You know, the one with the naked baby swimming towards a dollar note.
The baby on the album who is all grown up now (obviously) is suing the band for child sexual exploitation about 30 years after the album's release, several news outlets including The Guardian and Rolling Stones reported.
Claiming for lifelong damage
Spencer Elden, who was four months old at the time of the shoot, is claiming that the defendants were a part of “commercial child sexual exploitation of him from while he was a minor to the present day … defendants knowingly produced, possessed and advertised commercial child pornography depicting Spencer”.
The defendants in the case filed at a California court are the surviving members of the band - Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, Kurt Cobain’s widow Courtney Love, and the record labels that released or distributed the album in the last three decades, as well as Kirk Weddle, the photographer who took the picture and happens to be Elden's father's friend.
According to reports, the lawsuit claims that the image was sexually explicit and depicts Spencer as “a sex worker – grabbing for a dollar bill”.
Spencer, who is now an artist, also claims that he was never paid for the image and his parents never signed release forms for the image that was taken specifically for the album cover. However, previous reports shows that his parents was paid USD250 for the picture when it was taken in 1991.
He is seeking damages if at least USD150,000 (RM628,875.00) form each of the 15 defendants. That's a lot of money!
It's interesting that Spencer is finding the image offensive now not because it's been three decades since the album's release, but because he has recreated the image multiple times before, most notably for the album's 25th anniversary in 2016 and three times before that.
He even wanted to pose for the shoot naked but the photographer who capture the image, John Chapple but the photographer shot down the idea so Spenser posed with a shorts on.
We wonder what made him change his mind about the original image.