Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Cookies performing Chains.
CD Review
The Rock and Roll Era: The ‘60s: Rave On, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1990
Chains-Carol King
Chains, my baby's got me locked up in chains
And they ain't the kind that you can see
Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah
Chains, well I can't break away from these chains
Can't run around 'cause I'm not free
Woh these chains of love won't let me be
Now believe me when I tell you
I think you're fine, I'd like to hold you
But I can't break away from all of these chains
My baby's got me locked up in chains
And they ain't the kind that you can see
Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah
I wanna tell you pretty baby
Your lips look sweet, I'd like to kiss them
But I can't break away from all these chains
My baby's got me locked up in chains
And they ain't the kind that you can see
Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah
My baby's got me locked up in chains
And they ain't the kind that you can see
Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah
Chains
Chains of love
Chains of love
Oh these chains of love gotta hold on me
************
“No Jimmy, no I can’t go out with you tonight, I have to study for tomorrow’s biology exam ,“ protested Lorraine, Lorraine Dubois, Jimmy LaCroix’s , one and only, his ball and chain, his, well, sweetie, the one that he gave his everlovin’ class ring to. Jimmy in turn protested that he had not seen Lorraine for five whole days since he had been ill and therefore indisposed. Jimmy tried every trick in the book, including the old dodge of studying together but nothing worked, nothing that night. Or for that matter the next several nights. Jimmy was beside himself.
See before Lorraine Jimmy was strictly what his corner boys called a “love ‘em and leave “em kind of guy. (Said corner boys holding forth over at Mama’s Pizza Parlor, the one on Main Street with the jukebox and kind of reserved after school and on weekends for Olde Saco teen-agers. Others could go there at their peril during those hours and were kindly advised to go to Mama’s on Atlantic Avenue that was kind of set aside for families and others in no particular need of jukeboxes, lively girl and boy watching, or stuff that might other cause too much excitement contrary to doctor’s orders.)
Such guys, such callow youth, existed even in the very attached by sixteen (and therefore theoretically for life), married by eighteen, two bratty kids by twenty world of the old French–Canadian quarters in Olde Saco up in Maine (the local F-Cs called it the Acre, as in God’s Little Acre, the actual residents, at least some called its Hell’s Acre). Jimmy, having seen that unchanging cycle in his downhill parents, his older brother Jean, his older sister Lara, and about twelve hundred other Acre families wanted none of that. No way. No for him.
Until Lorraine. Until not so sweet Lorraine that is. She threw Jimmy for a loop and had him running through hoops from the first time he eyed her in tenth grade homeroom over at Olde Saco High. So Jimmy surrendered, surrendered without a fight, because after all what is a guy going to do when a frill (local Acre guy talk for a girl, woman in those days) has a guy all balled up and calling her every night just to hear the sound of her voice. So every one of those nights after Lorraine gave Jimmy her nightly excuse for the day Jimmy went to his room, threw his younger brother, Raymond out, closed and locked the door and played Chains by The Cookies a few times and fell asleep. Raymond knew enough not to knock and so he spent more than one night sleeping on the downstairs sofa.
P.S. Jimmy and Lorraine were married, married over at Saint Brigitte’s (just like their parents and grandparents) at eighteen, had two so-so bratty kids by twenty and the last I heard were still “chained” together. Go figure.
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