Tom Jones - the Life (21 page)

Then it was time for the funeral at the nearby chapel. Tom travelled in the car with Glynis, her son David from her first marriage, and Dai’s daughters, Nicola and Gemma. A local councillor had arranged for them to have a police escort and in Treforest another policeman stopped the traffic to let them pass – something Dai would have loved.

At the chapel, Tom sat between Gemma and Glynis and ‘sang his heart out’, especially when it was time for his favourite hymn, ‘The Old Rugged Cross’. Glynis recalls, ‘That’s the one he sang the loudest. You could tell by the tremor in his voice that he was finding it hard, but he kept going.’ He had to lend Gemma, who was fifteen, a hankie to dry her eyes.

Afterwards, they went to the graveside for the burial and Cassie the dog sat patiently between Glynis and Tom while the vicar gave the blessing. On the way back to the cars, it was more like a wedding, with photographers taking pictures of Tom and Dai’s family. They tried to take pictures of Tom and Glynis at the wake at the Wood Road, but she refused.

Tom stayed late at the club and made sure he spoke to everyone. He sat on a sofa next to Gemma, who told him, ‘You smell like my dad.’ They both used the same cologne, called Secret of Venus by Weil. He danced with her to the Aqua hit ‘Doctor Jones’, which made them both laugh. He danced with Glynis as well, to a song more fitting to end the saddest of days – ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’.

The inspired pairing of Tom and Robbie at the 1998 Brit Awards didn’t lead directly to
Reload
. The publicity helped the public accept an album of duets as a good idea, but the impetus initially came from a satirical record called ‘The Ballad of Tom Jones’, which was an unexpected hit that year.

By a strange twist of fate, the song was written by a musician whose real name was Tommy Scott. He was the lead vocalist with Space, an indie band from Liverpool. They had made the charts a couple of years before with ‘Female of the Species’, a track Tom liked and included in his stage shows. Tommy had been inspired when he saw Tom in concert in Manchester, performing his song: ‘All the housewives were screaming for Tom – but no one had a clue who I was.’

‘The Ballad of Tom Jones’ was a duet sung by Tommy Scott and the husky-voiced Welsh singer Cerys Matthews, whose band Catatonia were at the forefront of Britpop in the nineties, with hits including ‘Mulder and Scully’ and ‘Road Rage’. Tommy and Cerys play a squabbling couple who stop short of murdering one another when they start listening to
Tom Jones’ Greatest Hits
. Cerys memorably sang on the chorus, ‘I could never throw my knickers at you.’ She was voted the sexiest woman in rock in a
Melody Maker
poll, and Tom would probably have had no objection if she had thrown them at him.

The song was a huge hit, supported by an atmospheric video, and made number four in the UK charts. Tommy Scott described it as his ‘Frank and Nancy Sinatra thing’. Tom was flattered to have a song named after him. He commented, tongue in cheek, ‘You know you’re doing something right when they start recording songs about you.’

After the Brit Awards, Mark Woodward was very keen for his father to record an album of duets. He wanted to take advantage while everyone was talking about Tom and Robbie. Independently, Gut Records, the label that had released ‘The Ballad of Tom Jones’, had been thinking the same thing. They wanted to make a record with Tommy Scott and Tom Jones together. That was the original idea and it grew from there.

Gut had quickly built a reputation as one of the leading independent labels under the direction of a former radio plugger called Guy Holmes, who had started his own company to release ‘I’m Too Sexy’ by Right Said Fred. He contacted Mark at exactly the right time and an album of duets was swiftly agreed over dinner with Tom.

The only surprise was that it had taken so long for the idea to be conceived. Ten years had passed since Tom’s collaboration with the trendy The Art of Noise. Clearly the concept worked, as his duet with Robbie demonstrated. Now it was a case of deciding which artists to approach. That proved to be the easy part, because there seemed to be a queue around the block of credible artists wanting to perform with Tom. There was talk of All Saints joining him for ‘What’s New Pussycat?’, but that never materialised. It might have breathed new life into the old song, but would probably have been a step back in time and Tom was anxious to avoid that. In the end, seventeen acts made the final recording.

Robbie didn’t hesitate to sign up, even though he was understandably nervous about joining The Voice in the same vocal booth. They chose to record ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’, a guitar-led track by Lenny Kravitz that was proving to be one of the highlights of Tom’s current stage show. Robbie revealed how he handled it: ‘I thought, “I know, I’ll do an impression of him”, so I did and I think I pulled it off.’ The first time Robbie had sung the complete song was on their initial run-through. That was the only chance he got. After they had finished, Tom announced, ‘That’s it, then. Shall we go to the pub?’

