Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ Baby Once Again Fights to Have Image Censored on Album Cover

A month after suing Nirvana for child pornography, Spencer Elden is now asking the iconic Nevermind cover featuring him as a 4-month-old baby be censored. The iconic 1991 album cover shows Elden floating naked in a pool, reaching out for a dollar bill. On Friday, Elden’s attorneys demanded Nirvana edit out his genitalia permanently.

“Today, like each year on this date, our client Spencer Elden has had to brace himself for renewed unwanted attention from the media and fans alike throughout the world,” Elden’s attorneys wrote in a statement to USA Today. “This is a choice that he has never had.” Nevermind, which includes the hits “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Come as You Are,” was released on Sept. 24, 1991.

In Friday’s statement, Elden’s attorneys wrote that they plan to keep their legal proceedings alive to “bring long-awaited privacy and dignity back” to Elden. They went on to “implore” Nirvana to “right the wrongs of their past, by acknowledging the harm they have perpetrated and redacting the image of Mr. Elden’s genitalia from further reproductions of Nevermind because behind every cover is a person pleading for their privacy back.”

Before the 30th anniversary of Nevermind approached, Elden had publicly embraced his part in Rock history as the baby on the cover of one of the genre’s most successful albums. When the album celebrated its 25th anniversary, Elden even recreated the post, although this time, he wore shorts. “I said to the photographer, ‘Let’s do it naked.’ But he thought that would be weird, so I wore my swim shorts,” Elden told the New York Post at the time. The original Nevermind cover was photographed by Kirk Weddle, who was friends with Elden’s parents. They were paid $200 for his appearance on the cover, Edlen said.

More recently though, Elden’s opinion of the cover changed. In August, he field a lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court against Nirvana members Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and the late Kurt Cobain. He accused them of knowingly producing, possessing and advertising “commercial child pornography” with the Nevermind cover. Elden claimed he will suffer “lifelong damages” because of the album cover.

“(The) 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 read in part. “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.” Elden is seeking a trial by jury and $150,000 from 17 defendants, including former members of the band, their record labels, the photographer, cover designer and Courtney Love, the executor of Cobain’s estate.