Years ago Spencer Elden was featured as a naked baby on the cover of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album. Now 30 years old, he's filed a lawsuit alleging that the band and various others violated federal laws by profiting off of child pornography.
In the suit, filed in an L.A. federal court, Elden said his parents never signed a release for the photo and were never paid. He’s now claiming $2.5 million in damages for being “exploited as a minor.”
The cover of "Nevermind," released in 1991 by the Geffen/UMG label, depicts a naked baby swimming underwater, seemingly towards a fish hook with a dollar bill attached.
The lawsuit over the image comes years after reports that Photographer Kirk Weddle paid Elden’s father $200, following the 1990 shoot at the Pasadena Aquatic Center, according to NPR.
Elden’s primary complaint is that 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," according to the lawsuit.
Elden's suit alleges the defendants, which include the late Kurt Cobain, "used child pornography depicting [him] 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,” according to a report by City News Service.
Variety reports that Elden 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 and photographer Kirk Weddle, among others.
Messages seeking comment sent to the Universal Music Group and an attorney who represents Nirvana LLC were not immediately answered, City News Service said.