Jeremy Spoke In Class Today

“I’ll never forget the shot, and it’s a pretty famous shot, that comes around and reveals the look in [Eddie's] eye that’s almost evil incarnate. I’ll never forget saying ‘Oh my God’ when I [was] sitting there watching the monitor and the shot was happening. I actually did get chills.” – director Mark Pellington to the author, on directing Eddie in the “Jeremy” video.

An affluent suburb. 9:45 in the morning.

Exactly 20 years ago this weekend, a Texas high-schooler named Jeremy ended his life tragically and “Jeremy,” one of Ten‘s classic songs, was born. Brand-new Seattle resident Eddie Vedder, who had become Mookie Blaylock/Pearl Jam’s singer just three months earlier, sat down with the newspaper and came across a January 9, 1991 wire story from the Dallas Morning News that began with the headline “Richardson Teen-ager kills Himself In Front Of Classmates.” The article described how Jeremy Wade Delle, a sophomore just a month shy of his 16th birthday, put a .357 Magnum in his mouth in Ms. Barnett’s second period English II class at Richardson High School in Richardson, Texas at a quarter to ten on the morning of January 8, 1991.

“At Home Drawing Pictures…”

Eddie recalled his retreat into Pearl Jam’s basement rehearsal space at Galleria Potatohead in Seattle to write “Jeremy,” on the Rockline radio show on October 19, 1993. “I remember one night in this basement when I was writing that I thought, man… Some kid did this,” Eddie said. “I didn’t make that up and that’s a fact. It came from a small paragraph in a paper.”

“Daddy Didn’t Give Affection…”

That Dallas Morning News article that formed the basis of what Eddie read went into eerie detail about Jeremy Delle’s last moments, saying he pulled the trigger in front of the class of 30 after leaving an undisclosed suicide note with a friend. The story called him a “loner who had been in counseling” with his father, and mentioning his parents were divorced and that he lived with is dad, who had been called to the Principal’s office to talk about Jeremy’s poor attendance. Delle’s regular in-house suspension is also alluded to.

Eddie told Rockline that it struck him hard that such a huge gesture could be reduced to such a small piece of newsprint. “It 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,” Eddie said on Rockline in 1993. “Sixty-three degrees and cloudy in a suburban neighborhood. That’s the beginning of the video and that’s the same thing is that in the end; 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 then those people. And then you can come back. That’s kinda what I did.”

“Clearly I Remember Picking On The Boy….”

Eddie had revealed that there was second kid that co-inspired the song when Pearl Jam were guests on Dallas’ KLOL, with host David Sadoff in December 1991. “I actually knew somebody in junior high school, in San Diego, California that did the same thing, just about,” Eddie told Sadoff. “[He] didn’t take his life but ended up shooting up an oceanography room. I remember being in the halls and hearing it. And I had actually had altercations with this kid in the past. I was kind of a rebellious fifth-grader and I think we got in fights and stuff. So it’s a bit about this kid named Jeremy and it’s also a bit about a kid named Brian that I knew.”

It’s unclear exactly what day Eddie set his thoughts about Jeremy and Brian to Jeff Ament’s music, and the band was off to Vancouver on for a gig at Harpo’s opening for Alice In Chains, but like many early 1991 shows, the setlist hasn’t yet been re-uncovered, so there’s no way to know if Mookie Blaylock had this key “Ten” song in their repertoire yet. And though “Jeremy” isn’t on a confirmed setlist until the Jan. 10May 17, 1991 show at Seattle’s Off Ramp (well after the recording of “Ten” was over), the song certainly existed in its final form by March 27, 1991, the date of Eddie’s hand-labeled cassette of “1st Takes London Bridge” from the “Ten” sessions.

By mid-1991, the song was a staple of Pearl Jam’s setlists, and with “Alive” still brand new, it was clear the band were setting their sights on “Jeremy” as a follow-up single. In fact, considering the fact that the band enlisted photographer Chris Cuffaro for a video they shot on Oct. 4, 1991, “Jeremy” almost trumped “Even Flow” as the second single from “Ten.” Cuffaro’s black and white take, which prominently featured Eddie in a white tank top with a black arm band and a different boy playing the role of Jeremy, was shelved in favor of running with “Even Flow,” whose video was a straight-forward live clip filmed a Jan. 17, 1992 PJ show at Seattle’s Moore Theatre. But “Jeremy” was still on the agenda.

