One of the biggest controversies in rock music this year has been the lawsuit against Nirvana by Spencer Elden, who’s depicted as a baby on the cover of the band’s 1991 album Nevermind. But, this isn’t the first time a band has found themselves in this type of situation.
There have actually been a ton of lawsuits against bands over album artwork throughout musical history, but for the sake of keeping things related to the case of Nirvana and Elden, we’re focusing on the ones that were filed against bands by the people, or models, who’re actually featured on the covers.
Perhaps one of the most famous examples is The Rolling Stones’ 1978 album Some Girls, which marked their transition toward disco and funk rock, and also originally had some very famous faces on the cover in addition to the band members. The group of women and their family members sued the Stones, who ultimately decided to put out a different version of the cover with only the musicians’ faces instead.
“On the original album there were old-fashioned film stars, but because we were stupid and never got permission from them, we got stopped a lot from using them,” Mick Jagger later told Yahoo! of the artwork.
That’s a situation where the band didn’t actually ask permission to use the images, which is the same for several others on our list as well. However, Elden’s case is unique in that his parents were the ones who gave the band consent to use his photo on Nevermind, as he was only a baby during the photoshoot.
However, he has celebrated the album cover in recent years, so a lot of eyebrows were raised when the news broke that he was now claiming that the photo is child pornography. Especially because, as Dave Grohl pointed out, he has a Nevermind tattoo.
Nirvana, ‘Nevermind’
Nirvana’s Nevermind album cover is pretty much the only reason we’re here in the first place. Spencer Elden was less than a year old when he was photographed in a swimming pool for the cover of Nirvana’s iconic album. And despite the fact that he recreated the photo for its 25th anniversary back in 2016, just a month before it turned 30 earlier this year, he made the decision to sue the band for child sexual exploitation and claimed that the image is a form of child pornography. This case is currently open.
The Rolling Stones, ‘Some Girls’
The Rolling Stones’ iconic 1978 album Some Girls featured… some girls… on the front cover who were not all too happy about it. The art was designed by Peter Corriston and illustrated by Hubert Kretzschmar, and featured bright colors and die-cut images of several high profile celebrities, including Lucille Ball, Farrah Fawcett, Raquel Welch, Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland, in addition to the members of the Stones.
Medium did a breakdown of the lawsuit, which was initiated by Ball, Fawcett, Liza Minnelli (on behalf of Garland, who was her mother) and the estate of Marilyn Monroe. The women argued that the band didn’t ask their permission to use images of their faces on the album cover.
Ultimately, the band replaced the faces of the women with face of the members, as well as The Beatles’ George Harrison, which is the cover you’ll see above. There are images of the original elsewhere on the web.
TAD, ‘8-Way Santa’
As you can see, the album cover above is that of TAD’s 8-Way Santa. But the lawsuit story is about the original cover, which featured a partially nude couple on the front. According to a 2016 interview frontman Tad Doyle did with Vice, one of the band’s friends came across a photo album in a thrift shop, and they found the polaroid of the couple — Patricia Rogers and Kimball Weber.
Doyle and co. brought the photo to Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman of Sub Pop Records, and they liked it, so they used it as the album’s cover. However, Rogers and Weber were no longer together, and she was a born-again Christian at the time she discovered that the photo ended up on the record in stores. Rogers filed a lawsuit against Sub Pop, and as noted in The Chronicle, they agreed on a $2,500 settlement, and the band went with a photo of themselves for the cover instead.
We couldn’t include the original cover in this post for obvious reasons, but it’s floating around on the internet if you look.
Placebo, ‘Placebo’
David Fox is the name of the boy who appears on Placebo’s 1996 eponymous debut album, which reached No. 5 on the U.K. Albums Chart. Fox later claimed that he was bullied a lot in school because of the photo depicted on the cover.
“That picture ruined my life,” he told The Sun [via Digital Spy]. “When the album came out, the friends I did have began to pick on me. I think they might have been jealous. Or they saw a boy pulling a silly face and didn’t want to hang out with him anymore because he looks weird.”
Fox said that his education suffered as a result of the bullying, mainly because he transferred schools several times to try and avoid the persecution.
In 2012, Fox decided to sue the band and the album’s photographer, and noted that his mother never gave legal consent for the image to be used on the cover.
