Jeremy, one of Pearl Jam's most famous songs, was inspired by the true story of a boy who took his own life because he was tired of the relentless bullying he suffered at school.
1991 – Jeremy Wade Delle is a student at Richardson High School in Texas.
He is tired of the torment his classmates inflict on him every day. He is ready to do something drastic. One day, after telling his teacher, "Miss, I'll show you what I came here to do", he kills himself by shooting himself in the mouth with a .357 Magnum in front of his classroom door. Eddie Vedder reads the news in a newspaper: it is buried in a small column item. The singer is stunned that a tragedy of this magnitude has been reduced to a few lines: "That act was Jeremy's revenge," Vedder remarks, though he adds, "the most effective revenge is to live".
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That story reminds Eddie of another student he had argued with several years earlier, who had fired a gun at school. And so he decides to write a song that is a desperate cry against an America that gives its children the means to kill and to kill themselves, rather than strengthening their will to live. The dramatic intensity of the track's lyrics — in which Vedder does not confine himself to the role of narrator but expresses his own emotions — is heightened by the raw, cutting guitars of Stone Gossard and Mike McCready. Though it is Jeff Ament's bass (a special 12-string Hamer) that lends deep solidity to the entire structure of Jeremy.