Incredible way a keen Aussie cyclist recreated the controversial Nirvana baby album cover by riding 150km
- Pete Stokes recreated Nirvana’s Nevermind album cover with mapping software
- The iconic cover features a naked baby reaching for a banknote on a fishing hook
- The cyclist rode 150km around Adelaide to draw the baby artwork over a map
An Aussie cyclist has recreated a controversial Nirvana album cover using GPS software to overlay the iconic baby artwork over a map of Adelaide.
Pete Stokes, 45, spent eight hours riding across the city to draw the outline of the Nevermind cover, which features a baby underwater grabbing for a banknote attached to a fishing hook.
Using exercise-tracking app Strava, his 150km journey from Rostrevor in the east to Fulham Gardens in the west was imprinted over a map of a city.
He craftily sketched the baby’s facial features by looping around the CBD, before weaving in and out of suburban streets to trace the infant’s outstretched limbs.
Pete Stokes, 45, has recreated the famous Nevermind Nirvana album cover (pictured) using GPS-based App Strava
The national parks project manager said he regularly uses the technology to produce pictures, with other works including dinosaurs, dragons, foxes, and German composer Beethoven.
‘It’s whatever takes my fancy at the time. Nirvana has its place in my record collection,’ he told Guardian Australia.
‘When this album came out I was in high school – I was about 14, and that’s when you’re forming your love of music.’
Strava art has become a global trend as runners and cyclists from around the world flock to social media to show off their work.
In Australia, a Perth cycling group etched a goat and numbat while a Sydney fitness company have shared pictures of cows, whales, and dogs.
Meanwhile, the 1991 album cover – picked out by late lead singer Kurt Cobain – is at the centre of a bitter legal battle as Spencer Elden, who was four months old when the photo was taken, sues the band for child pornography.
Eldon, now 30, said Nirvana and the estate of Kurt Cobain ‘trafficked’ his image as a naked baby and is claiming $2.5million in damages for being ‘exploited as a minor’.
In the suit, filed in Los Angeles federal court last month, Elden said his parents never gave their release in writing for the photos, and were not paid.
The famous cover (pictured) features a baby in a pool grabbing for a banknote attached to the end of a fishing hook
Elden is asking for $150,000 from each of 17 defendants named in the suit, which include Cobain’s bandmates Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, Cobain’s former wife Courtney Love, the executor of Cobain’s estate, and the estate’s managers Guy Oseary and Heather Parry.
Despite the court case, Nirvana is planning to reissue the album to mark its 30th anniversary on 24 September, with the original cover photo still displayed on their official website.
Nevermind famous ushered in the grunge era and sold more than 30 million albums for Geffen Records.
The album was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Performance, and it’s title single Smells Like Teen Spirit earned nods for Best Rock Song and Best Hard Rock Performance.
Nirvana went onto release their third album, In Utero, in 1993, and the following year they found success once again with their acclaimed album based on their MTV Unplugged set in New York.