Robbie was on his way to becoming an international superstar, but he never achieved notable fame in the US. Tom did his best by introducing his friend as a new British star at one of his Vegas shows. Robbie stood up and took the obligatory bow, but nobody really knew who he was.

Robbie’s vocal concerns about singing with Tom were echoed by some of the other sixteen guests on
Reload
. Nina Persson, the blonde pin-up singer of The Cardigans, was scared she would sound ‘like a little moth’ next to Tom. She need not have worried, because Tom gave her the space to sing. The result was a quirky but memorable version of the Talking Heads song ‘Burning Down the House’. It set the mood for an album that would include some unexpected song choices, which sounded entirely different from the originals.

The Australian singer Natalie Imbruglia was another talented female vocalist concerned she would be overwhelmed by the power of Tom’s voice. After the first take, she felt like she had been caught in the path of a hurricane, but Tom subsequently reined back to give her a chance. They sang ‘Never Tear Us Apart’ by INXS, a poignant tribute to the singer Michael Hutchence, who had been found dead in November 1997. Tom had become friendly with Hutchence before he died and attended his funeral in Sydney.

Other singers were not so nervous. Mick Hucknall from Simply Red joined him to update the blues classic ‘Ain’t That a Lot of Love’. The two men enjoyed singing together so much that they sang a series of impromptu duets at a television party in September 1999 – ‘Delilah’ and ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’ featured, as well as Mick’s number one hit ‘Holding Back the Years’. It was like a night from the old days in Las Vegas. Tom thought Mick was one of the few singers who had ‘got the pipes’.

Another who certainly did was Van Morrison, who provided his own song, the melancholic ‘Sometimes We Cry’, for the album. Tim de Lisle, in the
Mail on Sunday
, noted, ‘The best guest, improbably, is Van Morrison, who has the lungs to keep up with the Jones boy and the clout to keep him under control. They deliver a touching, experience-tinged version of Morrison’s own ballad.’ Van shared one particular characteristic with Tom that made it much easier for the two men to work together: he liked to record things in one take.

Tom had seldom been inclined to follow Van’s example and write his own songs. ‘Looking Out My Window’, however, was one of only a handful he had composed up to that point. Tom has always been too busy singing and performing to do any writing. As a young man, he was a gregarious figure and not one to shut himself away, finding meaningful chords on his guitar. He put his emotion into words other people had written. The poorly educated youngster had long ago grown into a well-travelled, entertaining man of the world with a lifetime of experiences he could put into composing – but he chose not to. He built the house, he didn’t design it.

He had written ‘Looking Out My Window’, a funky jazz track performed with the James Taylor Quartet, while staring at the pouring rain from behind his car windscreen in the Cromwell Road, London. The lyric is about a man wondering why his love has left him, but there is no suggestion that there was anything autobiographical in the lyric. It had originally been the B-side of ‘A Minute of Your Time’, one of his lesser hits from 1968.

Tom was keen to surround himself with the cream of Welsh music for the new album. He was quick to sign up Stereophonics, Cerys Matthews and James Dean Bradfield, the lead singer with Manic Street Preachers – they were the only three Welsh acts he knew. He met the boys from Stereophonics when they came to watch him in concert in Cardiff. Afterwards, they joined him for a drink and he asked them if there was any chance of them taking part. He returned the compliment by going to see them at Wembley Arena in December 1998. They went for drinks and Tom spent three and a half hours telling them stories about Elvis, having a crack in Vegas and some legendary drinking. They were spellbound. When they left, Tom told them, ‘Thank God, you’re going. I’ve run out of stories to tell you.’

Tom enjoyed their company and their music. When Mark and his family travelled to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with his mother and father, he phoned the drummer Stuart Cable to tell him that at that very moment Tom was sitting by the pool, listening to the group’s first album,
Word Gets Around
. In a sad postscript, Stuart died in 2010, aged forty, at his home in Llwydcoed, a village fifteen miles north of Treforest. He had choked on his own vomit after a bout of drinking.

With Tom, Stereophonics chose to sing an old Randy Newman song that had long been forgotten. ‘Mama Told Me Not to Come’ had originally been written for Eric Burdon and The Animals in the sixties, but was better known as a top three hit for an American group called Three Dog Night in 1970.

Stereophonics’ lead singer, Kelly Jones, explained to
Melody Maker
why they were involved: ‘Anyone in our position would jump at the chance to work with Tom Jones. He’s a fucking legend. I don’t give a fuck if we get slagged for doing a song with Tom Jones. I couldn’t care less if in some people’s eyes it isn’t cool.’ But the album
was
cool.