“It’s not about the money for me,” he stated. “It’s about the principle and what it’s done to me. It hasn’t had an impact on them. They haven’t had to live with the consequences.”
Matchbox 20, ‘Yourself or Someone Like You’
Matchbox Twenty’s 1996 album Yourself or Someone Like You features New Yorker Frank Torres on the front cover, sporting a flying helmet. In 2005, Torres sued the band for “emotional distress,” claiming that the band had not asked his permission to use the photo on the album.
As mentioned in Contact Music, Torres’ lawyer said that he had only discovered the album two years prior to the lawsuit, which was why he hadn’t taken legal action sooner.
“We took a bunch of pictures for that first album,” frontman Rob Thomas later said in an interview. “That guy was really meant to be… he was just in the background, he was a blurry figure, and the photographer took a couple of test shots and took a shot of that guy.”
“Paul [Doucette] and I fell in love with him. We thought it was just the greatest thing. Our label hated it so much that they tried to talk us out of it so badly,” the singer continued. “When it hit 12 million in sales, that guy on the album cover sued us.”
According to Thomas, Torres didn’t get anything from the suit.
Dead Kennedys, ‘Frankenchrist’
There’s quite a bit of controversy surrounding Dead Kennedys’ 1985 album Frankenchrist. Firstly, a painting of male genitalia, which was done by H. R. Giger and titled “Landscape XX,” was included in the record sleeve because Jello Biafra liked it. Of course, this was right around the time of the PMRC, so that was a whole situation of its own.
But we’re here to talk about the cover, which features a quartet of Shriners from Detroit driving small cars in a parade. The photo was originally taken and published by Newsweek in the 1970s, and the Shriners weren’t happy to see themselves on the front of the record, especially because of its associated with the “Landscape XX” illustration inside.
According to Sun Sentinel, Newsweek sold the photo to either the Dead Kennedys or their record label, so the Shriners sued the band, Newsweek and two local record stores for $45 million.
Vampire Weekend, ‘Contra’
Vampire Weekend’s 2010 album Contra is another case of the band being sued because permission to use a photo was never requested. Ann Kirsten Kennis is the model who appears on the front, and it was her teenage daughter who discovered that it was her image that was used.
The polaroid photo of Kennis had been taken about 30 years prior to the release of Contra. The Guardian reported that a photographer, named Tod Brody, claimed that Kennis signed a release for the band to use the photo in 2009, which she denied, and sued the band, their record label XL and Brody for $2 million.
“Don’t just use my picture all over the place,” she said. “It [feels] like someone [is] exploiting me.”
Vampire Weekend and XL said that they followed standard protocol in licensing the picture, and thus blamed Brody for any potential misleadings. They came to a settlement with Kennis, and then sued Brody in turn.
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Alice in Chains – Dirt
It’s easy to assume that the woman featured on the cover of Alice in Chains’ Dirt is Layne Staley’s former girlfriend Demri Parrott, but it’s actually model Mariah O’Brien. Photographer Rocky Schenck had worked with her before before for the cover of Spinal Tap’s Bitch School. Schenck told Revolver that the concept of a woman being half-buried in the desert was the band’s idea, so the set was made out of clay. “They built me into the set, and I had to hold my pee for, like, eight hours,” O’Brien added. She now works as an interior designer in Los Angeles.
Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath worked with Keith Macmillan for the cover of their self-titled debut album. He recruited model Louisa Livingstone for the shoot, in which she wore a long, black cloak. He told Rolling Stone that they tried a couple of “risqué” shots, but decided against anything too revealing. “Any kind of sexuality took away from the more foreboding mood. But she was a terrific model. She had amazing courage and understanding of what I was trying to do,” he explained. Now, Livingstone makes electronic music under the moniker Indreba.
Korn – Korn
Korn are no strangers to creepy album covers. Their debut Korn features a girl on a swing, staring at some sort of figure that’s casting a shadow beside her. That little girl is Justine Ferrara, the daughter of Paul Pontius, who worked at their label at the time, Immortal Records. “I just remember being at a park with this guy Dante, who’s really nice,” she recalled to Revolver. She wasn’t even allowed to see the cover until she was in the 8th grade because of the sinister tone it invokes.
