Category Archives: Nirvana

Saint Laurent selling secondhand band T-shirts in its vintage collection

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Shirts in the range, which is dominated by Nirvana designs, have sold for as much as £3,295

Once the preserve of fans in moshpits at gigs, the band T-shirt cemented its high fashion status this week with an endorsement from a luxury fashion brand – and the price tag to match.

As part of their The Vintage collection, Saint Laurent is now selling secondhand band T-shirts for thousands of pounds. Nirvana dominates with the classic smiley face T-shirt selling for £700 and an In Utero T-shirt priced at £2,510. One T-shirt – featuring the cover of 1992 compilation Incesticide – has hit the headlines. It was sold for an eye-watering £3,295.

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Nirvana win lawsuit over Nevermind baby album cover

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A US judge has dismissed Spencer Elden’s claim that an image of him as a naked baby on the 1991 album constituted child sexual abuse

Spencer Elden, who appeared on the cover of Nirvana’s 1991 album Nevermind as a baby, has lost his lawsuit claiming that the image constituted child sexual abuse.

In the suit Elden claimed that the album cover, which depicts him at four months old and was taken by a family friend, had caused him “permanent harm” and a “lifelong loss of income-earning capacity”.

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John Peel: personal records and memorabilia set for Bonhams auction

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Items including a handwritten letter from David Bowie and Peel’s horn gramophone will be up for sale next month

Records and music memorabilia once owned by the celebrated former BBC DJ John Peel, including a signed mono pressing of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1968 album Two Virgins, is to be sold at auction in June.

Peel’s family said in a statement: “John/Dad was in a position to have access to many of the most celebrated people and events in the history of popular music. This is reflected in a wealth of souvenirs he collected. In going through the accumulation of 40 years of pop music moments, we decided that some of the most interesting items might find a home, with fans of his programme or of the artists whose music he played.”

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Nirvana seek to dismiss sexual abuse lawsuit concerning Nevermind cover

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Lawyers describe Spencer Elden’s claim of child exploitation as ‘not serious’ and says it fails to meet statute of limitations

Lawyers working on behalf of Nirvana have filed to dismiss a lawsuit made against the band by Spencer Elden, who appeared as a baby on the cover of their album Nevermind.

In the lawsuit filed in August, Elden claimed he was the victim of child sexual exploitation and that the cover artwork was a child sexual abuse image. “Defendants knowingly produced, possessed and advertised commercial child pornography depicting Spencer,” the lawsuit read.

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Keen spirit: Australian cyclist uses GPS to recreate Nirvana’s Nevermind cover

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Enthusiast marks album’s 30th anniversary with 150km ride around Adelaide using Strava to sketch naked baby

The naked Nirvana baby has been recreated yet again – this time on the unsuspecting streets of Adelaide.

Pete Stokes rode about 150km on a single-speed bike to sketch the outline of the famous Nevermind cover. His efforts, tracked by GPS-based site Strava, show the baby’s (slightly angry) face over the CBD and the banknote over the leafy eastern suburbs of Burnside and Kensington.

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Baby on Nevermind cover sues Nirvana over child sexual exploitation

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Spencer Elden, who appeared at four months old on iconic album design, claims the image is child pornography

Spencer Elden, who appeared as a naked baby on one of rock music’s most iconic album covers – Nevermind by Nirvana – is suing the band, claiming he was sexually exploited as a child.

In a lawsuit filed in a Californian district court against numerous parties, including the surviving members of the band, Kurt Cobain’s widow Courtney Love, and the record labels that released or distributed the album in the last three decades, Elden alleges the defendants produced child pornography with the image, which features him swimming naked towards a dollar bill with his genitalia visible.

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‘It’s cooler to hang Lennon’s guitar than a Picasso’: pop culture wins out at auctions

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Sales of items from celebrities such as Janet Jackson and K-poppers BTS are trending – and reframing what goes under the hammer

Is celebrity merchandise the new Monet? Auction houses are in flux, with more and more pop culture items being sold under the hammer for six and seven-figure sums.

Last month, Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills hosted a three-day auction of Janet Jackson’s personal belongings, including some of her most iconic stage outfits. Buyers included Kim Kardashian, who snagged Jackson’s outfit from the music video for her 1993 classic If for $25,000 (£18,000) and, on Instagram, said she was “such a fan” of the singer.

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Dave Grohl’s teenage obsessions: ‘I learned drums by arranging pillows on my floor’

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Ahead of the 10th Foo Fighters album, their frontman recalls the music and scenes that made him – from punk gigs in Chicago to sleeping on floors in Italian squats

Before I was a teenager, I started playing music in my bedroom by myself. I fell in love with the Beatles, then began to discover classic rock. I went from Kiss to Rush to AC/DC, but in 1983 I discovered punk rock music through a cousin in Chicago. My world turned upside down. My favourite bands were Bad Brains and Naked Raygun; I listened to Dead Kennedys and Black Flag. My introduction to live music came when my brother took me to a punk show in a small bar in Chicago. I didn’t have that festival/stadium/arena rock experience; I just saw four punk rock dudes on the stage, playing this fast three-chord music, with about 75 people in the audience climbing all over each other. It changed my life. One of the most prolific scenes in hardcore American punk rock was in Washington DC, just across the bridge [from Grohl’s home town of Springfield, Virginia]. So I started going to see bands like Minor Threat and Fugazi. By the time I was 14, I was cutting and dyeing my hair and wearing leather jackets. All I wanted to do was leave school, jump in a van and tour shitty basement clubs with my punk band.

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Kurt Cobain ‘MTV Unplugged in New York’ guitar sells for $6m

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Nirvana frontman’s 1959 Martin D-18E sold to Australian who will put it on tour, with proceeds going to help struggling artists

The guitar used by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain during the band’s famous MTV Unplugged in New York concert has sold for more than $6m (£4.8m) at auction.

The 1959 Martin D-18E featured in the grunge group’s performance in November 1993, five months before Cobain’s death aged 27.

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Nirvana sue designer Marc Jacobs over alleged copyright breach

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Representatives of the band are suing the brand over a logo in its Redux Grunge collection

Nirvana are suing designer Marc Jacobs for copyright infringement. The brand’s recent Redux Grunge collection features several items that resemble the Seattle grunge band’s black-and-yellow iconography, Forbes reports.

Representatives for the group, which split in 1994 following the death of frontman Kurt Cobain, claim that Marc Jacobs’ unauthorised use of “Nirvana’s copyrighted image on and to promote its products is intentional”. The suit claims that the use of Nirvana’s iconography, which the group has used since 1992, is to “make the ‘Grunge’ association with the collection more authentic”.

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