Tom Jones has two recurring nightmares. In the first, he is wrongfully accused of murder. In the second, he has hidden a body in the attic, the house has just been sold and the body is about to be discovered. He wakes up in a bath of sweat. The nightmares confused him for years. "I haven't killed anybody. I've never wanted to kill anybody. I've tried to analyse it, and I think, since I started making hit records, I've thought, 'Jesus Christ, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me.' But always you think this is going to fall apart. Something will happen. There is a skeleton in the closet." He stops. "Which there isn't. But in my mind I think they're going to find that out, and that's going to finish me."
Jones, now 68, has a lovely way of telling stories, as if every thought has hit him for the first time.
Perhaps there's another reason for the nightmares. His biggest hit, Green, Green Grass Of Home, was about a man facing execution. Another huge single, Delilah, tells the story of a jealous boyfriend killing his girlfriend. His new album is called 24 Hours and the title track is about another man on death row — though it can just as easily be read as the sombre reflections of an elderly man looking into the abyss. It's a landmark album for Jones — his most personal, and the first for which he has a joint writing credit on most of the songs.
We first meet in a London hotel. He is wearing black, as he often does. Black polo neck, black trousers, black shoes, strange black hair that looks as if it could be woven from acrylic, and black goatee. He is accompanied by his son and daughter-in-law, Mark and Donna Woodward, the svengalis behind his renaissance over the past 20 years. Mark looks like a greyer version of his father — how Jones might look if he'd chosen a more sober career. Jones also introduces me to a handsome elderly man with snow white hair, Don Archell, his personal assistant, and to the singer Cerys Matthews, with whom he duetted on the hit record Baby, It's Cold Outside. Jones orders the first of his vodka martinis, and he's off.
If there's one thing Tom Jones enjoys as much as singing, it's chatting. He's seen so much, met so many people, had such a lucky life, of course he wants to talk about it, he says. He loves being interviewed. "Look, if I go into a pub, I'm doing an interview because people want to know things. And I love my life, I love my achievements, I love talking about it . If somebody wasn't asking me, I'd go and find someone and say, 'Guess what I did?!' It's a Celtic thing. The people in Wales, they all talk, and I love it."
So he talks about drinking with Robbie Williams' dad in Los Angeles, his grandson's skills on the ski slopes , the time Otis Redding told him that soul singers try to sing like Jones. "I said to Otis, 'You're joking — I'm trying to sound like you.'" Jones spent so many years in Vegas, singing epic ballads, that it is easy to forget he was one of the great white soul singers. Go to YouTube and watch him battling it out note for note with Stevie Wonder on Superstition, Aretha Franklin on See Saw and Tina Turner on Nutbush City Limits, and you see just how raw, radical and soulful he was.
He grew up in Pontypridd in a Welsh mining community. His earliest memories are of tugging on his mother's sleeve at family weddings, asking when he could sing, and her saying he had to wait to be invited. He was five or six, and impatient. Even then, he says, when he got up, he was aware of the effect he had on the little girls. They made eyes at him, asked him what school he went to. He can't remember his voice being much different — even then, he wanted to belt them out. "Some kids, they sing very high and then their balls drop and their voice drops. I can't remember that ever happening to me. It was higher, but it didn't change dramatically."
He was useless at school. Not interested. He thinks he was slightly dyslexic, but says he might be making excuses for himself — perhaps he was just thick. Even on the sports field, he couldn't concentrate — sure, he'd play rugby because he had to, but all the while he'd be watching the time, telling himself in a few minutes he could be down the shops buying himself an air gun or at home singing. He boxed, but didn't much care for getting hit.
At 13, he contracted tuberculosis. He was off school for two years, most of the time spent in bed. Thank God for TB, he says. If it hadn't been for the illness, he might have ended up down the mines, like his father. "The doctor said to my parents, ' Whatever you do, you can't put this boy in a coal mine because he has weak lungs .' And the weird thing is, with weak lungs I've become a fuckin' singer."
The illness changed his attitude to life. "When I used to get up for an hour a day, I would stand at the front door and see my mates playing, going up the hills. They'd shout, 'All right, Tom' but I couldn't get out the door. There was a lamp-post at the end of our street, and I'd look at it and think, once I can walk from this door to that lamp-post, I will never complain about another thing in my life. And that was it. And if I do, if the thought ever enters my mind, I see that lamp-post."