Below: The 1991 Chris Cuffaro version of “Jeremy”

“We Unleashed A Lion…”

The text that appears in the “Jeremy” video: an affluent suburb (typed) the woman was killed instantly (newspaper) charges against girl… ying stun town… the teenagers stand accused of (newspaper) 4 teenagers shot (newspaper) girls in torture… Indiana (newspaper) 64 degrees and cloudy (typed) 3:30 in the afternoon (typed) bullets (newspaper) taunted the crowd with racial epithets (typed) Bishops say they are determined to halt child molesting by Priests (newspaper) jeremy (handwritten) the serpent was subtil (handwritten) peer (handwritten)

genesis 3:6 (handwritten) described as….. (handwritten) bored (handwritten) ignored (handwritten) because I say so (handwritten) [classroom blackboard] …behavior Life Crisis

- Anxiety disorders

- Environmental Stress

- Hereditary Factors

- Factors that affect black (handwritten) problem (handwritten) 3:30 in the afternoon (handwritten) an affluent suburb (handwritten) 64 degrees and cloudy (handwritten)

On the strength of his video for Public Enemy’s “Shut ‘Em Down,” Mark Pellington was hired to have another go at making a “Jeremy” video and shortly after doing a massive eight-page treatment of his vision for the song, he was ensconced in Kings Cross Studios in England with the band, likely on June 7, 1992, the free day Pearl Jam had between playing the Finsbury festival in London on June 6 and rocking Pinkpop in the Netherlands on June 8.

The resulting video, with its eerie text and the boy standing in front of his blood-spattered classroom, has become almost as famous as the song itself. I spoke with director Mark Pellington several years ago about it, and he delved deep into the making of the clip:

“I had a 45 minute conversation with [Eddie] about the story about the kid,” Pellington told me. “It was kind of the normal methodology when you do a piece; You have a one on one with the writer of the song…. We connected… I understood they were looking for a story that would go into other levels, other themes about the song.”

“I wrote a seven or eight page treatment,” Pellington continued, “And sent it to them and they were very supportive. It was quite a long, elaborate, emotional treatment so we set about onto casting and production. We shot the band in England, and thank God, they were like, ‘We don’t want to play our instruments, we want to be in it but very little and really have Eddie’s performance be the main anchor.”

“We set up a very very simple dolly track and shot him. And really the power of the song, the emotion, was very pure that came out of him. I think we did 3 or 4 takes. I’ll never forget the shot, and it’s a pretty famous shot, that comes around and reveals the look in his eye that’s almost evil incarnate. I’ll never forget saying ‘Oh my God’ when I’m sitting there watching the monitor and the shot was happening. I actually did get chills.”

The well-known 1992 “Jeremy” video directed by Mark Pellington:

“We did five different versions [of the ending],” Pellington went on. “One where the kid brings the gun up to his mouth and its blurred and then you cut in closer and you see his head sligtly move… [is] the unedited version, which is what I show to people and I have shown in public at screenings. it’s still very subtle but it’s clearer what happens. Right as he puts it in his mouth it cuts to ’3:30 in the afternoon, an affluent suburb.’”

“I came up with the phrases and worked with a young graphic artist who wrote them on black showcards. I shot like 40 phrases. It was just to have a whole other level of subtextual comment on it, from the first instance of evil in the Bible to the interior thoughts of his parents to kind of a third person commenting on it.”

“I don’t think I directed [Eddie]. I don’t think I told him to do one thing. I think I maybe told him a couple of times to keep his head up because I wanted to see his eyes. He didn’t want to look into the camera although he does once by mistake and I kept that in there. When you’ve got something pure, let it happen, capture it, and make sure that you don’t fuck it up.”

Jeremy’s Legacy

Today, in Richardson Texas, incidentally, it is forecast to be 63 degrees, but not cloudy. Twenty years later, we’re still listening to the song born when a Texas teen died.