Nirvana Sued for Sexual Exploitation by Baby on ‘Nevermind’ Album Cover
Nirvana’s 1991 album ‘Nevermind’
The naked baby on the cover of Nirvana’s iconic “Nevermind,” is suing the band for sexual exploitation.
As first reported by Variety, Spencer Elden, the once nude baby, filed the suit on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court’s central district of California.
The suit’s defendants are listed as Nirvana’s surviving members Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Chad Channing, in addition to Courtney Love — the executor of Kurt Cobain’s estate — and Guy Oseary and Heather Parry, the managers of the estate.
“Nevermind” photographer Kirk Weddle and art director Robert Fisher are also being sued, as well as several record companies that have released or distributed the album.
The album cover, largely understood as a statement on capitalism, shows a naked Elden — then an infant — in a swimming pool with a dollar bill dangling in front of him.
Elden, now 30, is asking for at least $150,000 from each defendant, claiming he suffered “lifelong damage” due to the image, and that neither he nor his legal guardians ever signed a release authorizing the use of the picture.
“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,” added the suit, obtained by Variety.
While non-sexualized nude photos of infants are not considered pornography under United States law, Elden’s lawyer, Robert Y. Lewis, said that the cover depicted Elden ““like a sex worker— grabbing for a dollar bill that is positioned dangling from a fishhook in front of his nude body.”
“The concept and creation of this image replicated previous controversial campaigns used to promote music with sexually explicit material depicting a child or outright child pornography, including the album covers for Scorpion’s ‘Virgin Killer,’ Blind Faith’s ‘Blind Faith’ and Van Halen’s ‘Balance,’” read the suit.
The lawsuit also alleges that the band “intentionally 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,” it continued.
Despite the claims in the lawsuit, Elden has repeatedly marked the album’s anniversary by recreating the cover as a teenager and as an adult — yet always kept his bathing suit on.
“The anniversary means something to me. It’s strange that I did this for five minutes when I was 4 months old and it became this really iconic image,” he told the New York Post in 2016. “It’s cool but weird to be part of something so important that I don’t even remember.”