He returned to school for a year and left at 15 to work as a labourer's mate. "Hod carrying, mixing cement. Up and down ladders. Good, strong legs." A year later, he was married to Linda, living in her mother's house with baby Mark. They wanted more children, but a miscarriage left her infertile.
Fast-forward another year and Jones is doing shifts on building sites by day and singing at working men's clubs by nights. The women loved him, but it was the fellas who really came to watch and judge. Big, tough, emotional men, they made for a demanding audience. "On Sunday nights it was men only. You'd have to make sure you put a bunch of ballads in there. The men loved them. Especially in Wales."
All the time he really wanted to sing edgier songs. First, there was the new rock'n'roll of Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, then there was the blues. "I was liking black singers without realising. And the blues. Big Bill Broonzy. I heard this song, 'If you was white, you's all right, if you was brown, stick around, but if you's black, oh brother, get back' and I thought what a great line that is." Jones' voice is lilting, even by Welsh standards, and every few minutes he breaks into song to illustrate his point. He can't help himself.
It was when he got himself a band, and started to play rock'n'roll and blues and soul, that women went crazy for him. By now, Linda didn't like turning up to his shows. They made her feel uncomfortable, and she had Mark to look after, anyway. "She said, 'Go on, I know what those girls are like and I don't want to see it. As long as you come home here.' So that's what happened."
In his mid-20s in 1964, Jones, still known as Tom Woodward (his mother's name was Jones), headed off for London, championed by the people of Pontypridd. All he had was his looks, the moves he had learned as a teenager and the voice. "My mates would say, 'You can sing, you've got to go to London,you've got to show these fuckers how to put it together.'" He hated leaving Linda and Mark at home, Linda working at a battery factory to make ends meet — he considered it demeaning to be supported by a woman. Working in the mines or factories of Pontypridd was drudgery, certainly not a career. He promised himself that when he became successful, he would ensure that his family never had to work again. One of the things of which he is most proud is that he was able to retire his father from the mines at 50.
Three days later, on Saturday, we meet at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club in east London, where he is having his photograph taken. It's a throwback to his early days — a huge red heart on the stage, carpets that stink of stale beer, and a few elderly men dotted around supping on pints. Jones is here with his mini entourage — Don, Mark and Donna, and their ageing staffordshire bull terrier, Leroy. Leroy and Jones are not dissimilar — both have been round the block a few times, yet exude a puppyish verve. Leroy likesnothing more than lying on his back and being given a good tickle. I would imagine the same could be said for Jones.
Jones is all in black again — this time in a frilly shirt rather than polo neck. After six decades in the business, he still gets self-conscious when having his picture taken. He asks if we'd mind leaving the room while he psyches himself up. When we return, he's fiddling with his silver crucifix, trying on a new shirt — white this time — and singing along to one of the songs. After the shoot, he fancies a drink. Two vodka martinis, please. He asks if I went on somewhere else the other night. He and Cerys had a bit of dinner and a few drinks, he says. "She left about 12.30 to 1am." But she was going to leave at 8pm? "Exactly!" he says with delight.
Matthews later tells me she doesn't get much chance to go out now that she's a mother of two. "Tom is very persuasive. We had so much fun — we didn't stop laughing. He's a riot and a good friend, as well as being an old school gentleman." She has never sung with anybody like him, she says. "It's the best feeling in the world. His instincts are natural, his passion is absolute. I once asked him what his ideal day would be and said don't let it be about music. 'Well, it couldn't be my ideal day if I couldn't get up and do a show,' he said."
When Jones came to London in 1964, he hooked up with aspiring manager and song writer Gordon Mills. It was Mills who suggested changing the name to Jones — very Welsh, very laddish, very Henry Fielding. Six months on, Jones felt he was wasting his time recording demos for stars to turn into hits. He made a demo of a song written by Mills called It's Not Unusual and was told it was going to be recorded by a young singer called Sandie Shaw. He knew he'd done the song more than justice, that it was perfect for him, and decided he would return to Pontypridd if he couldn't make it his. "Thank God Sandie Shaw listened to the demo and said, ' Whoever's singing this song, it's his song', so God bless her."
