The groundbreaking Nirvana record Nevermind celebrated its 30th birthday last month. Along with the buzz from commemorating the record, other news surrounding the notorious naked baby cover continued to arise. In August, Spencer Elden, a.k.a. the naked baby, sued Nirvana’s surviving members, Kurt Cobain’s estate, album-cover photographer Kirk Weddle, and the labels involved in the album’s release, alleging sexual exploitation and that the cover is child pornography.
Dave Grohl recently discussed that Nevermind reissues could possibly bear new art, in light of the lawsuit. “I have many ideas of how we should alter that cover, but we’ll see what happens,” Grohl told The Times Magazine. “We’ll let you know. I’m sure we’ll come up with something good … 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. And, fortunately, I don’t have to do the paperwork.”
An upcoming box-set reissue of Nevermind is still planned to have the original artwork, yet Grohl hints that may change in future releases.
Elden filed the lawsuit this summer, alleging his “true identity and legal name are forever tied to the commercial sexual exploitation he experienced as a minor which has been distributed and sold worldwide from the time he was a baby to the present day.”
In other Grohl news, which seems to be all the time these days, he went on CBS to discuss his new memoir, The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music.
Grohl talked about how he was inspired during the pandemic to begin writing short life stories on his Instagram. He went on to explain that his career in music was ignited by the same feelings as those of his predecessors like the Beatles—heartbreak in the ripe years in middle school. Transferring his emotions to guitar at that age is how he got started writing songs, which was his entree into the local Seattle band, Scream, then Nirvana.
Grohl explained the last chapter he wrote was the one about his Nirvana band member and great friend, Kurt Cobain. He had some apprehension about the topic. “Rather than write about what happened, I wrote about the emotional process of dealing with loss and mourning, and how it’s a lifetime of healing.”
After Cobain died, Grohl flew to a remote area of Ireland, taking his mother’s advice from his childhood of “sometimes in life, you have to do what’s best for yourself.” He found a hitchhiker, who coincidentally was wearing a t-shirt with Cobain’s face on it. “I was about to pick him up, and I looked at him and I just thought ‘you know what, I gotta get home and start over.’”
The Storyteller is out tomorrow, October 5, wherever you enjoy buying books.
