Джереми: История песни Pearl Jam

1992 single by Pearl Jam

"Jeremy" is a song by American rock band Pearl Jam, with lyrics written by vocalist Eddie Vedder and music composed by bassist Jeff Ament. "Jeremy" was released in August 1992 as the third single from Pearl Jam's debut album, Ten (1991). The song was inspired by a newspaper article Vedder read about Jeremy Wade Delle, a high school student who shot himself in front of his English class on January 8, 1991. It reached the number 5 spot on both the Album and Modern Rock Billboard charts. The song gained popularity for its music video, directed by Mark Pellington and released in 1992, which received heavy rotation by MTV and became a hit. The original music video for "Jeremy" was directed and produced by Chris Cuffaro. Epic Records and MTV later rejected the music video, and released the version directed by Pellington instead. In 1993, the "Jeremy" video was awarded four MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Video of the Year.

"Jeremy" is based on two different true stories. It was sometimes erroneously known as "Jeremy Spoken" due to the most pronounced lyrics emphasizing those two words. The song takes its main inspiration from a newspaper article about a 15 year old boy named Jeremy Wade Delle from Richardson, Texas, who shot himself in front of his teacher and his second period English class of 30 students on the morning of January 8, 1991. In a 2009 interview, Vedder said that he felt "the need to take that small article and make something of it—to give that action, to give it reaction, to give it more importance." Delle was described by schoolmates as "real quiet" and known for "acting sad".</blockquote>

The second story the song is based on, involved a student that Vedder knew from his junior high school in San Diego, California, who committed a school shooting. He elaborated further in a 1991 interview:
I actually knew somebody in junior high school, in San Diego, California, that did the same thing, just about, 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 and I don't know the song, I think it says a lot. I think it goes somewhere and a lot of people interpret it different ways and it's just been recently that I've been talking about the true meaning behind it and I hope no one's offended and believe me, I think of Jeremy when I sing it.

In July 1991, Vedder became acquainted with photographer Chris Cuffaro. Vedder suggested Cuffaro film a music video for the band. On Vedder's insistence, Epic gave Cuffaro permission to use any song off Ten. He chose "Jeremy", which was not intended to be released as a single at the time. Epic refused to fund the clip, forcing Cuffaro to finance it himself. Cuffaro raised the money by taking out a loan and selling all of his furniture and half his guitar collection. Cuffaro and his crew spent a day filming several scenes of a young actor, Eric Schubert, playing the part of Jeremy. The scenes with Pearl Jam were filmed in a warehouse on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. A revolving platform was rigged at the center of the set, and the members of the band climbed on it individually to give the illusion of the song being performed as a crew member spun the giant turntable by hand. Vedder appeared with black gaffer's tape around his biceps as a mourning band for the real Jeremy.

By the time Cuffaro finished his music video, Epic had warmed up to the idea of releasing "Jeremy" as a single. Music video director Mark Pellington was brought in to handle the project. Pellington said that he "wasn't a huge fan of the band, but the lyrics intrigued me—I spoke to Eddie, and I really got connected to his passion." Pellington and Pearl Jam convened in Kings Cross, London, England, in June 1992 to film a new version of the "Jeremy" music video. Working with veteran editor Bruce Ashley, Pellington's high budget video incorporated rapid fire editing and juxtaposition of sound, still images, graphics and text elements with live action sequences to create a collage effect. The classroom scenes were filmed at Bayonne High School in New Jersey. The video also featured many close ups of Vedder performing the song, with the other members of Pearl Jam shown only briefly. Some of the stock imagery was similar to the original video, but when it came to the band Pellington focused on Vedder. Vedder thus serves as the video's narrator. Ament said, "It was mostly Mark and Ed's vision. In fact, I think it would have been a better video if the rest of the band wasn't in it. I know some of us were having a hard time with the movie type video that Mark made, because our two previous videos were made live." The video premiered on August 1, 1992, The success of the "Jeremy" video helped catapult Pearl Jam to fame. Pellington stated, "I think that video tapped into something that has always been around and will always be around. You're always going to have peer pressure, you're always going to have adolescent rage, you're always going to have dysfunctional families." The video won four MTV Video Music Awards in 1993, including Best Video of the Year, Best Group Video, Best Metal/Hard Rock Video, and Best Direction.