Another vodka martini. A toast to Sandie Shaw. Jones has an incredible memory for dates. He'd do brilliantly on Mastermind with Tom Jones as his specialist subject. "I recorded It's Not Unusual on November 11 1964, it came out on January 22 1965 and it was number one by March 1, which was St David's Day. Tremendous!"
There are a couple of things people know about Tom Jones: he has always been something of a ladies' man — women throw their knickers at him — and he is still married to the woman he wed at 16. It's not that he boasts about his conquests; others do that for him. There have been countless kiss'n'tells, most famously Mary Wilson of the Surpremes who claimed they had enjoyed a two-year fling; there was the paternity case (he paid out because, he says, he could not prove the boy was not his son — there has been no relationship); and there have been the former associates who have done the dirty on him.
For the first time on the new album, he addresses his infidelities in the remarkable confessional The Road, when he sings that however far and often he has strayed, he has always returned home. It is both a love song and an apology, isn't it? "Well, I never admit to anything, you know what I mean." I can't help laughing. Tom, you admit plenty in this song.
He recites the lyrics as if standing at the pulpit. "'I have felt weakness when I was strong, felt sweetness when I was wrong.' Linda wouldn't say to me, 'What d'you mean by that?' No, she wouldn't do that. The thing that she likes more than anything else is, 'But the road always leads back to you.' And that 's the truth. I will never leave my wife. It never entered my mind." They've been apart a lot, he says. "But we are still in love with one another. You know, we're not sexually like we were, but we are still in tune with one another, we can still have fun with one another, we still talk. She's still the Welsh girl I married."
He says Linda is shy, agoraphobic. When he has well-known friends around, she hides. I also heard she once beat him up after hearing about one of his affairs. "Oh yeah!" he says, almost enthusiastically. "She's actually thrown things at me." Sometimes, he says, she settles for harsh words. "The funniest thing is, we were having a bit of a barny one night in LA — sometimes it can start off really nice, a nice dinner, back to the music room, put on the old records that we used to dance to when we were teenagers, and it's all lovely, lovely, lovely, and then it becomes, 'Well, what about when you did this?' "Would that be about Mary Wilson? "Exactly. Things like that. So she said, 'Let me tell you something, but you've got to stand there, and you've got to promise me that you will not try and get hold of me.' And I thought, 'Jesus, what's she going to tell me — that she's been with an old friend of mine or what?' So I'm expecting the worst, and we're both well oiled by this point. 'OK, come on, what is it?' She says, 'If you couldn't sing, you wouldn't have a friend in the world' and runs out of the room. Well, I fell on the floor in a heap. She thought that was the worst thing she could ever say to me — I thought it was hilarious."
Does he think there's any truth in it? "Maybe! No, nah." I ask if she has had affairs. "Not as far as I know … Best not to go into it. We don't discuss it, never have." He pauses. "That has never been discussed either, if you know what I mean — the not discussing it. Should we have another?"
I'm beginning to sink into a happy blur, while Jones is remembering more and more dates: 1968, Copacabana, New York — the first time he had knickers thrown at him. "There was a supper club, and the singer sang at the same level as the table and chairs, right on the floor. And the more people you drew into the club, the smaller the area in which you performed — like some of the northern clubs. At one point I'm performing in a tiny area and I'm sweating — I was always a good sweater. So because they'd had dinner, they had napkins on the table, so they see me sweating and hand me their napkins, I hand them back and they'd keep them. So this one woman stood up — up with the dress, down with the drawers. Took 'em off and handed them to me." What did you do? "I wiped my brow and said, 'Sweetheart, watch you don't catch cold.' Because you always learn in working men's clubs, no matter what happens, you've got to try to make some fun out of it." When he went to Vegas for the first time later that year, the women started throwing hotel keys as well.
In the 70s, his income tax rose to 98 %; Jones and Linda packed their bags and moved to Los Angeles, where they still live. By now, he was known for his tight trousers, hairy chest, snake hips and libidinous thrust as much as for the voice. Was he as horny as he appeared to be, or was it an act? Hell, no, he says, appalled, it was — is — for real. Was any other performer as sexually charged as him? "Well, the only one really was Elvis Presley. I knew him very well, and he said I see in you what I feel myself. You see, Elvis was a macho man, he was a good-looking fella, but he was still strong. That's why he was always doing karate in those movies, it was a male thing that he felt. So, not to pick on Mick Jagger, but [Elvis] said how the fuck … what do people see in the Beatles and the Stones and these British bands? He said thank heaven for you coming out of Britain, that you feel the same thing. I said, 'Well, you are partly to blame, it was watching you … you rubbed off on me so much that you gave me confidence to do it.'" Does he get excited on stage? "Oh yeah!" Sexually excited? "Well, you don't get physically aroused, because you concentrate so much."
