The band was exhausted after a very late night and the shoot took place early in the morning. Weddle remembers it as being a difficult shoot. As part of the album's publicity drive, Weddle was commissioned to do a second shoot, this time showing the band members underwater with guitars and drums. Sales of Nevermind gathered momentum and within a few months it was at the top of the Billboard charts.
"So I went and shot some other babies from the side as a back-up, but they still wanted the original shot." The dollar bill on a fish-hook was added at the post-production stage and it seemed that Weddle's work was done.īut not quite. "I was like, damn, you know, I don't know whether they're going to like that," he says. However, there was a problem with it: the baby's penis was prominently shown.
When the film was developed, Weddle saw he had only one good frame. Nirvana's Nevermind baby recreates classic album cover We did it again, bang bang bang, then he started crying and I said, 'Okay, we're done.'" The shoot took just five minutes to complete and half a roll of film was used. "I shot off about five or six frames, we pulled him out and he was fine. "He just drifted by, happy as could be," Weddle remembers. He blew a little air into the baby's face to induce a gag reflex and make him temporarily hold his breath. Then, with Rick and Renee on either side, the baby was eased into the pool. He first shot a clip test using a child's doll to make sure he had the correct exposure. Weddle set up his Nikon in an underwater housing on a tripod at the bottom of the pool. On the day of the shoot, only the photographer, the baby and the baby's parents were present. "They didn't think it was a big deal because they knew I was good in the water." "I said, 'Can we use your kid?' and they said 'Sure,'" Weddle continues. "Come As You Are" MTV Unplugged live from Canal de MrCristiancobain on YouTube.As luck would have it, Weddle's friends Rick and Renee Elden had a four-month old baby boy named Spencer. (B) Territorial Pissings - Drain You - Lounge Act - Stay Away - On a Plain - Something in the Way (A) Smells Like Teen Spirit - In Bloom - Come as You Are - Breed - Lithium - Polly "If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile." More When Cobain made it clear that the only compromise he would accept was a sticker covering the penis that would say, Geffen Records prepared an alternative cover without the penis as they were afraid that would offend people, but relented However, there was some concern because the boy's circumcised penis was visible in the image. He sent a photographer to a pool for babies to take pictures. Of water births but they were too graphic for the record company.
Nirvana nevermind cover boy tv#
DGC 1991.Īccording to Kurt Cobain, he conceived the idea of the cover while watching a TV program on water births. The boy is Spencer Elden who was 3 months old at the time this shot was taken. 2, Music Radar, The 50 Greatest Album Covers of All Time.Īrt direction by Robert Fisher, photo by Kirk Weddle. 41, Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time. 17, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time 17, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000 No. 17, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 10, Entertainment Weekly, 100 Greatest Albums Ever No. Here's the original album cover art design. And so the bill and the boy will always be parted. The flipped image was added below the create the illusion of limitless space without gravity. And so I finally chose to create the twin but I'm not a closet pedophile. That would be a synchronized chase on the bill, as if it was all that mattered. I didn't really intend to hide the "boy" or create a Siamese twin, but neither would I leave the boy's right hand hanging in the water and give the effect of a perfectly mirrored image at right.