Interview: Tom Jones, legendary soul singer

Published on Sunday 25 July 2010 15:13

At the age of 70, Tom Jones has stopped dyeing his hair and started to do a little soul-searching instead. What did he find?

• Tom Jones

SHE'S A LADY Tom Jones with his wife and childhood sweetheart Linda Trenchard in the 1960s

H e walks towards me slowly and straight-legged, as if he's wearing leather trousers and it's 1969 all over again. More specifically, as if the breeks had been left out in the sun since '69 and gone stiff. Of course, if you remember when this man was big in Vegas, star of his own American TV show and the up-all-night drinking buddy of Elvis Presley, there was a special feature of the strides that would make them even more problematic for a man of 70 today. They were at least a size too small. Deliberately so. Yes, madam, I thought you'd remember that …

But it's a wee shame I've mentioned leather trousers this early because a closer inspection of Sir Tom Jones reveals he's opted for jeans.

Even a cursory listen to his new album Praise & Blame will tell you he's travelled a long, long way from the Vegas Hilton and his extended stay as its second best-known satyromaniac – almost as long as the original journey he made from Treforest, Pontypridd. There are no diabolical Delilahs on it; the most prominent character is God. In many of the songs, Jones is on his knees, reflecting on his wild years and wondering where in the afterlife he'll be playing his gigs.

He may never escape mention of swinging hips and flying knickers but Praise & Blame deserves our serious attention and in many quarters has got it, with some acclaiming it his best album. Others, though, aren't so sure.

"Four question marks!" roars Jones the Voice. "What grown-up uses four

question marks?" He's referring to the e-mail Island Records' vice-president David Sharpe fired off to staff demanding to know whether Praise & Blame was "some sick joke????". Sharpe continued: "We didn't invest a fortune in an established artist for him to deliver 12 tracks from the (sic] Common Book of Prayer." Island had expected a "repeat" of Sex Bomb and Mama Told Me Not To Come. The label had "paid for

Mercedes and ended up with a hearse".

I ask Jones if he feels insulted. "Of course I do, yeah." Then I ask if the e-mail had been a publicity stunt, perhaps with the aim of portraying him as still dangerous. "Well, I can understand why people would think that and I'm trying to get to the bottom of it." He doesn't know Sharpe and is keen to hear his explanation. "All the guys at Island that I do know, they're still apologising. It's been a bottle of this, then a bottle of that … "

But Sharpe, unwittingly, has raised an interesting point. When a performer turns 70, can his paymasters, and also his public, really expect him to keep delivering Sex Bomb II, III and IV? Won't the set-list for his live show look a bit odd with Sex Bomb and his cover of Prince's Kiss juxtaposed with Lord Help and If I Give My Soul, as if a snogging couple had barged into a church service? And shouldn't he be allowed to forsake the flesh for the spirit given he's finally forsaken the Grecian 2000?

In his room in London today, water on the table alongside his trusty throat lozenges, not as tall as you might think but with a thumping great chest, Jones definitely suits his grey hair and goatee and no longer resembles a second-division porn mogul striving for the David Gest look. So does he feel 70? "Honestly, I don't. Ten years ago when people said, 'How old are you now then, Tom?' I'd be going 'Fif- …' and I seemed to struggle with the fact I was 60. Now, though, maybe I'm still kidding myself but I don't feel like I've slowed down, or that I ever will." Sir Tom works out with a cross-trainer, a contraption which he says, in his still-macho Welsh way, sorts out the men from the boyos. "I remember Elvis's fitness regime, sat on the cycling machine popping devilled eggs in his mouth."

Jones, having successfully made the transition from kitsch to credible some years back, is calling Praise & Blame his "Johnny Cash album" because the sound is stripped back, almost naked, as on the country legend's final releases — but there's one crucial difference. "Johnny was coming to the end of his vocal powers, although that made those records sound wonderful." Jones, who's trying to be just as honest, feels no diminution, at least as a singer.

"Of course I can't drink as much as I used to — or rather I can try, and I still like a good pub crawl, but I can't bounce back quite as fast. I remember taking my dad round the pubs in Weybridge when we lived there. He got pissed pretty quickly and, given that back in Wales he'd always stood proud at the bar with his brother while I was throwing up, I said, 'Dad, what's wrong with you? He said: 'Son, I'm sixty-bloody-two.' I thought: 'Is that going to happen to me?' And of course it has."

So, considering the subject matter of the album, and especially the songs Burning Hell and Ain't No Grave, does he think about death or fear it? The singer of Delilah, It's Not Unusual, Green Green Grass of Home — who's sold 100 million albums — looks perturbed. "Christ, I'm not looking forward to it! If there was any way to avoid it, I would." Who would he want to sing at his funeral? "That's a good question, no-one's ever asked me that before. Maybe Jerry Lee Lewis, though I'm kind of hoping he goes before me."

He wanted this album to be "meaningful". He hopes, when he sings the songs live, that knickers won't be thrown. "You can't tell an audience what to do, but that would kill the moment." Maybe he can add that wish to the prayers he says every night, though he says he's undecided about the existence of an afterlife. "What age would your friends be when you met them again? What would Elvis look like? I know what I'd say to him: 'You f***ed up'. He took too many drugs, although never around me, I think he was embarrassed. He once asked, 'What ones do you take to stay sane, Tom?' I said I was sane because I didn't take any. But he also said, 'Watch the booze, Tom'. That was me when it was champagne every night; I don't do that now. In fact, this kind of reminds me of being a teenager again, not being able to handle the bevvy."