Jeremy is shown at school being alienated from, and taunted by, his classmates, running shirtless through a forest, and screaming at his parents at a dinner table. Only Jeremy is shown moving in the video; all of the other characters depicted are almost always frozen in a series of stationary tableaus. Shots of words depicting others' presumed descriptions of Jeremy—such as problem, peer, harmless, and bored—frequently appear onscreen. Included are three biblical allusions: "the serpent was subtil", from Genesis Genesis (3:1), "the unclean spirit entered", from Mark Mark (5:13), and Genesis (3:6), referencing the concept of original sin. As the song becomes more dense and frenetic, Jeremy's behavior becomes increasingly agitated. Strobe lighting adds to the anxious atmosphere. Jeremy is shown standing, arms raised in a V (as described in the lyrics at the beginning of the song), in front of a wall of billowing flames. He is later shown staring at the camera while wrapped in an American flag, surrounded by fire. He then stands shirtless in an artificial forest, surrounded by various drawings. He becomes aggravated, breaks off a branch, and swings it at various trees in anger, all while lights flash around his body. The final scene of the video shows Jeremy striding into class shirtless, tossing an apple to the teacher, and standing before his classmates. He reaches down and draws back his arm as he takes a gun out of his pocket. (The gun only appears onscreen in the unedited version of the video.) The edited version cuts to an extreme close up of Jeremy's face as he puts the barrel of the gun in his mouth, closes his eyes, and pulls the trigger. After a flash of light, the screen turns black. The next shot is a pan across the classroom, showing Jeremy's blood spattered classmates, all completely still, recoiling in horror. The video ends on a shot of a dangling blackboard, on which all the harsh terms and phrases seen earlier are scrawled.

Pellington's original video shows Jeremy putting the gun in his mouth at the climax, but this ran afoul of MTV restrictions on violent imagery, so the weapon was cropped out of the shot by zooming in on the upper part of Jeremy's face. Pellington himself dismisses this interpretation of the video. After "Jeremy", Pearl Jam backed away from making music videos. "Ten years from now," Ament said, "I don't want people to remember our songs as videos." The band did not release another video until 1998's "Do the Evolution", which is entirely animated. In 1996, a shooting occurred at Frontier Junior High School in Moses Lake, Washington, that left three dead and a fourth injured. The prosecutors for the case said the shooter, Barry Loukaitis, was influenced by the edited version of the music video. The video was included in MuchMusic's list of the 12 most controversial videos, due to its subject of suicide, and in light of school shootings. The uncensored version of the video was remastered in high definition and released on Pearl Jam's official YouTube channel on June 5, 2020, to mark National Gun Violence Awareness Day. The remastered version also features a new audio track, remixed by Brendan O'Brien for the 2009 reissue of Ten. This version was shown as part of VH1 Classic's retrospective Pearl Jam Ten Revisited, which coincided with the album's rerelease.

"Jeremy" was first performed live by Pearl Jam on May 17, 1991, at the Off Ramp Café in Seattle, Washington. The band's 1992 appearance on MTV Unplugged included a performance of the song. At the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, the band had intended to play the Dead Boys song "Sonic Reducer", but MTV insisted on "Jeremy", since the video was in heavy rotation (although it had been released after the deadline for that year's awards). At the end of the intense performance, however, Vedder managed to sneak in a reference to "Sonic Reducer" by singing that song's first line: "I don't need no I don't need no mom and dad." Live performances of "Jeremy" can be found on the "Animal" single, the "Dissident"/Live in Atlanta box set, various official bootlegs, the Live at the Gorge 05/06 box set, and the Drop in the Park LP included in the Super Deluxe edition of the Ten reissue. Performances of the song are also included on the DVD Touring Band 2000 and the MTV Unplugged DVD included in the Ten reissue.

+Release dates and formats for "Jeremy"RegionDateFormat(s)Label(s)Ref. (Reference)EuropeAugust 17, 1992CDEpicUnited KingdomSeptember 14, 19927 inch vinyl, 12 inch vinyl, CD, cassetteUnited StatesJune 27, 1995CD