Baby on famous album cover grows up and sues band for child pornography

“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,” the lawsuit reads.

The man whose baby photo is the iconic cover of the Nirvana “Nevermind” album is now suing the band, saying the image is child pornography.

Spencer Elden, the then 4-month-old pictured swimming naked underwater toward a dollar on a fishhook, filed the lawsuit on Tuesday arguing the image constitutes child pornography. Elden, now 30, further claims that he and his parents never had the ability to authorize the use of his image or his likeness and that he has suffered due to it.

“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,” the lawsuit reads. “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.”

The suit names the defendants as living band members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic; original Nirvana drummer Chad Channing; executor of Kurt Cobain’s estate, Courtney Love; managers of Cobain’s estate, Guy Oseary and Heather Parry; Kirk Weddle, the photographer; Robert Fisher, the art director; and numerous record companies. LINK

Elden has “Nevermind” tattooed across his chest and has recreated the image on numerous album anniversaries. Though he has communicated mixed feelings regarding being the subject of the famous photo in a number of interviews, the lawsuit is the first time he ever referred to it as child pornography.

“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,” Elden told the New York Post in 2016, adding, “It’s cool but weird to be part of something so important that I don’t even remember.”