Tom Jones - the Life

by Sean Smith

  ‘Without Love’ was a top ten hit at the end of 1969, but the song that got away became one of pop’s great classics after it appeared on the Let It Be album. At the time, The Beatles were going through much internal strife and the song became controversial, with McCartney apparently unhappy with its production. That would explain why he’d offered it to Tom and wanted him to release it quickly. He was probably pleased in the end that Tom couldn’t record it, as the track became one of the most popular during McCartney’s solo tours.

  While his TV show was a resounding success, particularly in the US, not everything that Tom touched turned to gold. He topped the bill at the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium in November 1969. Afterwards, the Duke of Edinburgh was introduced to him and enquired, ‘What do you gargle with, pebbles?’ Tom laughed off the insult when Chris Hutchins asked him about it. He said, ‘I forgave him everything when I noticed his shirt collar was frayed.’ Tom always took huge care and pride in how he dressed, even as a young man with nothing but pennies in his pocket.

  He was less pleased the following day, when the Duke followed up by telling a luncheon for the Small Businesses Association in London, ‘It’s very difficult to see how it is possible to become immensely valuable by singing what I think are the most hideous songs.’ Prince Philip is renowned for his gaffes, but at least he instructed an aide to send Tom a written apology. A year later, he sought Tom out at a Buckingham Palace function and told him he was misquoted.

  The seventies began with Tom discovering he had made a profit of more than £1 million without even trying. Acting on the advice of their accountant, Bill Smith, Gordon had formed a company with Tom, Engelbert, Bill and himself as directors. The idea was that it would make them all more tax efficient. They called it MAM, which stood for Management, Agency and Music and gave a quiet acknowledgement of the importance of their mothers. When the company went public, Tom’s shares were worth close to £600,000. Within four weeks of being quoted on the stock market, they were worth £1.6 million.

  Tom left money matters to Gordon. Gerry Greenberg remembers visiting him in his hotel room in Manchester and being amazed at the amount of cash lying about: ‘He was in the shower and I was in the bedroom chatting away to him. I looked around and there seemed to be money everywhere. There were wads of notes just thrown around. I could have taken anything I wanted. He either trusted me implicitly or he didn’t give a damn about his money, which I suspected he didn’t.’

  He was, it seemed, more concerned with embracing the latest fashion – a haircut that covered his ears completely, so he resembled a tea cosy. He also unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a hairy chest and a large silver crucifix, which looked slightly ridiculous when he was in his rocking chair next to Ella Fitzgerald, who was old enough to be his mother.

  He sang his biggest hit of the seventies in the third series in January 1971. The lyrics to ‘She’s a Lady’ were scribbled by Paul Anka on the back of an airline menu on a flight from London to New York after he had appeared on Tom’s show. Gordon had asked him to write a song, and he came up with this brash and chauvinistic lyric, which he thought suited Tom’s personality. Anka, who also wrote ‘My Way’, dislikes the song more than any he has ever written, even though it made him a fortune.

  Today ‘She’s a Lady’ sounds very dated, but it reflected the trend of the early seventies, when disco was beginning to take over the world. The song reached only number thirteen in the UK, but the American audience turned it into his biggest-ever hit in the US, where it reached number two on the Billboard chart.

  Paul Anka found Tom and Gordon quite hard to handle. He recalled in his autobiography that after one show he was taken out to dinner and then Gordon suggested they move on to a shady private club for some late entertainment. Tom was worried about the cost, because Paul observed he was very ‘thrifty’. The ‘cabaret’ was a large woman engaging in some kinky games with a sheep. The boys had just wanted to see their guest’s reaction and have a laugh at his expense.

  Just as illuminating was Paul’s insight into Gordon, the puppet master: he was ‘a bigger star in his own way than either Tom or Engelbert’. He also revealed the reckless gambling streak that Gordon had, betting $25,000 on a game of tennis against him. Gordon lost. Gordon also met his match in Lew Grade, when he thought he had won the negotiations battle over becoming a co-producer on the show. The wily Grade agreed, ‘If that is what you want.’ Gordon was pleased, until the expenses for the show began to trickle in, with such gems as ‘Camera tube … £8,000’. ‘How the fuck do I know if they’ve replaced the camera tube?’ complained Gordon, realising that he had been bested.

