Nirvana naked baby album cover subject loses lawsuit
Perhaps the most famous naked baby of the 90s, the iconic photo that graced the cover of the seminal Nirvana album “Nevermind” has been the subject of a lawsuit that was just dismissed.
Spencer Elden is not a household name, but most people who were teens or in their early 20s in the early 1990s remember the photo of him as a naked baby, floating in a pool and reaching for a fish hook with a dollar bill attached. Even today’s kids, born decades after lead singer Kurt Cobain died, recognize the fashion worth of the album cover that ruined Eldon’s life.
Nevermind sold over 30 million copies worldwide and featured the single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” which catapulted grunge rock into mainstream popularity in 1991. The cover featured four month old Elden naked in a pool at the Pasadena Aquatic Centre in a photograph shot by Kirk Weddle in California that same year. Elden claimed the picture on the album cover was sexual exploitation and child pornography and tried to sue everyone involved.
In August of last year, 30 years after the release of the landmark album, Elden filed his third lawsuit against Weddle, the record labels involved, former Nirvana members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, and Cobain’s widow Courtney Love. He claims that he has suffered continual emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, and lost financial potential that has lasted from his childhood until now in his 30s.
On Friday, a US District Judge in Los Angeles dismissed the lawsuit saying that the statute of limitations had passed since he waited more than 10 years after becoming aware of the alleged infraction to take legal action. His previous lawsuits had also been dismissed, but the judge this time did so in a way that would prevent him from filing continuous lawsuits indefinitely against Nirvana.
It didn’t help Elden’s case that he often seemed to embrace his claim to fame, saying that he would probably get money from it when asked as a 12 year old by Rolling Stone magazine in 2003. Six years ago, in 2016, he recreated the iconic photo as an adult with the word “Nevermind” tattooed across his chest in a seeming tribute to the Nirvana album cover.
SOURCE: Bangkok Post
