All grown up: Baby on the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind album turns 20

By Wil Longbottom

Last updated at 7:49 PM on 26th September 2011

His was the baby face that adorned one of the most iconic music albums of all time.
The unwitting star of Nirvana's breakthrough Nevermind album - one that would catapult them to super-stardom - wasn't old enough to be aware of his role in the birth of grunge music.
Spencer Elden, now 20, is still introduced as the 'Nirvana baby' two decades after the release of the album and has learned to cope with the extra attention his brush with fame generates.

All grown up: Spencer Elden, now 20, recreates his pose on Nirvana's Nevermind album cover. This spoof of the cover was taken by British photographer John Chapple

The fine art student now studies at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, where his father Rick let his infant son appear as a model for an up-and-coming band's new album in 1991.
He told CNN: 'When I am introduced, they introduce me as the Nirvana baby.
'My dad was an artist rigging special effects for Hollywood. They went to the local pool, threw me in the water and that was it.
'It was a friend-helping-a-friend kind of thing.'

Now and then: Elden on CNN, and how he is more famously known on the cover of the Nirvana album

It is now 20 years since Nevermind was released by the then little-known Seattle band, featuring hit songs including Smells Like Teen Spirit, forced alternative rock into the mainstream.
The front cover, which features Spencer as a baby swimming naked in a pool as he appears to chase a dollar bill being reeled in on a fish hook.
At the time, Rick Elden shared a studio in old town Pasadena with other artists to help pay the rent.
Among them was photographer Kirk Weddle, who had the contract to photograph a baby underwater.

Tragic end: Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, performs at the Nakano Sun Plaza in Tokyo in 1992. He committed suicide in 1994 at the age of 27

Tributes: Former Nirvana band members Krist Novoselic, left, and Dave Grohl, centre, along with Nevermind producer Butch Vig pose in Los Angeles. A 20th anniversary edition of the album is released tomorrow

Rick Elden told EchoPark: 'Babies have a gag reflex. If you blow in their face, they hold their breath.
'I blew in Spencer's face and put him in the water. Kirk was shooting 18 frames a second, so Spencer was in the water for about two seconds.'
The pair did two shoots on one roll of film, before going for lunch at a taco house unaware of the significance the images would have.
Neither Spencer nor his father has ever received royalties from the image.
Perhaps unsurprisingly he has grown up to become a fan of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana's music.
He told CNN: 'Definitely, I like Nirvana a lot and there are no songs that I don't like - they all have a special place for people.'
He has never met any of the band members though. Kurt Cobain, who was married to singer Courtney Love with whom he had a daughter Frances Bean, shot himself at his Seattle home in April, 1994, at the age of 27.

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