  Thanks to his TV series, Tom began the seventies as the top British entertainer in the world. His American tours were now the biggest ever undertaken by a British performer. Gordon was fond of saying that the audience at home had no idea how big a star Tom was in America and the rest of the world. He estimated wildly that his man had sold 100 million records worldwide by the end of the sixties.

  Tom never forgot the contribution that Lew Grade made to his worldwide success. In 1975, he appeared in New York in a special tribute to the impresario, which also starred John Lennon in his last broadcast before he was shot.

  The event, Salute to Lew Grade, provided Tom with one of his favourite stories, which he never tires of telling. The guest of honour was Lord Mountbatten, who approached Tom afterwards, when he was chatting to Lennon. ‘Mr Jones, I want to tell you we are very proud of you,’ he declared, perhaps still recalling Prince Philip’s gaffe, and marched off. He completely ignored the former Beatle, who proceeded to shout after him, ‘Hey, OBE me!’ Lennon turned to Tom and declared, ‘Do you believe that? The fooker blanked me. I’ve met the fookin’ Queen.’

  14

  On Top of Miss World

  Dai Perry was having a pint in the Wheatsheaf when he took a call from his best mate Tom, inviting him to catch a flight to Las Vegas and become his new bodyguard. Dai was going through a messy divorce, so it seemed the perfect antidote. He had all the physical credentials for the job, but he had never learned that tact and diplomacy were just as important as a smack in the face.

  When This Is Tom Jones came to an end in 1971, beaten in the ratings by A Man Called Ironside, Tom’s constant touring provoked travelling hysteria. He needed protection from fans intent on tearing the shirt off his back. Dai was the man for that, his eyes darting from side to side, constantly watching for any threat. He was able to step in when things got out of hand at Madison Square Garden in New York, and Tom had his crucifix ripped off and his trousers torn to shreds.

  Tom was determined to have his ‘butty’ Dai with him, even though his manager was never keen on the new arrangement. Gordon recognised that after a few drinks there was a danger of Tom and Dai becoming Treforest Teds once more. The rough edges that he had spent years smoothing were beginning to reappear. Tom was the headline act at Caesars Palace, not the Bucket of Blood. The inherent risk was apparent when Tom visited Madison, Wisconsin, in June 1971. He was enjoying a party with his entourage in his hotel suite, when a local boxer tried to gatecrash the celebration. His entry was barred on three separate occasions by Dai, until the man shouted out that the bodyguard was a ‘pumped-up Welsh factory worker’ and called Tom a ‘coal-mining prick’. Tom saw red and punched him, then Dai punched him and the two of them proceeded to kick him all the way to the elevator. He looked like the victim of a hit-and-run accident and needed hospital treatment.

  Chris Hutchins, who wasn’t at the party, observes, ‘Tom was out of order and I think he regretted it. Tom could handle himself, but he doesn’t get into fights. I don’t think he has any vengeance in his heart.’

  The problem was that Chris and Gordon would use Dai shamelessly to deal with paparazzi they wanted to discourage from taking pictures. They would just send him in to get rid of them without asking any questions first. Chris admits, ‘We could have helped him. I felt a bit guilty about Dai. There was no dipl
omacy about him and we could have taught him that.’

  A few months after the Madison fracas, alcohol led to another unsavoury scene – this time on a plane. It was an eventful day. Tom was travelling with Linda in a limo bound for Kennedy Airport in New York, where they were catching a plane home to London. They had already enjoyed a drink or two, when Linda told him she wished he had never become so famous.

  ‘We could have been happy in Pontypridd,’ she exclaimed.

  Tom pointed to the expensive gold jewellery that she was wearing around her neck and wrists and replied, ‘You’ve not done too badly on it.’

