‘Nevermind’ Pool Baby Sues Nirvana For Child Porn Over Iconic Album Cover

Spencer Elden, who was featured naked on the cover of Nirvana’s hit album “Nevermind,” when he was just four months old, is suing the band for child pornography thirty years later.

In a lawsuit he filed against Kurt Cobain’s estate and the band’s surviving members, Elden, 30, says Nirvana exploited him sexually and violated federal child pornography statutes by featuring him underwater in a pool, gazing at a $20 bill on a fish hook, while he was completely nude.

Elden alleges he suffered “lifelong damage” from a photo he claims his legal guardians did not consent to. The suit accuses the photographer, band, and record label of “intentionally marketed Spencer’s child pornography and leveraged the shocking nature of his image to promote themselves and their music at his expense.”

The 1991 album sold more than 30 million copies and achieved triple-diamond status. Elden says “he was forced to engage in ‘commercial sex acts,’ and that the band went back on an alleged promise to conceal his genitals on the album cover.”

“The permanent harm he has proximately suffered includes but is not limited to extreme and permanent emotional distress with physical manifestations, interference with his normal development and educational progress, lifelong loss of income earning capacity, loss of past and future wages, past and future expenses for medical and psychological treatment, loss of enjoyment of life, and other losses to be described and proven at trial of this matter,” the suit charges.

The plaintiff is seeking $150,000 from each of the lawsuit’s defendants, including Courtney Love, the executor of Kurt Cobain’s estate; band members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, photographer Kirk Weddle; art director Robert Fisher, and a number record companies involved with the album.

“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 filing claims.

“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.”

Marie Finn