Album anniversaries get people interested. “Where are they nows?” pique people’s interest. And “Feel old yet?”-style reminders of the passage of time always seem to surprise people. Spencer Elden is a walking amalgamation of all three. The 25-year-old is best known for being the baby on the cover of Nirvana‘s Nevermind and photographers have been paying him to recreate that famous image for his entire life.
He’s recreated the cover for the 10th anniversary and the 17th anniversary, and he’s been called up to speak on the album any time it reaches a milestone. In a recent interview with the New York Post, Elden recreated the photo yet again and explained what it was like to be so widely remembered with something he can’t even remember himself.
“The anniversary means something to me. It’s strange that I did this for five minutes when I was four months old and it became this really iconic image,” he told the Post. “It’s cool but weird to be part of something so important that I don’t even remember.”
“I went to a baseball game on opening day, the Dodgers. And I was looking out at all the people. I had a moment where I was like ‘Man, all these people have seen my baby penis when I was a baby,'” he added.
He said he’d like to have a quarter for every person who had seen his penis. His parents only made $200 for the photo and Elden has been talking about possibly making money off the shoot since way back.
“Every five years or so, somebody’s gonna call me up and ask me about Nevermind … and I’m probably gonna get some money from it,” he told Rolling Stone when he was 12 years old, wise in the way that only a child whose penis has been seen by the entire world can be.
(Via SPIN)