  That was enough for Linda, who opened the car window and began hurling her bracelets, rings and necklaces onto the freeway. The habitually thrifty Tom was clearly the worse for wear, because he began to laugh when she couldn’t get her £50,000 diamond ring off her finger, later telling friends, ‘You had to see the funny side of it.’ Linda, too, got a fit of giggles, even though she had thrown away thousands of pounds of jewellery. She may have been a ‘lovely woman’ most of the time, but she undoubtedly had her moments.

  The excitement of the day wasn’t over, however. Tom had a drunken row with a woman sitting across from him over the noise he was making listening to music. She threw her coffee over him, and he tossed his brandy over her. The plane’s staff came to sort out the commotion, whereupon Dai, who had been asleep, woke up to what he thought was an attack on his boss. He pinned the person he thought was the ringleader to the ground and held him there with his knee on his chest. Dai told him that he was staying put until the plane landed. The man, who was wearing a uniform, exclaimed, ‘It’s not landing until I get up. I’m the captain.’ He was actually a steward, but his quick thinking probably saved him from getting punched. Both Tom and his bodyguard were fortunate that the incident didn’t end in prosecution.

  Clearly Tom and Dai were a potentially explosive combination. To be fair, considering how many live shows and how much travelling the two did, there were very few incidents. Tom loved having his pal around.

  On a rare visit back home to Pontypridd, they had met a vivacious teenager called Kay Tranter at Gingers nightclub. She was wearing a striking pair of hot pants and the boys invited her over to join them. She thought Tom was ‘stonking’, but preferred the larger and more rugged Dai.

  She and Dai were invited to Tor Point, which she thought was a ‘fantastic’ house. Linda was very homely and cooked for everyone. When Kay had a big disaster with a bottle of blonde bleach and a frizzy perm, Linda stepped in and cut her hair. This is the down-to-earth life that Tommy Woodward has when he is not being Tom Jones. For her twenty-first birthday, Tom paid for Kay to fly out and visit Las Vegas and stay with him, Linda and Dai in his suite at Caesars Palace. She met Elvis, Andy Williams and Fats Domino.

  Although Kay preferred Dai, Tom was encountering more than his fair share of attractive women. He thought Marjorie Wallace looked perfect. The dazzling blonde beauty queen is the only woman he has ever met who was equally beautiful whichever side of her face you were looking at. Her beauty was symmetrical. Their affair was exhilarating and ultimately very sad.

  They met in December 1973, two weeks after she was crowned Miss World at the Royal Albert Hall. Engelbert Humperdinck was on the judging panel that year and was in no doubt that Miss USA was the most appealing of that year’s contestants. Subsequently, at the Miss World ball, he and Marjorie enjoyed a snog for the cameras that was a front-page picture the next day, which had been the plan, of course. He had apparently hoped that they might meet up again, but he never had a chance after she met Tom.

  She was escorted by Chris Hutchins to see Tom, who was appearing at the London Palladium. They met before the show in his dressing room, and the chemistry was instant. For Tom to entertain before he went on stage was very rare and evidence of just how bowled over he was by the shapely and statuesque Miss Wallace. Later, they agreed to move on to Hatchetts nightclub in Piccadilly, where they were discovered by a less than delighted Engelbert. After much Dom Pérignon had been consumed, they adjourned to Tom’s usual suite at the Westbury Hotel.

  This liaison became something much more significant than a routine one-night stand. They grew to have great affection for one another. Marji, as she was generally known, stayed in London and enjoyed more rendezvous with Tom during his nights at the Palladium. Inevitably, a paragraph of gossip about them reached the newspapers, and Linda exploded when she read it at Christmas time in Tor Point. She gave her husband a hiding. He recalled on American TV the occasion when she beat him up. He was trying to say sorry and pointed to his chin, inviting her to whack him. She didn’t need a second chance: ‘She went “Bang!” and then started kicking me.’ Dai Perry was with them when this scene of seasonal goodwill unfolded. ‘You’re on your own, Tom,’ he said, still observing the Ponty code of conduct regarding women. Tom just had to take it, and observed, ‘That was my Christmas present.’