James Dean Bradfield joined Tom to sing an Elvis song from the fifties. Tom doesn’t do too many Elvis covers, but ‘I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone’ was transformed into a slice of Manic Street Preachers rock, complete with crashing guitar chords and exhilarating vocals from both men. The song was like an encore for a high-class pub-rock gig. It would have made a terrific single, but there were many other contenders on the album.

Cerys Matthews had a reputation of being a larger-than-life character, a self-confessed hell-raiser, who liked a drink and embraced the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. She wasn’t too reverential where Tom was concerned, which he liked. She told the
Sunday Mirror
, ‘You can’t really fault a man willing to go on stage in a flamenco catsuit. But there was no Mr Big Time Las Vegas at all, apart from the tan … and the fact that he had more jewellery than me.’

The song they chose to perform together was ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’. Their flirtatious interpretation managed to breathe fresh life into a song that was a staple of the Christmas season.

Cerys became part of Tom’s entourage and was often seen with him on nights out around London and visited him in Las Vegas. They have kept in touch over the years and were photographed enjoying each other’s company at the after-party for the 2008 Q Awards at the Shepherds Tavern in Mayfair.

These days the Catatonia concerts, when Cerys used to bounce around on stage swigging from a bottle of chardonnay, are long forgotten. She has become a respected and popular broadcaster and a leading light of modern Welsh culture.

Reload
is Tom’s most successful album. After the blaze of publicity, including
An Audience with Tom Jones
, the lead single was ‘Burning Down the House’, which reached a slightly disappointing number seven in the UK. The album, however, went straight to number one at the beginning of October 1999.

Reviews were mostly positive. The Glasgow
Sunday Herald
enthused, ‘Unlike embarrassing has-beens who think they can put on a black polo neck, do a cover version and revitalise their sagging sales figures, Jones is producing music that is fresh, innovative, popular and even credible.’
Reload
sold more than 1.2 million copies in the UK alone and in excess of 6 million worldwide.

Not everyone was completely gushing. BBC Online called the version of Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust for Life’ ‘toe-curlingly bad’. The
NME
reviewer clearly got out of bed on the wrong side, describing Tom as ‘old leather face’ and calling the album ‘rubbish’. Arguably, the weakest song on the album was the collaboration he did with Tommy Scott. They sang ‘Sunny Afternoon’ by The Kinks, one of the great songs of the sixties. It was very hard to match the original, with the idiosyncratic vocal style of Ray Davies, but again it demonstrated that Tom was a risk-taker.

The album revealed a man still prepared to take chances in a year when he became more of an establishment figure. It began with him finally being awarded an OBE at a time when honours for tax exiles weren’t as frowned upon as they once were. He forgot to take a hat with him when he formally received his award from the Queen. He joked with photographers, ‘I didn’t bring a hat because I thought it might mess up my hair.’

The award was also the excuse the now defunct
News of the World
needed to say that OBE stood for Order of Bonking Excellence. They ran a kiss and tell from a large-breasted lap dancer, who described a thirteen-hour ‘romp’ with Tom, which sounded nothing like as exciting as the headline suggested.

The media continued to be obsessed with Tom as a sex symbol, even though he was in his fifty-ninth year. It didn’t help that the most memorable song from
Reload
, and the one that has become a Tom standard, was his collaboration with Mousse T, entitled ‘Sex Bomb’. It was the natural successor to ‘Kiss’. At Donna’s wise suggestion, the lyric was changed from ‘I’m a sex bomb’ to ‘You’re a sex bomb’.

Mousse T seemed the most unlikely partner for Tom on the entire album. The German-born DJ and producer had originally written the track for inclusion on his own album and had wanted Tom to be the featured artist. He explained, ‘I wanted to make the track a mixture between the sounds of the ’70s and those of today’s music, and so we definitely wrote it for Tom to sing.’

He had positive feedback from Tom after sending him a demo, and flew to London to make the recording. Tom told him, ‘I’d really love to have it on
my
album.’ Despite being the fourth and last single from
Reload
, after the duets with The Cardigans, Cerys and Stereophonics, it proved to be the biggest hit, reaching number three in the charts and propelling the album back to number one.

Mousse T enjoyed his experience of working with Tom: ‘We did all the vocals in forty-five minutes flat – Tom is just incredible like that. He makes you want to cry – he is so good at what he does. All you can say is, “Thanks.”’