Dave Grohl reacts to lawsuit over Nirvana's Nevermind album cover

Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl responded publicly to a lawsuit brought by Spencer Elden, the man photographed as a four-month-old baby on the cover of the band's 1991 album Nevermind, according to coverage published October 4-5, 2021. Elden's suit, filed in August 2021, named 15 defendants including Grohl, bassist Krist Novoselic, Courtney Love, photographer Kirk Weddle, art director Robert Fisher and managers of Kurt Cobain's estate.

Elden's lawsuit alleged the underwater photograph constituted child sexual exploitation and sought $150,000 in damages from each of the 15 defendants, along with replacement of the cover artwork on all future releases of the album, including a 30th-anniversary deluxe reissue set for release November 12, 2021, according to the reporting. Elden was four months old during the original shoot, which lasted approximately 15 seconds; his father was reportedly offered $200 for the photo session, and no release form was reportedly signed authorizing use of the image. Nevermind has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.

The lawsuit followed a period in which Elden had himself repeatedly recreated the photograph — reported to have posed in swim trunks re-staging the cover image on the album's 10th, 20th and 25th anniversaries — a history that added an unusual wrinkle to a suit alleging the original image was exploitative.

I have many ideas of how we should alter that cover but we'll see what happens.

Grohl's response

Grohl indicated the legal specifics were not his focus, saying he delegates such matters to others. "At some point, unfortunately, it [lawsuits] just becomes par for the course," Grohl said, according to the coverage. On the possibility of changing the cover itself, he added: "We'll let you know. I'm sure we'll come up with something good."

Keeping perspective

I think that there's much more to look forward to and much more to life than getting bogged down in those kinds of things.

That comment, reported in coverage of Grohl's remarks, framed his overall posture toward the litigation: acknowledging it without dwelling on it, and noting that he "fortunately" does not have to handle the associated paperwork himself. Legal experts quoted in some of the coverage characterized the case as weak, with one attorney arguing the framing risked undermining legitimate child exploitation claims — though the outcome of the suit itself was not detailed in the sources reviewed for this account.

What the dispute signals

The lawsuit arriving just ahead of a milestone anniversary reissue put Nirvana's surviving members in the position of publicly weighing whether to alter one of rock's most recognizable images, three decades after it was taken. Elden's own repeated recreations of the photo across multiple anniversaries, set against a $150,000-per-defendant demand and skepticism from legal commentators, illustrate how contested the meaning of a decades-old, widely reproduced image can become once it is examined under a legal standard — child sexual exploitation — that did not frame the original public conversation about the cover.

US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by Consequence, Rolling Stone UK and BuzzFeed News. It restores a story originally published on this site in October 2021; figures are as reported at the time.