The 1984 Album Cover of William It Was Really Nothing by The Smiths.
The song "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" was released by the Smiths in August 1984. Despite being relatively short, clocking in with a runtime of less than 2 minutes, and being released as a B-side song on the album for "William It Was Really Nothing"; "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want," has built up a strong following with usage in numerous movies over the years. Steven Morrissey, the lead singer of the Smiths, said years later that the song came very close to being the perfect Smiths song. It was written in one afternoon in 1984 by Johnny Marr, the Smiths' guitar player. As for me, the first time I heard it I literally felt chills--but in a good way.
I was a bit moody during my undergrad years at Mississippi State. I was also often reclusive, at least when I had the choice to be. The year 2002 was a very strange time with most people discussing terrorism as small talk along with the news reports of obviously unconstitutional activities being done in response to the terrorist events. I was in a public university studying political science and training in an Air Force ROTC detachment for a future in the military. And at that point, it seemed the world was completely different from the one I thought I inhabited when I first submitted my paperwork to get into college. In the quiet afternoons after class, I would sit in my dorm room and listen to music occassionally. The Smiths were one of the bands that would get frequent play with "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" being one of my favorites.
Johnny Marr initially called the song, "The Irish Waltz." Marr thought it reflected the longing often found in Irish ballads.
My life during the "Global War on Terror" years was unremarkable. I finished my degree and commissioned in the Air Force. But I was assigned for a "Cold War" job in a bunker. While I was in safe surroundings in America, a classmate of mine from high school was sent into overseas into combat. I don't know much about what Aaron experienced other than to know he saw a friend die in front of him. Of course, that's really all you need to know. And it obviously took a toll on him from the messages I got about it years later. He also loved the Smiths. I saw the Smiths as just one of many bands I liked. My old classmate Aaron seemed to put the band on the top of his list since they were a prominent fixture on his MySpace page.
Aaron never seemed to recover from what he saw in Iraq. From what I found out later, he gained weight and retreated into his grief. He joined a political group and often sought out conflict and physical confrontations with others. His independent mind turned to an almost recursive opposition to anything from established institutions resulting ultimately to his early demise. From what I read later, Aaron died of complications from a virus that was fully preventable. The Aaron that I read about seemed so foreign to the Aaron that I knew in high school.
Years later, Johnny Marr said that writing "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want," one afternoon in 1984 was one of the best memories of his life.
"Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want," is a song about basically anything you want it to be. The universal nature of yearning and striving that each of us feels is easily translated through the song's lyrics. The song doesn't have to provide details since the structure of that common desire is enough. The framework gives the vector but the sparesness allows you to define the meaning. Aaron thought that joining the military could give him what he wanted. Later, Aaron thought that aligning with political groups could give him what he wanted. In the end, I think only we can give ourselves what we want. The colleges, the television news, the books, and all the rest of our modern world is only supposed to provide the framework. But unlike "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want," the structure of the world around us is trying to convince us it can supply the meaning too. Whether that is true or not, I'll leave that up to you.
