Here are a few members of Kurt Cobain's (Nirvana's) production team talking about how the album cover was conceived and initial responses to it by the record company, major sales outlets and the police.
At the time of its reception (the early 1990s) the main issue for Walmart wasn't the baby eagerly trying to grasp a dollar from a hook under water, it was that the baby's penis could be seen in clear view. Cobain's team wanted to enter the mainstream music world by offering their old and new fans an image of new birth, symbolising the band's transition from independent to the mainstream. As with many bands who promote their albums with challenging album covers and music videos, they wanted to "push the envelope" of might be accepted by mainstream audiences while holding onto their old independent audiences.
Kurt Cobain wanted to shock and surprise audiences by creating a memorable image which would challenge business values. The baby symbolises innocence and the dollar bill, grubby temptation. The image of an innocent baby swimming underwater greedily grasping after a one dollar bill on a fish-hook is difficult to reconcile. After all, it is an odd combination: a baby would not understand the concept of money - yet big business aims to "hook each and everyone of us from as early an age as possible. The dollar on a hook is a fishing image in which once the baby ( and we) are hooked on the almighty dollar we can be reeled in and caught up in a world of money and greed and readily accept the values of capitalism. Only a few years before "Greed is good!" was the motto of Gordon Gekko, the greedy capitalist from Oliver Stone's
film, Wall Street from 1987.
Of course, the baby swimming underwater with its mouth open is not the only symbol of innocence on the cover: blue is associated with purity and water with baptism. For Cobain the baby's penis only symbolises the baby's gender; and it was only a problem for people who could not understand the concept of innocence and found sexuality a problem. Cobain thought that people who were troubled by this feature were probably "closet paedophiles" and he refused to change the image. Some observers thought the penis also represented the umbilical cord and that it would remind audiences that the open-mouthed baby was happy to being underwater as this is the natural state of a baby in the womb.
The baby is just below the surface and the deeper blue suggests greater depth which may signify danger or, as is more likely, the peace of mind implied by the band's name,
Nirvana:
"The Buddha described Nirvana as the perfect peace of the state of mind that is free from craving, anger and other afflictive states (kilesas). The subject is at peace with the world, has compassion for all and gives up obsessions and fixations." (From Wikipedia)Another interpretation is that the hook with the dollar bill on it may be periodically whipped away from the baby's reach. The title of the album is typographically written in dark blue as if it is shimmering water; the album's name,
Nevermind may well be setting up the teased baby's impending frustration at perhaps not grasping the money, with the reassurance that the baby's "state of mind" remains secure without the means to indulge in consumerism.
Ultimately, there is a greater irony at work here: the singer and his band still wanted their album to sell well - and make pots of money for themselves!
The album cover lends itself very easily to pastiche:
