SOME NERVE-ANA
‘Nevermind’ kid sues over baby ‘porn’
The man who as a baby was photographed naked in a pool for the cover of Nirvana’s 1991 album, “Nevermind,” now accuses the band of being child pornographers, claiming they told him to “Come As You Are” without consent.
Spencer Eldon, 30, has filed a federal lawsuit against Kurt Cobain’s estate and the band’s surviving members, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, saying the grunge-rock pioneers violated federal child-porn statutes and sexually exploited him.
Eldon also said he has suffered “lifelong damage” from having his naked body plastered on the triplediamond-selling record, and claims neither he nor his guardians consented to the photo shoot.
The band, photographer Kirk Weddle, according to Artnet News, and record labels “intentionally marketed Spencer’s child pornography and leveraged the shocking nature of his image to promote themselves and their music at his expense,” the suit alleges.
The plaintiff, who was 4 months old at the time of the shoot, also claims he was forced to engage in “commercial sex acts,” and that the band went back on an alleged promise to conceal his genitals.
Eldon, now a painter, has twice re-created the cover shot: in 2008, when he was 17, and in 2016, when he was 25. He wore swimming trunks on both occasions.
“I said to the photographer, ‘Let’s do it naked.’ But he thought that would be weird, so I wore my swim shorts,” Eldon said of the 2016 shoot.
Eldon’s family was paid only $200 for the 15-second plunge in the pool, which happened only because Eldon’s dad was a friend of the photographer, according to a 2008 National Public Radio report. Although he seemed excited about the re-enactment in 2016, days earlier the LA-based artist told Australia GQ he wished the band had stayed away.
“I’m pissed off about it, to be honest . . . Recently, I’ve been thinking, ‘What if I wasn’t OK with my freaking penis being shown to everybody?’ I didn’t really have a choice.”
Eldon’s suit seeks damages and an injunction to prevent the band from profiting from the album.
Legal experts trashed Elden’s suit in interviews with The Post.
Lawyer Jamie White, who has represented thousands of survivors of childhood sexual abuse, called the case “just outrageous on so many levels.”
But Eldon lawyer James Marsh defended the suit.
“. . . [T]he notion that this is frivolous . . . is sort of laughable because frivolous lawsuits are [cases where] you’ve got a hangnail or something,” he told The Post.