"Jeremy" Wins Big At The VMAs

1993

Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" video wins four awards, including Video of the Year, at the MTV Video Music Awards. Pearl Jam responds by not making any more videos until 1998.

In addition to Video of the Year, "Jeremy" wins for Best Group Video, Best Metal/Hard Rock Video, and Best Director (Mark Pellington). Eddie Vedder is nonplussed in his acceptance speeches. "I don't know how you can say it's the best," he says. "It's just a little piece of art, and you can't put art into a competition." Accepting Video of the Year, the group is joined on stage by the star of the video, Trevor Wilson. "Hey everybody, this is Trevor. He lives," Vedder says, referring to the ambiguous ending of the video where Jeremy's classmates end up spattered in blood (the video was supposed to end by showing Jeremy shooting himself, but MTV made them edit out the gun). The song takes on a heavy topic and is based on a real-life tragedy: In 1991, a 15-year-old student in Texas named Jeremy Delle killed himself in his English class. "If it weren't for music, I think I would have shot myself in the front of the classroom," Vedder says. "It really is what kept me alive." The group is much more animated when they perform, with Neil Young joining them on stage as a surprise guest for "Rockin' In The Free World." Young and Pearl Jam, kindred musical spirits, collaborate many more times over the years. For Wilson, it's his last appearance on camera, as he gives up acting, going on to study international relations at New York University and work for the United Nations. In 2016, he drowns while swimming in Puerto Rico.