The Hidden Meaning Of Pearl Jam's Jeremy

"Jeremy" is track six on Pearl Jam's stellar debut album, Ten, and it showcases the already-mature musicianship and lyricism of a band that, in the intervening years, has done little but continue to explore and evolve its sound. "Jeremy's" instantly recognizable, ominous opening bassline serves as a prelude to the building menace of the story to come, full of vivid lines such as the first verse's Lemon yellow sun / Arms raised in a V / And the dead lay / In pools of maroon below. Jeremy, the young man portrayed in the song, imagines himself as a wicked ruler of an equally wicked world in response to the dismissiveness he's been subjected to his entire life. In the end, he "spoke in class today," as the song says, through the only means left to him.

Many have speculated whether or not "Jeremy" was inspired by some real-life event. As it turns out, the answer is yes: singer Eddie Vedder was inspired by a story he read in the Dallas Morning News about a nearly-16 year old young man named Jeremy Delle who committed suicide on January 8, 1991, at Richardson High School in Richardson, Texas. Delle, an artist by nature, had been told by the teacher of his second-period English class to get an admission slip from the school office because he missed class. As reported in Songfacts, he returned to class, gun in hand, and said, 'Miss, I got what I really went for,' before putting the barrel of the gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. He was one of three students in the school that year to commit suicide.