The original lawsuit also alleged that the marketing of the record via a naked Elden reaching for a dollar bill held on a hook - the image was also used in the video clip for the hit single from the album, 'Come As You Are' - was a 'sex trafficking venture.'

He first attempted to sue the original band members, record label, album photographer and others (each for $150,000, or €128,000) for 'lifelong damages' that include 'extreme and permanent emotional distress with physical manifestations, interference with his normal development and educational progress, lifelong loss of income earning capacity' and 'loss of enjoyment of life.' A judge dismissed that case on January 3.Įlden has now filed a new lawsuit accusing the band of sexual exploitation. 'Commercial sexual acts'īut 30 years after the album's release, Elden's lawyers in August 2021 filed a lawsuit alleging that the 'Nevermind' image was procured after Elden 'was forced to engage in commercial sexual acts while under the age of 18 years old.' When the boy, Spencer Elden, was snapped naked in the water and wound up front-and-center on the band's groundbreaking 'Nevermind'album, his likeness became the epoch-defining image of grunge rock. The children are young and it is very graphic.In 1991, photographer Kirk Weddle asked a friend to bring his four-month-old baby to a photo shoot at a swimming pool for the indie band Nirvana. “The typical child pornography that is being seen in law enforcement and pursued in the courts can be violent.

“Nudity of a child alone is not the definition of pornography,” she said.

This lawsuit is not a typical child pornography case, said Mary Graw Leary, a professor at the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America. “Why am I still on their cover if I’m not that big of a deal?” he said.Įlden is “asking for Nirvana to do what Nirvana should have done 30 years ago and redact the images of his genitalia from the album cover,” Mabie said. He said that his feelings about the cover began to change “just a few months ago, when I was reaching out to Nirvana to see if they wanted to be part of my art show.”Įlden said he was referred to managers and lawyers. “Recently I’ve been thinking, ‘What if I wasn’t OK with my freaking penis being shown to everybody?’ I didn’t really have a choice,” Elden said to GQ Australia. In a different interview that year, he said he was angry that people still talked about it.

“It’d be nice to have a quarter for every person that has seen my baby penis,” he said in a New York Post interview in 2016.

Baby in nirvana nevermind cover