On the 5th of June, the legendary rock band, Pearl Jam, shared the uncensored version of their iconic video for “Jeremy.” The band shared the video on the same day as National Gun Violence Awareness Day on Friday.

Fans of the band know that the video for “Jeremy,” which told the story of a young boy who shot himself in the middle of his classroom in front of his fellow students and teachers, was shelved on account of its political content.

On their Instagram account, Pearl Jam said that the “increase in gun violence” since “Jeremy” first came out is “staggering.”

At the time of the original video’s production, they couldn’t release it because of the TV censorship laws. Reportedly, the video for “Jeremy,” and the song’s lyrics as well, were about the 16-year-old boy from Dallas, Texas, Jeremy Delle, who shot himself in front of classmates in 1991.

However, as it was noted above, the video was put into storage at the time on account of the aforementioned censorship laws. Regardless, the band did earn several MTV VMAs for the updated video that year in 1993, including Video of the Year.

Pellington said he felt “chills” when he was recording the video for the classic song during a conversation with Billboard in 2017. The interview was for the song’s 25th anniversary three years ago. There’s no doubt that Pearl Jam has been passionate about gun violence for years.

In the early 1990s, the band released their t-shirt, “Choices,” which featured the hand of a little girl reaching for a gun amid a group of crayons. Pearl Jam re-issued this classic t-shirt on which the back of it reads, “9 out of 10 kids prefer crayons to guns.”

“10 out of 10 kids prefer crayons to guns,” is what the new t-shirt says. According to Billboard, proceeds from the shirt sales will go to their foundation, Vitalogy, which works with organizations around the country to decrease gun violence.

Advertisement

Back in March, Pearl Jam released their latest record, Gigaton, which went on to debut at number 1 on the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart. It was in the top five of the Billboard 200 as well.