Joining Mario for this week`s Story Behind The Song was Today Fm`s Ed Smith , present of Ed`s National Anthems Mon- Fri 7-9m and Ed`s Songs of Praise Sunday 7-10pm.

Ed knows a thing or two about the tunes! Today he picked a Pearl Jam classic "Jeremy" which carries quite a heavy story.

This song is based on the true story of Jeremy Delle, a 16-year-old who killed himself in front of his English class at Richardson High School in Richardson, Texas, on January 8, 1991. Eddie Vedder found out about Jeremy when he read an article about the incident in the Dallas Morning News, which read: "Because he had missed class, the teacher in his second-period English class told Jeremy to get an admittance slip from the school office. Instead, he returned with the gun, police said. He walked directly to the front of the classroom. 'Miss, I got what I really went for,' he said, then placed the barrel in his mouth and fired." EddieVedder could relate to the Jeremy Delle story, there was kid in his seventh grade class with similar leanings. 

Ed went on to tell us that the mother of the boy written about in this song has since spoken to say it wasn`t an accurate portrayal of what happened and thinks that the day he died should not be what defined his life. Eddie Vedder has since said that he had considered delving deeper into the real-life story but ultimately shied away. "That was a newspaper article," he said of the song's inspiration, "and then when I went to write about it, I thought of actually getting a hold of what the actual person it was written about, but then I thought that would be intruding."

Check out this this full chat by pressing the play/listen button on screen