I ask if it is true that at his shows he was provided with both a dressing room and a love-making suite. He looks sheepish, and stutters into a non sequitur. "Well, well … I … no ! Well, we can't go into that … but I do love to drink. Though not before a show … "
His friendship with Elvis provided him with some of his most cherished memories. They never performed together publicly, but they often went to Elvis's hotel suite for a sing-song when they were both playing Vegas . "He'd say, 'I'll get the group up and we'll do something' and I'd already done two shows. There were two songs he loved at the time. A song Kris Kristofferson wrote called Why Me and Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly. Once he latched on to something, he wouldn't let it go. So we're at the suite, comparing gospel I learned in Wales with gospel he learned in Mississippi. We must have sung The Old Rugged Cross a dozen times with an electric piano and his vocal group, the Sweet Inspirations. He'd say, 'D'you think I'd like Wales, Tom, if I came over ?' I said, 'You'd love the male voice choirs.' I had this vision of taking him up the Rhondda valley and having him sing with all the choirs."
For the last two years of Presley's life, Jones never saw him. He knew he'd become addicted to diet pills and had turned in on himself, but he didn't know how desperate he was. In 1977, Presley died and Jones still regrets that he didn't make more of an effort to help him. Towards the end he had stopped taking calls. "I didn't know Elvis was sick. I thought he was just getting lazy — he was getting heavy and pushed people away from him. The first thing that hit me after he died was I should have gone and seen him. Priscilla called me, and said, 'When you show up, you give him a spark. He's got this competitive spark in him again.' So I thought maybe I could have given him that shot again. Maybe."
Presley's death coincided with a downturn in Jones' fortunes. He came to be regarded as a kitsch crooner, a parody of his former self, and went without another hit in Britain for 15 years. He continued to sell out shows, but the venues were smaller. The knickers and door keys began to pall. People stopped talking about the voice. "The thing that I don't like about it, it became a joke. People go, 'Oh Tom Jones, knickers.' You want another?"
Two more vodka martinis.
"Since then I've thought it's positive, it's not as if they're throwing bottles at you. But it did become a bit of a joke. Girls would run to the front even when I'm doing a ballad. You're trying to create a mood, doing the Green, Green Grass Of Home, and underwear lands straight on you, and everybody laughs. I once did a radio show with Howard Stern in New York and Roger Daltrey was going in after me, and he said, 'I just had to walk through a room full of knickers back there, I thought you must be on the show.' And I thought, ' Oh fuck, it's even got to Roger Daltrey' — all he could think to say about me was not love the way you sing or hate the way you sing, but knickers."
I'm staring at Jones through my martini glass. His teeth are so white. "Oh yeah, they were capped," he says. His hair — so black."Oh yeah, that's dyed." His skin — so firm. "Oh yeah, I had the fat removed from under my chin. That's basically why I wear the goatee because it covers the scar. If I went for laser treatment, I could get rid of it, but I thought, fuck it, I'll wear a goatee. And my nose, that was straightened. Then, with the eyes, they took the heaviness out of the lids. Thank God the plastic surgeon said you've got to be careful because you've got to look like you, you can't look like someone else." A toast. To the plastic surgeon.
In 1986, Gordon Mills, his manager, died. Jones was devastated. He had lost a close friend, and his career was in a trough. And that was when his son Mark came into his own. Ever since Mark had been in his late teens, he had toured with his father, helping out with the lights and design, even the song choices. Mark himself was a fine singer, but he got red-light fever if he had to perform — the studio light went on and he lost his bottle. But what he loved more than anything was dreaming up strategies that might revive his father's career. "Mark said to me, 'Well, what do we do now for a manager?' and I said, 'Why don't you have a go?' Donna, his wife, was Bill Cosby's secretary and she was always talking about things she thought I should be doing, so I said, 'Why don't you both do it? We can do it all together … '"
Mark looked at Jones' act — the knickers and the tight trousers and the old repertoire — and told his father that there was a good reason people didn't talk about the singing any more. " When I see those old clips, I see why people didn't take me more seriously, vocally — cos your trousers are too tight. Not tight in the waist," he says delicately. "And I've always had big legs, so where are you going to put all that stuff. So there it was. When I look at it, I think no wonder people went, 'Oh!' when I came on stage."
