So i want to give a shoutout to brando from the Appetite for Distortion podcast who told
me about this story. I was going through Instagram yesterday and I saw a story he
posted saying that the kid on the cover of the Guns N' Roses use your illusion albums
was suing the band over the use of his image on the album. I was like what? It had turned
out the baby who appeared on nirvana’s nevermind album is now suing the band, It had turned that
brando was just making fun of the whole thing saying this is going to lead to other lawsuits.
Spencer Elden, who appears as the baby on the cover of Nirvana's 1991 album Nevermind,
is now 30 years old but he was 4 months when he appeared on the record.
As part of Elden's lawsuit the paperwork would state "Defendants intentionally commercially
marketed Spencer's pornogray and leveraged the shocking nature of his image to promote themselves
and their music at his expense," Elden is seeking $150,000 in damages from each of the defendants,
including surving Nirvana members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, & photographer Kirk Weddle,
the record label , and Courtney Love, the executor of Kurt Cobain's estate. The photographer
whose named in the lawsuit Kirk Weddle was actually a personal friend of Elden’s father.
Elden's lawyer, says the image of the dollar bill on the front cover
makes the baby resemble and i quote "a sex worker."
The lawsuit also claimed that Elden’s parents never signed a release allowing his image
to be used and that his parents were only compensated $200 for the photo to be taken.
The court filing would also state that Geffen Records, Nirvana's label
claimed that a sticker was going to be used to cover the Elden’s private area on the album cover.
Elden would claim the whole experience gave him and i quote "extreme and permanent emotional
distress" It remains to be seen whether the lawsuit will be successful or not but how
did Elden even end up on the cover. Well the whole story starts with Geffen Records
art director Robert Fisher who was a huge fan of Nirvana before nevermind came out and convinced
the record label to let him work on the. project Fisher would meeting with Kurt Cobain who
expressed hisa concept for the front cover with Fisher remembering to Milanote.com Kurt wanted a
baby being born underwater. Back then before the Internet you would have to go down to the local
bookstore and go through child birthing books and try to find photos. So that’s what I did.
But it was just like … there’s no way we can make an album cover out of this. I couldn’t find any
really good pictures and they were all way too graphic to use.” So they needed an actual baby
to shoot. It would be frontman Kurt Cobain’s idea to include a fishook on the album cover to make it
more menacing and there was a lot of discussion over what to include on the end of the fishook.
One idea was a CD to represent music, another was a burrito while somebody else suggested a dog.
With a concept now established Geffen now needed a photographer to shoot the cover.
Fisher would recall in the same interview “They used to have these things called work-books — big
thick catalogues where photographers would buy a page or two and they’d send them out
to creatives to try and get work. And this one guy in there, one of his tag-lines was
he specialised in ‘submerged humans’. I thought ‘That’s our guy!’. That was Kirk Weddle" he'd say.
Upon being hired Weddle had originally tried to go to an infant swim class to shoot the cover,
but the results weren't good. ,Weddle happened to know Elden’s dad who assisted with photo shoots.
Elden’s dad recalled to NPR "[He] calls us up and was like, 'Hey Rick, wanna make 200 bucks
and throw your kid in the drink?,'" . "I was like, 'What's up?' And he's like, 'Well, I'm shooting
kids all this week, why don't you meet me at the Rose Bowl, throw your kid in the drink?' And
we just had a big party at the pool, and no one had any idea what was going on!" he'd remember.
Several months after the photo shoot Elden’s father was driving along sunset boulevard
when he spotted potted a 9-foot-by-9-foot picture of his son on the wall of tower records. While the
family wouldn’t earn a penny more from the photo, Geffen Records would send them a platinum record
of Nevermind two months later along with a teddy bear to coincide with Spencer's first birthday
NPR would catch up with Elden when he was a senior in high school and he talked about going possibly
going to west point and that his friends would sometimes joked with him about the cover saying
"My friend is all like, 'Hey I saw you today.' And I'm like, 'Dude, I was working all day.' And he's
like, 'No, I went to Geffen Records, and you're on the floor and you're floating and I stepped
on your face. 'Cause I guess they have like a floating thing where people can like walk on me
and stuff ... so it's kinda cool," he'd say. Years later he would he would be interviewed
by Time Magazine revealing his feeling about the album cover saying “Looking back,
it feels kind of stupid doing interviews about it, because I had nothing to do with it,
“It’s a really weird feeling being a part of someone else’s momentum—being caught up
in this wake of stuff.” Interestingly enough he would reveal in the same interview he had
looked into taking legal action against the record label, but nothing came of it at the
time saying “It’s hard not to get upset when you hear how much money was involved,” ” While he
would harbour some resentment Spencer thought the concept for the artwork was and i quote “genius”
but wasn’t a fan of his face appearing on merchandising like coffee mugs. Despite
repeated requests Spencer would never end up meeting any of the surviving members of Nirvana.
In 2016 Spencer was residing in los angeles still living with his mother and was selling
his art online as well as growing tomatoes. Spencer has previously recreated the cover as
an older child and adult to mark Nevermind‘s 10th, 20th and 25th anniversaries. You're on the album
cover, but did you like the album at all were there certain songs you liked or didn't like.
Definitely i like nirvana a lot and there's no song i don't like. They all have a special place
for people you know and i really liked the album and i definitely really like to listen to it when
no one is around. I wouldn't turn it around with all my friends watching because
it makes it kind of weird and awkward. I like the album. Do you get royalties. you are on
the cover and it's one of the best selling album's ever. No i don't get any royalties
there was no model release signed so its kind of an interesting cover becaues you know i feel
like it kind of portrays the situation kind of well. That does it for today's video guys
thanks for watching and we'll see you again on rock n' roll true stories. Take care.