Pearl Jam - "Jeremy"

"Jeremy spoke in...spppooookkkeee iiiinnnnn..."

Cho Seung-Hui spoke in class today:

Following a week filled with school violence (the Virginia Tech shootings, the eigth anniversary of the horrific Columbine Massacre), I found myself turning to a song (and video) that has, quite frankly, freaked me out since I was a child: Pearl Jam's "Jeremy".

I do realize that many of my co-writers (and readers) of this site are probably alienated, maybe even cringing by my love of Pearl Jam, admittedly not a popular band round these indie parts (their recent records don't really help my case, truth be told). And yet, I've been a faithfull Pearl Jam fan (defender?) since my father brought home "Binaural" some time around its release, and I bought "Ten" as a wee laddy.

In retrospect, it's a bit of a shocking accomplishment that "Jeremy" managed to become the top ten hit it did. Among the seventies rock-worshipping grunge anthems of "Ten" lies this frightening look into the mind of a troubled teen, tormented by classmates, who "gnashed his teeth and bit the recess ladies breast" and was later driven to a suicide in front of the classroom. Over an undeniable creepy bass intro and "Ding! Ding!" response, Vedder paints a picture of a typically disturbed, violent adolescent:

Drawing pictures
Of mountain tops
With him on top
Lemon yellow sun
Arms raised in a V
Dead lay in pools of maroon below

History lesson: So, I've done some research on the inspiration for this song, and have come to find it was based on the tragic suicide of Jeremy Wade Delle at Richardson High School in Texas, 1991, a kid not that much younger than myself. "Jeremy was a good kid with a mountain of problems that he didn't deserve," said a teacher who knew him. Delle had recently switched into the school from a psychiatric hospital, and was almost immediately deprived of social contact in the In-School Suspension program. He arrived in English class on 1/8/91 and was told to get an admittance slip from the school office. Instead, he remarked, "Miss, I got what I really went for," put a .357 Magnum revolver in his mouth and blew his brains out in front of the class on that otherwise mundane Tuesday morning.

A girl named Lisa Moore knew Jeremy from the in-school suspension program. "He and I would pass notes back and forth and he would talk about life and stuff," she said. "He signed all of his notes, 'Write back.' But on Monday he wrote, 'Later days.' I didn't know what to make of it. But I never thought this would happen."
A fascinating collection of information on this incident.

Newspaper article of the school suicide, January 1991

Account of a fellow student at the school.

"An affluent suburb, 64 degrees and cloudy":

Anyway, this brings us to the song. Eddie "I Hate Being Famous" Vedder supposedly came across a newspaper blurb of this sad incident and wrote the song on the spot, attempting to get into the mind of the subject. Said Vedder in an interview:


"It came from a small paragraph in a paper which means you kill yourself and you make a big old sacrifice and try to get your revenge. That all you're gonna end up with is a paragraph in a newspaper...it does nothing...nothing changes. The world goes on and you're gone. The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself. Be stronger than those people. And then you can come back."

The song grows from this foreboding intro to a truly harrowing climax in which "King Jeremy the wicked speaks in class", so to speak. Eventually, parental neglection and peer alienation is too much to deal with.

Clearly I remember
Pickin' on the boy
Seemed a harmless little fuck
But we unleashed a lion

During the song's intense bridge, Vedder moans, groans and attempts to "forget this, to erase this from the blackboard." The blood literally splattered on to the blackboard, and I would imagine the witnesses to this horrific suicide remembered this image in their minds for years to come.

"Whoooahhh--ohh--oaahh! Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Aye, aye, aye, aye,!"

Anyway, don't kill yerself - it's a rather cowardly exit from this often confuzzling world. Below is the creepy video for this cathartic song. I remember it giving me the chills when I first viewed it as a child and, despite its admittedly cheesy nature, I still get a bit creeped out by a bunch of ten year olds doing the Nazi salute. Fun fact: From watching the music video, it's easy to get the misconception that Jeremy shot his classmates, from the images of the kids splatted with blood, a la Columbine. However, in reality, Jeremy only kills himself. This isn't clear due to the fact that MTV forced Pearl Jam to censor some of the violent imagery of Jeremy putting the barrel into his mouth and pulling the trigger during the video's climax.



P.S. I really like that little "dananana-na-na" guitar riff that Stone does after the "Jeremy spoke in class today" line.

P.S.S. Despite popular belief, not everyone named Jeremy are a danger to themselves or others.

Anyhoo, now I gotta go listen to some Beach Boys or something to cleanse myself of this dirtyviolentsuicidal talk.