Tom Jones - the Life

by Sean Smith

  ‘But Linda carried on checking the wardrobes, everything, looking for any trace of the woman having been there. Finally, she opened the oven, the one place the boys had forgotten. Now Mary Wilson was a great cook and she had prepared a meal the previous evening, which they hadn’t yet eaten. And so there’s this fabulous meal there, and Linda says, “Oh yeah! And who cooked this?” And Tom said, quick as a flash, “Chris Ellis.” And Chris Ellis couldn’t do beans on toast. But Tom said, “He’s been taking cooking lessons.”

  ‘Well, he finally owns up and they went to bed and he told me next day that they were lying there and they had just made love and Linda started crying, and he said, “What’s the matter, Linda?” And she said, “When I think that bitch has been lying on these sheets …”’

  After this drama, Mary’s days as Tom’s mistress were numbered. She was struggling to come to terms with the inevitable and admits in her book that she even began phoning him at home, only to hang up quickly if a woman’s voice answered.

  In November 1969, Mary was hosting a lavish party at her Hollywood home. Tom arrived and suggested they have some privacy in her bedroom. He told her, ‘I don’t think this is fair to you. There is no future for us and I think we should end this affair now.’

  Mary dissolved into tears, still hoping that he might change his mind, but in her heart she finally understood that it would always be Linda. She revealed in her book she was able to achieve closure when Tom brought his wife backstage after a Supremes concert and introduced her. Mary thought she was ‘very nice’.

  Tom occupies a special place in her heart, but later, after she’d married and experienced infidelity herself, she poignantly recognised the ‘pain and humiliation’ that Linda had gone through. Linda gave some insight into her life as Mrs Tom Jones in a rare interview with the Daily Mirror at the height of the Mary Wilson affair. She made no mention of the Supreme when she declared that she was sure of Tom because ‘I always know he is coming home’.

  She hinted it was difficult coming to terms with the gorgeous women that surrounded her husband on a daily basis. Her self-confidence was so low that she would never answer the front door without first putting on her make-up. She had to endure letters from Tom’s female fans declaring how much they wanted to go to bed with her husband – those were the polite ones. She clearly was still deeply in love: ‘I feel alive when he comes in through the door whatever the time of day or night it is.’

  The front door, in 1969, was the entrance to the most impressive house in the exclusive St George’s Hill, Weybridge. Tor Point, as they called it, was a twenty-room mansion that Tom had bought the previous year, a palatial prison for someone who didn’t own a car. If you wanted to brag about having made it in show business, then this was the address to seek. Cliff Richard, John Lennon and George Harrison lived nearby, and it wouldn’t be long before Gordon’s stable of stars joined them.

  Gordon lived half a mile away. Engelbert was also close, after he purchased a house in the area that one of those TV property programmes would have called an ‘opportunity to increase value’. He spent a fortune – close to £30,000 – on renovations.

  A famous photo from these extravagant times shows the three men perched on their matching Rolls-Royces in the driveway of Gordon’s home. They are wearing expensive suits and ties and sporting the slightly smug expressions of men who know they have made it. Today, in these harsh times of recession, it would be the height of crass vulgarity, but then it was simply a statement of ‘look at me’ success. The picture revealed that the number plate on Tom’s Roller was the immodest TJ BIG.

  Tor Point was the jewel in this exclusive crown. Set in five acres of woodland and nestling behind an impressive set of electronic security gates with a Welsh dragon crest, visitors from Pontypridd thought they were arriving at Buckingham Palace. The house had prime position, overlooking the renowned St George’s Hill Golf Course, although Tom never showed the slightest interest in taking up the game.

  His sporting interests were well served at Tor Point, however. He could swim every day in a 25-metre pool with another Welsh dragon emblazoned on the bottom in red mosaic tiles. A squash court, a tennis court, a sauna and a gym made up his state-of-the-art fitness centre, which he had built at a cost of £250,000 at the end of the driveway. It was like having your personal health club in the garden. Since Tom now had a much higher profile in the US, he was more aware of the need to keep trim. He had noticed that his trousers were feeling tighter, while his chin was worryingly close to a double.

  If he didn’t fancy using these facilities, he could enjoy a run around the golf course in the company of the family’s newly acquired black Labrador, unimaginatively called Blackie. Tom loved the dog that was always so pleased to see him when he came home. It was a sad day a few years later when he was run over.

  Chris Hutchins once asked Tom, to test his mettle, when the last time he had cried was. Tom answered, ‘When Blackie died,’ and his eyes welled up with tears at the memory.

  Linda had been in charge of the interior decoration and design of the house, and no expense had been spared. The television programme Through the Keyhole would have focused on the large glass cabinets brimming with Tom’s gold and silver discs and his Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1966. The camera could have dwelled on his expanding collection of military memorabilia, including pistols, swords and a suit of armour. The few bookcases contained beautiful-looking books, but they were false-fronted and behind the expensive façade there was nothing to read. Pride of place in Tom’s study was a gold-leaf telephone with a mahogany base – the height of opulence. As the writer Robin Eggar perceptively commented, ‘Linda liked the money but not the fame.’ She would have been happier if they had won the pools and nobody knew who they were.

  She turned Tor Point into a beautiful home that they were both very proud to have. Upstairs, on the top floor, she allowed her husband his own play area. They installed a home cinema with sixteen seats. Next door to that was an enormous snooker room with a jukebox and Tom’s very own bar, a real beer barrel and an endless supply of chilled Dom Pérignon.