  After New Year, he was visiting Chris Hutchins at his house in Richmond, when he asked for Chris’s help. He needed to buy a couple of birthday presents. They repaired to a local jeweller’s, where Tom chose an elegant gold and pearl bracelet that cost more than £400. It was for Linda’s birthday on 14 January. He then selected a cultured pearl bracelet at just over £200. This was for his new lover’s twentieth birthday nine days later. He had to be careful not to get them muddled, which would have turned the episode into a farce.

  The following month, Marji and Tom flew out to Barbados, where she was a guest on a BBC show he was filming called Tom Jones on Happiness Island. He looked very happy indeed, when they were pictured on the beach tenderly kissing or, more precisely, sucking each other’s face. The media immediately got the right end of the stick. Tom sang the love ballad ‘Make It with You’, which, of course, he already had. It wasn’t a romantic getaway for two, however. As well as the television production team, Tom had his Ponty posse in attendance: Dai Perry, showing off his tattooed arms, Chris Ellis and the newest member of his entourage, his son Mark.

  During the previous summer, Tom became worried about his son, now a burly sixteen-year-old, who seemed to be moping around. Like his father, he wasn’t enjoying his schooldays, and despite his obvious love for his mother, he missed Tom. Over dinner Tom could see how moody he was. He recalled the occasion: ‘I’ve only ever wanted what made him happy. I asked what the matter was and he told me he wanted me to spend more time with him.’ Tom had been a wonderful provider for his family, but one thing he had been unable to give his son was more of his presence. That needed to change and the decision was taken for Mark to leave school and go on the road with his father.

  Linda wanted her son to be content, so she agreed to the arrangement, even though it would be a big change for her. It was the making of Mark. He was popular and unassuming. Chris Hutchins recalls, ‘On the road he was lovely. There was no “my dad is Tom Jones” or anything like that ever. Not a trace of it. He was just like his dad – a nice man.’

  Tom was quite strict with him, at least at first. Worried that his son was getting homesick, he allowed him to make a transatlantic call from his dressing room – enormously expensive then – so that a friend could play him the whole radio commentary for a Leeds United match, which was the team he supported.

  The quite obvious affair between Tom and Marji was made even more complicated because she was engaged to a dashing American racing driver called Peter Revson, heir to a billion-dollar fortune. They had got together in May 1973, when he competed in the famous Indianapolis 500 race, which was held in Marji’s home town. She was nineteen when she met the thirty-four-year-old playboy in a drugstore, where he was making a pre-race personal appearance. He became a well-known name in Europe after he won that year’s British Grand Prix for McLaren.

  Her love life became even more tangled when the newspapers printed extracts of what was alleged to be her diary, revealing a brief fling in London with the heart-throb footballer George Best. She reportedly gave her lov
ers marks out of ten. Tom was a nine, while poor George was a three.

  The diary may well have been an urban myth, but it was one controversy too many for Julia Morley, organiser of Miss World, who promptly stripped Marji of her title in March 1974. A statement said she had ‘failed to fulfil the basic requirements of the job’. She was clearly a Miss World who was becoming bigger news than the title itself, which was not the point of the annual contest. Two weeks later, Peter Revson was killed, aged thirty-five, in a horrific crash during practice for the South African Grand Prix.

  Tom offered a broad shoulder for Marji to cry on during the subsequent days and weeks. They spoke on the phone frequently and were able to sneak in a meeting here and there. That changed when he opened at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Tom was being paid £450,000 for five weeks’ work. Marji went too, while Linda, as she often preferred to do, stayed at home in the UK. For a brief time, Tom and Marji were to all intents and purposes living together. She stayed at the mansion he had rented and at night the lovers would travel in Tom’s limo to the hotel for his shows.

  It was only a matter of time before such blatant indiscretion was discovered and, sure enough, Chris Hutchins took a call at his new office in Los Angeles with the news he had been dreading: a paparazzo had taken a picture of Marji sunbathing and looking gorgeous by Tom’s pool. By now, it was abundantly clear to everyone that Linda would consider it a public humiliation. She hated that, so Chris had to act fast.

  He flew to Las Vegas to confront the couple at Tom’s house. When he arrived, Marji was there, wearing a skimpy bikini. He took Tom aside and explained the situation about the picture and the possible consequences regarding Linda and his marriage.