Trigger Inside: Kill your popularity or kill yourself, part 1: Pearl Jam

Continuing the subject of artists overwhelmed by their popularity, let's stay in the beginning of the '90s, but move from England to Seattle. In 1992 Seattle, the United States and soon the whole world exploded in the revival of classic rock sound in the form of the so-called "grunge", which really was not a genre of its own, but rather a way of saying "we can't call it classic rock, 'cause it's modern, so let's make up a new stupid label".

And in the very eye of the storm was a band calling themselves Pearl Jam. At first their debut album Ten had not received too much attention. But then MTV came to the rescue. My younger non-existent readers may not be aware of that, but at that time MTV was able to create a superstar overnight, just by putting a music video on heavy rotation - much like the Internet of today does, when a video goes viral on YouTube. And Pearl Jam went viral as hell. And all of this mainly because of the video you are just about to see. Other singles from Ten had accompanying music videos too, but nowhere near as spectacular as this one. And at that time MTV... wait, I already said that.

The breakthrough single was Jeremy. The song and consequently the video are inspired by a story of a 15-year-old boy, who shot himself in front of his classmates. As the vocalist and lyricist Eddie Vedder explained:

"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."

Well, in the next episode I'll tell you a story of a gentleman, who had more success in that department. But now back to Jeremy. Powerful lyrics and passionate delivery of Eddie Vedder, backed up by the emotional video helped catapult Pearl Jam to fame. The song reached the number five spot on both the "Mainstream" and "Modern Rock" Billboard charts, received nominations for Best Rock Song and Best Hard Rock Performance at the 1993 Grammy Awards and the video won four MTV Video Music Awards the same year, including Best Video of the Year, Best Group Video, Best Metal/Hard Rock Video and Best Direction.

Vedder's indirect, poetic style of writing climaxing with a chilling line "Jeremy spoke in class today..." was illustrated well by the video, focused more on suggesting events than explicitly showing them. The interesting thing is the director Mark Pellington decided to show the boy putting the barrel of the gun in his mouth, closing his eyes, and pulling the trigger. MTV's censors deleted this scene as too drastic. Ironically, the ambiguous close-up of Jeremy at the end of the edited video, combined with the defensive posture of Jeremy's classmates and the large amount of blood, led many viewers to believe that the video ended with Jeremy shooting his classmates, not himself.

The great passion in Vedder's voice is not surprising, because apparently he could easily relate to this story, having had a difficult childhood himself. Many of his songs tell stories of troubled youth and child abuse, including Why Go?, Daughter and the famous Alive.

His sudden popularity that had skyrocketed over the period of just months (if not weeks) was too much to bear for him and he did not want to end up like Jeremy. The rest of the band fully agreed on this subject, so they did the most obvious thing to do at that time for someone wanting to lower his popularity. I bet that having read about George Michael, you already guessed. And you guessed correctly. They stopped making music videos. The band did not release another video until 1998's Do The Evolution, which was entirely animated. And their popularity slowly declined, indeed, despite the fact that subsequent albums kept the same top quality and hit potential.

Real life has written a sad epilogue to this story. Less than two years later a suicide of a certain musician confirmed that Pearl Jam's choice of shunning popularity in order not to fall insane was a good decision after all. As strange as it could get, the musician - obviously a troubled kid himself not so long before - shot himself in the head, following in Jeremy's footsteps.

Pearl Jam - "Jeremy"

Well, you expected to see the bottom of the page here, but I have another (hopefully) interesting story. The above video was not the only one made to this song.

In July 1991, Eddie Vedder became acquainted with photographer Chris Cuffaro. Vedder suggested Cuffaro film a music video for the band. On Vedder's insistence, the record label Epic gave Cuffaro permission to use any song off Ten. He decided on 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. 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. I don't know if Cuffaro shot himself too, after learning he had just spent all of his personal money and got screwed. Below is the original video. And yes - Pellington's is better.