The Naked "Nevermind" Baby Is Suing Nirvana | TheRichest.com
Spencer Elden, the grown-up naked baby from the iconic album cover Nevermind, decided to sue Nirvana on the 30th anniversary of the famous album.
The cover portrays a four-month-old child with depicted genitalia in a swimming pool following a dollar bill dangled on a fishhook. According to the lawsuit obtained by 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." Yet, according to US law, as the BBC writes, non-sexualized photos of infants don't fall under child pornography. However, Elden's lawyer, Robert Y. Lewis, argues that the image is child pornography. He states that the dollar bill makes Spenser look "like a sex worker" and that this photoshoot is nothing but sexual exploitation. In addition, Elden's suit alleges the group members and the photographer, Kirk Weddle, for using the picture without his parents' consent. The only benefit they got was $200, as his father said to NPR in 2008.
Weddle was Spenser's family friend who spontaneously offered to conduct the photo session. Three months after it, the family saw the picture on Sunset Blvd, on the Tower Records wall. Two months later, a 1-year-old Spenser got a teddy bear and a platinum album.
So, the lawsuit seeks $150,000 from each defendant: the former group members Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, Kirk Weddle, Cobain's estate managers, Heather Parry and Guy Oseary, record companies and art directors who distributed the album in the last thirty years, and even Courtney Love, Kurt Cobain's executor estate and ex-wife.
As CBS News writes, Elden stated he got no compensation and "has suffered and will continue to suffer lifelong damages" because of the photoshoot. Indeed, in one of the interviews, he mentioned that he feels uncomfortable playing baseball, knowing that the players had seen his genitalia when he was a child.
Interestingly, Spencer recreated the cover album twice, in 2008 and 2016 but got paid $200 only for the second picture. One small remark - he wore shorts for both photoshoots. So, as Vanity Fair writes, Spencer has mixed feelings towards the legendary photo. After the 2016 photoshoot, he confessed to Time magazine that he tried to reach those who assisted in the photoshoot but failed to get any contact from their side. "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," he said.
Apart from that, he mentioned that he gets upset realizing how much money the band got from this album. Well, it has sold more than 30 million copies since 1991, and it's considered the best in the history of rock music. Obviously, he got nothing from the sales. And, for now, none of the defendants has given any comments on that matter.
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