Spencer Elden, the baby on the cover of Nevermind: “It has been unreal living 25 years as an icon”
In this interview, originally from September 2016, the young man reviews his story, when Nevermind was a quarter of a century old.
Spencer Elden (25) possesses the most unique of fame: that which is obtained when it is impossible to remember her. Long before talking or walking.
“I always grew up knowing that I had participated in something special. But for years it has been very difficult to deal with a situation that I have no recollection of and that was not even my idea. It was only when I was nine years old that I realized what it was all about “, the graphic designer today tells La Tercera, 25 years after the image of his little naked humanity under a swimming pool multiplied all over the planet with the premiere of Nevermind, the September 24, 1991.
He was barely four months old, his family only collected US $ 200 ($ 132 thousand) -for a title that later billed 26 million copies- and under an idea of his own father, the best friend of the photographer commissioned by the Geffen Records label the job.
What has it been like to live 25 years as an icon?
Unreal. I still have a hard time understanding this madness around an album. But I have not made a single profit. Who today can know that I am that child? I’ve had friends for years who wear the Nevermind t-shirts or have pictures from that album and a long time later I tell them that I’m the one who appears there.
What do you do when you see people wearing the Nevermind shirt on the street?
Any. What I can do. Only once did someone recognize me: at a Venice Biennale an Italian told me ‘you are the Nirvana baby, right?’ It was very crazy, I don’t know how he knew.
More stories? “I have some great ones, but I prefer to keep them in reserve. For example, I have never used this to conquer women, because I have also been lucky. More than once they told me a joke like ‘I’ve already seen you naked!’, But it’s just that. Others almost ask me to get naked and see if I have really grown up. And of course I am proud to be the body and the most famous sexual organ in music ”.
As a good twentysomething, Elden goes from irony to reluctance (“I could never meet any Nirvana, who are the ones who today get rich with all this”); from denying his celebrity to embracing her with happy resignation (“at least it wasn’t a Backstreet Boys album”). Of course, there is only one question that defines his almost umbilical link with Nevermind.
If you could choose to appear on the cover of any other album, what would it be?
I don’t know man, maybe none, because it would mess up and erase this whole story.