It brought alternative rock to the mainstream and almost overnight made Nirvana the biggest band in the world. Pamela Chelin contributed to this report. The Designer of Nirvana’s Nevermind Cover on Shooting Babies and Working with Kurt Cobain By Ollie Campbell Art direction Design Music When it was released in 1991, Nirvana’s Nevermind sent shockwaves through the music world. The lawsuit said Cobain allegedly out of 50 or so photos “chose the image depicting Spencer-like a sex worker- grabbing for a dollar bill that is positioned dangling from a fishhook in front of his nude body with his penis explicitly displayed.” The lawsuit also says Cobain and the band “wanted images of nude babies” for the cover and that “Cobain added a fishhook specifically to make the image more menacing.” Originally, the album was set to be sold with a sticker covering Elden’s infant penis and Cobain wanted it to say “If you’re offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile,” but those stickers never happened. The lawsuit also seems to place the brunt of the blame for the cover on the late Cobain, who originally wanted an image of a live birth happening in a pool to be on the cover - but that was deemed too graphic. “Neither Spencer nor his legal guardians ever signed a release authorizing the use of any images of Spencer or of his likeness, and certainly not of commercial child pornography depicting him,” the lawsuit said. Rick Elden apparently consented to his kid being used in the photo shoot - he told NPR in 2008 the photo shoot happened in Pasadena where “we just had a big party at the pool, and no one had any idea what was going on.”īut the lawsuit claimed Rick Elden never formally agreed for the band to use his son on the cover. Weddle, the photographer, was a friend of Elden’s father Rick Elden and asked if Spencer could be in the photo shoot for $200. Hollywood’s Notable Deaths of 2021 (Photos)