Mark realised that what had been problematic for Mills — Jones' versatility — could prove a virtue. If Jones could sing anything, why not hire trendy producers and record some of the contemporary songs he performed in his shows. In 1988, Jones had a massive hit with the Prince song Kiss, produced by techno pop stars Art Of Noise. A new young audience was entranced by the voice. "There was no baggage for them. You want another?"
A toast. To Mark, Prince, Tom's stamina and his not-so-tight trousers.
Monday morning, 8.15am, BBC radio studios in London. Jones isn't used to early mornings, but you wouldn't know it. He fair bounds in — all in black, new jumper . "You go on anywhere, on Saturday?" he says.
No, straight home, I tell him. And you? "Ah, nothing much. Don and I had a meal, and some red wine." A second later he realises he's forgotten something. "And a few champagnes. Have I got time for the khazi?" They tell him he's due on any second. Ever the professional, Jones holds it in. Wogan and Jones — both of them knighted — are chatting way in the studio. Meanwhile, Don Archell is reminiscing about drinking way back when … "Oh yes, he was up there with the Richards in the old days — Burton and Harris. I couldn't keep up with him, no way. I don't know how he did it. In Vegas, we used to be up till 7-8am. I'm glad it's not like that any more." Don still accompanies him around the world — 200 shows a year. Home for Jones is LA, home for Don is Luton. "Mind you, I'm hardly ever there."
What's Jones like as a man? "As you see him. Every day. Never changes. Same mood. Never loses it. So laid back." Wogan says it's amazing that after all these years Jones is so fashionable, with artists such as Duffy and Mark
Ronson keen to recapture the retro feel. The funny thing is that at his peak in the 60s and early 70s, Jones was never really cool — not like today. In 2000, he released Reload, an album of covers recorded with other artists and bands including Robbie Williams and the Stereophonics. It went on to sell four million — his biggest album. In 2005, he was estimated to be worth £175m.
I ask Mark, who is the boss — him or his dad? "Well, it's a proper relationship." Does it feel like a traditional father/son relationship? "It depends what you're doing. We were always friends, but if we weren't a proper manager/artist relationship at some point in the day, it wouldn't have worked for long." Does he have to make the decisions for Jones? "He relies on it. I know what he can sing."
Jones is talking about the new album. He loves the fact that, along with the more reflective songs, it's a statement about the here and now — that he's still around, and plans to be for some time. The opening song, I'm Alive, is a dance track every bit as celebratory as its title. He directs me to the lyrics of
another song, Seasons. "What I like about that song is that I walk on and 'make my memories'. I'm still making my memories, I'm not just thinking of old memories."
A week later Jones is on Jools Holland's BBC2 show, Later. No sign of Leroy, but Mark is on stage giving his father instructions. Profile to profile, deep in discussion, they look as if they could be auditioning for a Welsh Sopranos. As the other acts perform, Jones stands in front of his band, straight-backed and still, waiting his turn. When he gets his chance, there is a transformation — the blood seems to be flowing faster. There's a technical hitch, and he is asked to start again. "Do we have to stop?" he pleads. I'm reminded of the little boy tugging at his mother's sleeves. He sings three songs from the new album, and at the end of each his face creases into ecstasies.
Back in the changing room, he's buzzing. He thinks his voice now is better than it ever has been. "I've only lost a little bit on the high end, thank God, and I've gained a tremendous amount of bottom end. I couldn't have sung 24 Hours in that low key when I was in my 20s. And it's become richer. When you experience life, you read more into things. When you're younger, you're charging, and you think, 'Right, I'll hit the shit out of this, smacking everything.' I still do to an extent, but there's pathos."
It's notable how many times, over the days, he's thanked God. Well, he says, he was raised a Presbyterian and though he doesn't attend chapel, he has never lost his faith. "I pray every night by the bed before I go to sleep. I say, 'Look after my family and my friends and band members and all the people who work with me, and thank you for giving me this voice. Please may I keep it for as long as I live.'"