Nirvana: this is what the baby on the cover of Nevermind looks like today

This is what the baby on the cover of Nirvana “Nevermind” looks like today

Nirvana’s 1991 album cover is iconic. In “Nevermind,” a naked baby swims in the pool with a dollar bill hanging in front of him. Today this baby is a 30-year-old man.

Steven Sowa / t-online

“Smells like Teen Spirit”, “Come as You Are” or “Lithium”: the album “Nevermind” contains a series of legendary songs. Nirvana sold around 30 million copies and wrote the history of music with it: to this day, it is the highest-ranked album in Rolling Stone magazine’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” and is ranked 17th. .

But it’s not just the sound that gives “Nevermind” cult status. The album cover is iconic too: a naked baby swims in the pool with outstretched arms and open mouth, a bait hanging from a dollar bill-shaped hook in front of him. This baby really existed, and the story behind the photo is strange.

The story behind the filming of the baby

Underwater photographer Kirk Weddle had never photographed a baby and said in an interview with The Guardian in 2019: “I really didn’t want the little one to drown.” He was lucky that his friends just had a baby and entrusted him with their child. Nirvana was still largely unknown at the time: Weddle only received $ 1,000 for the shoot, including equipment and the cost of a rescue diver. Equipped with a snorkel and an underwater camera on a tripod, the recordings were in the box after five minutes.

By the way, 25 years later, the cover model named Spencer Elden had been photographed again, as in the pool at the “Pasadena Rose Bowl Aquatic Center” near Los Angeles. “It’s great, but I also miss being part of such an important event that I don’t even remember,” the then 25-year-old told the New York Post.

Today Elden is 30 years old and states on his Facebook page that he is active as an artist. Numerous videos of his apartment, which is filled with canvases and photos of the images, can be found on his social media profile, to which some 8,000 people subscribed.

The California artist has linked his own website there as well, but this one is no longer active and leads nowhere. The last photo that can be found of Spencer Elden is from February 2019. There he is in a black baseball cap, his hood is pulled over his head and he is looking at the camera with a three-day beard. The parallels to the 1991 “Nevermind” baby can only be guessed.