A possibly new contention in the lawsuit is that Elden’s parents never even signed paperwork allowing any use of the image. In previous interviews, he’s said he tried to get in touch with Grohl and Novoselic, on a friendly basis, but never got a reply. What was a constant, in the past as now, is that Elden has said he was never compensated for the photo beyond the $200 his parents were paid for it on the day of the shoot. Until now, despite his ongoing ambivalence about the photo’s legacy, he hadn’t described it as pornographic. However, in most of the interviews accompanying these photo shoots, he expressed deeply mixed feelings about being famous for the “Nevermind” cover and whether he was exploited by it. The cover art subject - who, like the “Nevermind” album itself, is now 30 - is asking at least $150,000 from each of the defendants, who include include surviving band members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic Courtney Love, the executor of Kurt Cobain’s estate Guy Oseary and Heather Parry, managers of Cobain’s estate photographer Kirk Weddle art director Robert Fisher and a number of existing or defunct record companies that released or distributed the album in the last three decades.Ĭuriously, original Nirvana drummer Chad Channing is also named as a defendant who was part of the group at the time, even though he had been replaced by Grohl in 1990, before the album was recorded or the cover photography shot.Įlden has repeatedly recreated the pose as a teenager and adult, diving into pools to pose (with swim trunks on) on the occasion of the album’s 10th, 17th, 20th and 25th anniversaries. “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.” District Court’s central district of California and obtained by Variety.

“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,” reads the lawsuit, filed in the U.S.

Nirvana nevermind cover art