In Billboard‘s new article on the life and death of Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” star Trevor Wilson, Trevor’s mother Diane recalls talking to the video’s director Mark Pellington last year about Trevor’s poetry. Pellington then discussed a conversation he had with Eddie Vedder about Wilson’s death.
Diane says she spoke to Pellington in October and they discussed Trevor’s poetry, after which the director said that Vedder was interested in possibly writing a song based on one of Trevor’s poems some day. “I started going through his stuff and I came across a letter he wrote to me when he was going off to Europe to get his masters, and it crossed my mind to let Eddie look at it and see if he wanted to do something with it,” she says. (The band could not be reached for comment for this story.)
Like Jim, Diane is still struggling to emerge from the fog of grief a year later. She has a kind of peace, though, in knowing that even if the EMS crew had been able to revive Trevor, he likely wouldn’t have been the same. “I can only say that knowing Trevor and how sharp his mind was, and how smart he was, he would not want to be alive not having all his faculties,” she says.
After Pellington’s conversation with Diane, he reached out to the band and Vedder texted him back right away, asking for Diane’s number. “I said to [Vedder], ‘If you ever want to make something or do a song or try to honor him in some way, I’m in.”
Over his ensuing call with Trevor’s old co-star, Pellington says the men discussed being parents, their sadness over Trevor’s passing, and loss in general. “I grew up on the Jersey Shore, Ed grew up in the ocean as a surfer… so with Trevor drowning, it connected on a lot of abstract levels,” Pellington says.
Diane, not yet ready to dig deeper into Trevor’s belongings, has yet to get in touch with Vedder. “When you’re 12 years-old your life could go anywhere,” she says, thinking back on her son’s unusual journey. “I had said to him, ‘I’ve always supported you going wherever you wanted to and I know you have to go, but do you really have to go so far away?’ But I would never stop him from going [to Myanmar], that’s where his life was taking him.”
