Nirvana - Nevermind [1991]

MONEYYY!! It's all about money. That was certainly the case in the nineties, when the stock markets exploded and champagne flowed freely on the luxury yachts that were affordable to an increasing number to people to. So, the baby on the cover of Nirvana's 1991 "Nevermind" isn't presented with a dollar bill, but with a fishhook. Have a bite!

The story of this highly recognizable album cover begins with a television program about underwater births that Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain and drummer Dave Grohl were watching. They asked Robert Fisher, a designer at Geffen Records, if he could use it for a cover. Fisher found some archival footage of underwater births, but the record company found it too graphic. That didn’t apply to the image of a baby swimming. Cobain then came up with the idea of creating a fishhook with a dollar bill attached to it, as a reference to the materialism that every human being at that time was immersed in from birth—and perhaps even before.
Photographer Kirk Weddle, specializing in underwater photography, shot the images of four-month-old Spencer Elden, who was about to go swimming for the first time. If you look closely, you can still see Spencer's father's fingerprints on the baby's chest before he released it into the water. The dollar bill attached to the fishhook was added later.
The record company did, however, anticipate that the cover might raise a problem in the prudish American society. It features a wee willy. So Fisher also created a version of the cover with the baby's penis removed. The penis-less version, however, was left in the drawer, although a few record stores were commissioned by a local celebrity to cover up the worm. Cobain had foreseen this; he suggested, semi-seriously, that the cover be labeled with a sticker that read, "If you're completely offended, you must be a secret pedophile."

Nevermind propelled the band and their music to the top of the charts, with songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit," which birthed Seattle's grunge music style.
"Baby" Elden earned eternal fame from the cover, but, according to himself, hardly any money. His father, Rick Elden, was an artist and an acquaintance of photographer Weddle; having Elden photograph him was a favor to a friend. Royalties were out of the question.
Initially, Spencer Elden was able to make light of his image as a naked baby. He often presented himself as the Nirvana baby. And when the audience asked him about his penis ("Is it still so small?"), he usually replied, "It's changing; do you want to see it?"
But with age, discomfort set in. In 2007, Elden, now on the cusp of adulthood, told the Sunday Times that it was ‘a bit creepy that so many people have seen me naked... I feel like the biggest porn star in the world.’ Another fourteen years later—at 30—he decided to take action: he sued the band.
According to his lawyers, Elden suffered lifelong damages from the cover. They claimed $150,000 in reparations from each of the surviving members of Nirvana—as executors of Kurt Cobain's estate.
On October 2nd of this year, a ruling was finally reached. According to the judge, the cover does not constitute child pornography. He stated that the context of the photo is anything but circumstantial: ‘It's more like a family snapshot of a child in the bath.’ The judge also pointed out that Elden had self-proclaimed him "the Nirvana baby", even signing replicas of the cover, and profiting financially from it. I can certainly understand the judge's ruling. It's a common phenomenon in the music world: if something becomes a success, everyone wants a piece of the pie. MONEYYY!!

Gerrit-Jan Vrielink

Translator: Alex Driessen