws and claims that his parents never signed a release allowing Nirvana to use the photo, CBS Los Angeles reports. 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.
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