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In celebration of Wales' national day, here's my profile from a couple of years back of the greatest living Welshman:
The world's press was out in force last week to salute birthday boy Tom Jones. Jones Still A Sex Bomb, said The Toronto Sun. Tom Jones Still A Sex Bomb, agreed The Cape Breton Post. Tom Jones Still A Sexbomb, agreed the typographically adventurous Kamloops Daily News. The National Post, confirming our reputation for offering Canadians a unique perspective on world affairs, ran with: Tom Jones Is Still Dodging Flying Underwear.
Well, you've got to admit he looks fantastic for a man of 75.
What's that? He's only 60? Well, he still looks fantastic in a weird kind of way. The unfeasibly hairy chest, the year-round orange leathery complexion one associates with sun-drenched Wales. Millions of women around the world still want to get into his pants, which, given that he can barely get into his pants (they'd be a tad tight on Kate Moss), seems absurdly ambitious.
The only time I met Tom was a long time ago back in my disc-jockey days, when supposedly he didn't give interviews. Either that, or no one wanted to interview him. His manager had signed a deal with Polygram for five country-music albums without checking first whether Tom liked country music. It wasn't a good time for him.
Now he's hotter than ever. Recently, there've been hit songs about Tom Jones fans, and films, and novels - one with a heroine called Delilah. And, speaking of "Delilah", at the Wales/Scotland rugby international in March the Band of the Royal Welsh Regiment played it and the crowd enthusiastically sang along - 50,000 beery rugger boyos bawling the all-time great anthem of male violence. "I felt the knife in my hand," they roared in unison, "and she laughed no more."
Ah, but you gotta laugh. No matter how many times Delilah meets her gloomy end, there's always someone who wants to have another stab at her. In Devon last month, it was the Budleigh Salterton Male Voice Choir, who devoted their charity concert at the United Reformed Church to the Tom Jones songbook - "Delilah", "Green Green Grass Of Home", all his deathless classics about death. And, if it's not Budleigh Salterton, it's Washington, D.C. At midnight on December 31st, how did the world's last superpower celebrate the passing of the soi-disant millennium? No Shakespeare, no Mozart, but Bill Clinton, the Lounge-Lizard-In-Chief, turned up at the Lincoln Memorial to listen to Tom Jones crank out well-loved favourites like "It's Not Unusual" (which, by happy coincidence, was also the President’s defence to the Paula Jones “distinguishing characteristics” charge). Millennia come and go, but Tom's on stage 250 nights a year still driving women wild with "It's Not Unusual" at an age when, sadly, for many men it's all too unusual. "A woman grabbed me round the neck and cried and moaned and jumped all over me," he said. "Her husband just looked up at me and said, 'Don't worry - you pump the tires, I'll ride the bike.' "
Tom, of course, quite likes to ride the bike himself. Indeed, he's the all-time Tour de France champion in that respect. But, if you're not as lucky as the two Australian fans who claimed recently to have enjoyed a three-way jungle-sex romp with him, you can still leave your calling card. I've attended only one Tom Jones gig, but the famous knicker-throwing had as elaborate a protocol as a Royal Wedding. During up-tempo numbers, you're allowed to career down the aisle waving your panties like a lasso: Tom will graciously receive them, use them to mop his brow, and, before handing them back, say either "I think I know this woman" or, if the smalls are a little on the large side, "Bloody hell, me Auntie Alice is here."
However, during ballads, you're only permitted to toss the knickers on stage and return quietly to your seat. Tom is a serious artist and he doesn't like anyone fooling with his ballads.
This is the paradox of Tom: On the one hand, the guy who takes his music so seriously that he believes there are songs so profound it would be inappropriate to sing them with your head in a stranger's gusset. On the other hand, the cheesy Vegas lounge act sloughing off tat pop and dodging what looks like the Kosovo air war re-enacted in lingerie. If he seems too old for that stuff, the point about Tom Jones is that he's always been too old. In 1964, he was Tommy Scott, "the twisting vocalist from Pontypridd," and one night in walked Gordon Mills, a canny music-biz hotshot. Mills figured that, at 24, Tommy was too old to be a rock'n'roll star, but he was in the market for a British Sinatra.
In the Sixties, Tom Jones was irredeemably (as they say in Britain) naff. The Velvet Underground were cool. In the Seventies, he was still naff, but now the Stranglers were cool. In the Eighties, likewise, only now Spandau Ballet were cool. But somewhere along the way, the massed ranks of intellectual rock critics decided to go all gooey and start metaphorically lobbing their Y-fronts at Tom. They all agreed he'd "reinvented" himself in 1988 by singing "Kiss", a song by Prince, or maybe it was "Prince", a song by Kiss. In fact, the striking thing about Tom Jones is how un-reinvented he is: He still sings all the kitsch but he mixes it with newer things, and he sings them all the same - loud. He could never have been a British Sinatra, but he was a belated British answer to Frankie Laine and the other booming balladeers of the early Fifties rather than the white soul boy he'd like to be taken for. That's why what works best for Tom is big open-voweled bombast:
"Whaaaaah, whaaaaaah, whaaaaaaah, Delilah?"
"What's New, Pussycat? Whoa-o-o-o-o-oah!"
"Why can't this crazy love be miiiine? Whoa-o-o-oh-oh-oah!"
"She's A Lady
Whoa, whoa, whoa
She's A Lady
Talkin' about mah little lady ..."
He's no better or worse than he's ever been, but, having seen all the seminal rockers they've hailed over the last three decades go belly up, the critics have reached a consensus that Tom is a man who cares passionately about music and, after years of being forced to peddle MOR schlock, is now free to give full range to his cutting-edge influences, etc. This doesn't entirely explain why he's up on stage every night singing "She's A Lady".
But it hardly matters. The Stereophonics, the Cardigans, and the other hip young things he duets with on his new album will soon fade and there'll be Tom still bellowing "What's New, Pussycat?" It's like his philandering. The one-night stands, the three-way romps, the paternity suits come and go, but Tom's 43-year marriage somehow endures. "At least, it's natural," he says. "I mean, the sex ... Nobody's suggesting that I had sex with kids or anything. Or sheep."
No, indeed. And it's the same with his music. Tom's happy to fool around with the kids (Natalie Imbruglia, Cerys from Catatonia) to impress the sheep (the critics). But he always comes home to Delilah. The adulation is more puzzling than the adultery, but it's his now and forever, till they lay him 'neath the green, green grass of home. And, let's face it, 'neath the green, green grass of home is about the only place he hasn't been laid.
from The Sunday Telegraph/The National Post, June 11th/12th 2000
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