Rage Against the Machine – Evil Empire
The child depicted on the cover of Rage Against the Machine’s sophomore album Evil Empire looks like a made-up painting, but it is actually based on a real person named Ari Meisel. “I didn’t model nor meet the band. My father was and is an art dealer and he represented the painter, Mel Ramos,” he explained to Kerrang!. “Mel painted the original painting of me, entitled CrimeBusters, as a birthday present for me when I turned 11. The group saw the painting in a book of Mel’s and liked it, then adapted it for their album cover.” Now, Meisel is an author and runs a company called Less Doing.
Nirvana – Nevermind
Ah, the legendary Nevermind baby. Spencer Elden is around 29 now, but when he was a few months old, he was featured on what would become one of the most legendary rock albums of all time. “Looking back, it feels kind of stupid doing interviews about it, because I had nothing to do with it, but a lot to do with it all at the same time,” he admitted to Time Magazine in 2016. At the time he did the interview, he was living with his mother and trying to become an artist.
Blink-182 – Enema of the State
The “nurse” featured on the front of Blink-182’s breakthrough album Enema of the State is model and adult film star Janine Lindemulder. Photographer David Goldman explained to Huffington Post that the imagery was inspired by the album’s title, which was originally supposed to be Turn Your Head and Cough. “And that’s why I came up with the idea of the glove. Obviously an enema is not really a glove type of thing. I thought it was a good visual,” he said. Lindemulder reportedly still works in the adult industry and performs at clubs.
Godsmack – Godsmack
Back when Toni Tiller did a few shoots with a Brooklyn-based photographer in 1994, she had no idea one of the images would end up on the cover of a rock album. “A few years later he was working with the band and they saw that in his book and liked it, so they purchased it for use. The next thing I know, my face everywhere. It was pretty strange, but I love weird stuff like that,” she explained to Kerrang! in 2018. “Now I live in the woods, I’m bald, usually barefoot, and into a variety of stuff. Meditation, strange objects, cooking, esoteric studies, cacti, dollhouses, rugs and artsy crap. In my spare time I have a reform school for rude kittens.”
Blind Melon – Blind Melon
The “bee girl” is one of Blind Melon’s signature symbols, as she appeared both on the cover of their self-titled debut album and in the video for the hit “No Rain.” However, the bees are not the same. The one on the cover of the 1992 album was actually a picture of drummer Glenn Graham’s sister Georgia, who was 10 years old when it was taken, as per Entertainment Weekly. For the music video, the band sought out a girl who looked similar to portray her, and that was a young actress named Heather DeLoach. We’re not too sure what Graham is up to, but DeLoach has a Facebook page called “The Bee Girl,” where she sometimes still dresses in bee costumes to commemorate her performance in “No Rain.”
Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream
Ali Laenger and Lysandra Roberts are the girls who appear on the cover of Smashing Pumpkins’ 1993 album Siamese Dream. When the Pumpkins reunited in 2018, they recreated the album cover with the duo all grown up, and Corgan noted that it “brought tears” to his eyes. The pair were also used for the 2018 tour promo teaser, in which they can be seen hugging each other and setting the band’s logo on fire. According to RadioX, Laenger is now a nurse and Roberts works in IT.
Hole – Live Through This
Ellen von Unwerth shot the cover for Hole’s Live Through This. “Courtney had the idea of re-enacting the scene of the movie Carrie, which I loved, too,” Unwerth told Another Magazine. The woman on the cover is model Leilani Bishop, who told Kerrang! she was ecstatic to be a part of the project, as she was a fan of Courtney Love’s husband’s band, Nirvana. Now, Bishop owns the company Botanica Bazaar.
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Mother’s Milk
Two models were originally shot for the cover of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Mother’s Milk — one was frontman Anthony Kiedis’ girlfriend, and the other was Dawn Alane, whose version was chosen. Pure Music notes that Alane wasn’t aware that her photo was going to be used, which caused a bit of strife. Her breasts were exposed on the original version, and stores refused to display it, so the official release has Kiedis and a rose over her nipples instead. Today, Alane is an artist.
Brand New – The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me
Nicholas Prior shot the photo that appears on the cover of Brand New’s The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me album. Named Untitled #44, Brand New saw the image at an art show in New York and wanted it for the record. Prior told Alt Press he initially declined the offer, but he agreed once he heard the album, which was sent to him by Interscope. The girl in the image is related to Prior, and she was four years old when it was taken, making her around 21 now. Prior added that she is a “gifted musician” herself.
