Description

Kurt Cobain got the idea from a television programme about water births. He mentioned it to Geffen art director Robert Fisher, who found stock footage of underwater births, but the images were too graphic for the label, and the photo library that held a usable picture of a swimming baby wanted $7,500 a year for it. Fisher decided it would be cheaper to make their own and sent photographer Kirk Weddle to a baby pool.

Weddle came back with five shots, and the band chose four-month-old Spencer Elden, the son of a friend of the photographer. The dollar bill on a fishhook, dangling just out of the baby's reach, turned an image of innocence into something sharper, and it has been read ever since as a comment on money, temptation and the music industry the band were entering.

Geffen worried that the baby's visible penis would offend retailers and prepared an alternative cover without it. Cobain refused, saying the only compromise he would accept was a sticker reading "If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile." The label kept the original. Thirty years later, in 2021, Elden sued the band and Weddle over the image. The case was dismissed in 2022, revived on appeal in December 2023, and dismissed again in October 2025, when the judge compared the picture to a family photograph of a bathing baby; Elden appealed again days later.

Credit

Art direction by Robert Fisher; cover photograph by Kirk Weddle.