He pauses and smiles, as if he's imagining the killer combination of a teenager's energy and potency with all the experience of being Sir Tom Jones at 70. "I'm trying to live life to the full, live as much as I can, record as much as I can — leave no stone unturned."

On Nobody's Fault But Mine Jones sings: "My mother taught me how to pray." Growing up Tommy Woodward, the miner's son couldn't really escape the church's influence. "We lived next door to the Sunday school teacher of the Presbyterian chapel, a lovely lady called Mrs Rodgers, and I'd feel terribly guilty if I didn't go. From five to 15 I don't think I missed it. Mates who didn't go made fun of me though I'd play football with them afterwards, rip my Sunday best or get it all muddy, and I'd have to pop in to my gran's for a tidy-up so my folks wouldn't know. The Old Rugged Cross is a song I remember from that time and I might have done a version on this album, but Elvis beat me to it with his."

On Praise & Blame, though, Jones raises the bar for renditions of gospel spirituals he first heard on the old steam radio. "Old girls like Mahalia Jackson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe must have influenced me because I remember singing The Lord's Prayer at school and the headmaster asking why I'd performed it like a negro. I didn't know what he meant. In the early days of knowing Elvis he asked if every Welshman sang as black as me. He'd go, 'Tom, are there any black men in Wales?' I'd tell him, 'They're all black, Elvis — from working down the pit.'"

Jones probably would have followed his father into the mines if he hadn't contracted tuberculosis at 12, confining him to bed for two years. When he could finally walk unaided to the lamp-post at the end of his street, he resolved to never complain about anything else life would throw at him. The next big defining moment wasn't long in coming, though, for by 16 he was a husband and father (son Mark would later become his manager).

Linda Trenchard was his childhood sweetheart and they've been married 55 years. From as young as five, Jones was aware of the effect he had on girls when he sang at family weddings and they'd make eyes and ask him where he went to school. By the time he was singing rock 'n' roll, Linda was aware of it too and stopped coming to his shows. "She'd say, 'Go on, I know what those girls are like and I don't want to see it. Just as long as you come home.'"

Today Lady Jones waits in a Beverly Hills mansion for his return from yet another tour. In his heyday it wasn't just knickers; women hurled room keys at him, and themselves. It was estimated (not, he says, by him) that he slept with 250 every year. Amid all the kiss 'n' tells, Mary Wilson of the Supremes claimed they'd enjoyed a two-year fling, Miss World Marjorie Wallace took an overdose and Jones had to pay out in a paternity case when he couldn't prove the boy was not his son. Linda has always stood by him.

On Praise & Blame's If I Give My Soul, he sings of embarking on a musical life full of drinking with "the devil's band" and concludes: "God ain't known no greater sinner." The song isn't his but seems to fit him like those leather trousers almost did. "I don't think we want to go there," he says. Where does he think he's ultimately going, Heaven or hell? "Hopefully up there but I dunno." He shuffles in his chair, fiddles with his lozenges. For the previous album, 24 Hours, he had a hand in the writing, most confessionally on The Road in which he addressed his infidelities. This time round, Bob Dylan's What Good Am I? seems to say all that's needed about a woman being taken for granted. He nods, and paraphrases the key line from the last record: "But the road always returns to Linda, it still belongs to her."

Linda suffers from emphysema, agoraphobia and hasn't flown since 9/11. "She's quite reclusive. Even with the emphysema, she didn't want to go to the hospital. But when she got there it didn't take her long to find out all the doctors' names and all their relationship histories. She's not scared of people. It just takes her some time."

The critic he respects the most, she was underwhelmed by his collaborations with Wyclef Jean, including a remake of What's New Pussycat?, telling him: "You're not hip-hop." He laughs as he recalls a get-together at the house with some muso-mates when he overdid the self-regard. She said: 'You don't really think you're Tom Jones, do you? I married Tommy Woodward.'"

Often portrayed as meek, Linda would seem to be anything but. "She's never questioned me," he says, now eager to talk about an area I thought would be closed off. "She doesn't condone what I've done but as long as I don't run off with someone else, it's a subject we've tried to avoid." Really? "Actually that's bollocks. There was the time with Mary Wilson, which was in the press." It was reported Linda tracked them down to a Bournemouth love-nest and screamed at him: "Get that cow out of here!" "Then," Jones continues, "there was the time with Marji Wallace. It was Christmas at our house and Linda biffed me, so that was my present. My bodyguard was an ex-Welsh rugby player and out of instinct I turned to him for help. He'd known us both from the old days, me all too well, I suppose, and he said, 'You're on your own, Tom.'"

Jones is looking forward to getting back on the road that leads to home. I ask him to describe a night with the Jonseses. "A nice meal, some wine, and if Linda's up to it we might dig out an old record and have a dance. Otherwise I'd probably want to watch the History Channel, some war documentary. Linda prefers movies — in fact she loves romances." As well she might.

Sir Tom Jones, as we know him, hopes he's going to heaven. Tommy Woodward also has fingers crossed for a favourable outcome. n

Praise & Blame (Universal/Island) is out tomorrow

• This article was first published in the Scotland on Sunday on 25/07/2010