  The house was by no means a masculine paradise, however. Linda filled the rooms with brightly coloured fruit bowls and vases always full of freshly cut flowers from the gardens. Despite Tom’s wealth, Linda preferred to do her share of the cleaning – even though she had a cleaner – and all of the cooking herself. It was how she spent her days, waiting for the next time her husband came home.

  When he was there, he was a man who liked hearty food. As well as lamb curry, he liked nothing better than to sit down with his wife and son and enjoy a home-cooked fillet steak with his favourite vegetables, which unusually happened to be sprouts.

  The house was always immaculate, ready at any time for guests to be received. Chris Hutchins used to call round occasionally to collect a photograph or to tell Linda something important. He recalls one particular day that stuck in his memory: ‘It was a huge house, but she was doing the dusting. And as she dusted, she had one of Tom’s albums on the record player and she was dancing and singing along to it. She was a fan. Of course she was. All of us were, including Gordon. We were all fans of Tom Jones.’

  Tor Point truly was a Hollywood mansion in a leafy enclave 20 miles from Central London. It was a place made for grand and glamorous parties – except, in the seven years they lived there, the Joneses never had a single one.

  At least Linda could enjoy visits from family who travelled up from Wales. She couldn’t persuade her mother Vi to leave her home in Cliff Terrace and move permanently. She was a frequent visitor, but Vi continued to work at John’s Café, next to the White Hart pub. Despite a strong admiration for Tom’s talent, she was never happy about stories involving her son-in-law’s indiscretions.

  Tom’s parents were only five miles away in Shepperton. They were even closer when he bought them a new house in Weybridge. His sister Sheila and her husband Ken moved into the lodge at Tor Point and Tom gave his brothe
r-in-law the job of looking after the extensive grounds. He liked to keep his family close and that never changed.

  Linda did have friends, of course, and while he was young, she was looking after her son, who was enrolled at an expensive school in Shepperton. Jo Mills was only just up the road, but she was a very different type of woman and, in any case, she had an expanding family. She was sociable and socially adept, and enjoyed throwing extravagant showbiz parties.

  Tom would associate with celebrities away from home, but, as a couple, Tom and Linda weren’t part of a show-business set. The most famous person ever to come to Tor Point was probably Michael Jackson, but at the time he was only a boy and Tom had invited him to shoot a video in the grounds. Michael turned up and spent half a day driving a little go-kart about the place while being filmed.

  Tom, when he was at home, was just the same as Linda. He preferred to go out to be sociable. He liked nothing better than to hold court in an old-fashioned boozer. Once, just before Christmas, Linda was worried because she didn’t know where he was and he had been missing for two days and two nights. She phoned Chris Hutchins, who told her he would try to discover what had happened. He found Tom in the local pub in Weybridge. Chris walked in and Tom looked up at him, smiled and said, ‘Hello, Chrissie. Have a drink.’

  Linda chose to stay at home when she had the money to do anything she pleased. Tom was about to sign a television deal that would make him a multi-millionaire. She didn’t choose to do what some other women with wealthy husbands do. She could have travelled the world with her husband, or by herself. She could have started a charity or a foundation. She might have started a fashion and design business or found an artistic pursuit that enriched her life, but she drank champagne and dusted. It may or may not be coincidence that she became more reclusive after Tom’s affair with Mary Wilson became public and she had to deal with that humiliation.

  Ironically, the third great Tom Jones song of the sixties was about infidelity. Thankfully, none of Tom’s affairs ended as badly as ‘Delilah’, the dramatic ballad that perfectly showcased his powerful voice.

  Les Reed and Barry Mason wrote it and, surprisingly, they didn’t compose the song with Tom in mind. He was second choice – just as he had been to Sandie Shaw when ‘It’s Not Unusual’ was written. They wrote it for P. J. Proby. Les, who admired the Texan’s individual approach, had been hired as producer for his album, called Believe It or Not. Les joined forces with Barry to write a number of songs for inclusion, but he recalls, ‘From the very beginning, on hearing the song, P. J. absolutely hated it. After a long and heavy day at the Wessex Sound Studios, we finally came to record his voice onto the track of “Delilah”. He was so against the song, he ended up singing it like Bob Dylan! Eventually, as his producer, I gave up on the song and we released an eleven-track album instead of twelve. I played “Delilah” to Gordon and Tom the following day … and the rest is history.’

  Tom had to answer some critics who thought the song glorified murder. He told the NME: ‘Of course “Delilah” has violence. It’s a song about a man who sees his girl being unfaithful and who kills her in the heat of the moment. It’s been known before. It’s not a song that glorifies murder. The whole point of it is that I’m sorry for what I’ve done.’

  As usual, a little controversy was good for sales and ‘Delilah’ reached number two in the singles chart. The album of the same name was Tom’s first UK number one in August 1968. The song is one of his best loved, but also remained controversial because of its violent subject matter. There were even calls for it to be banned after Tom sang it before the Wales rugby international against England in 1999, more than thirty years later. It became an unofficial anthem of the Welsh team, with the crowd cheerily singing, ‘I felt the knife in my hand …’

  The lyricist Barry Mason summed it up: ‘Nobody listens to the lyrics.’

  13

  This Is Tom Jones

  Tom continued to badger Gordon to let him have his nose fixed and his teeth done. His manager had always resisted, telling him he wanted him to look natural. Tom’s rugged masculinity was part of his appeal. Gordon changed his opinion, however, when the dollar signs began to appear in front of their eyes. The rough and ready rocker didn’t suit the image of a Vegas headliner or a budding movie star.

  Gordon now told him, ‘You are a star and you must look like a star.’ Tom was booked into a clinic in London for what was called an operation to repair some nasal cartilage. He soon grew tired of that subterfuge and has subsequently been happy to talk about his cosmetic surgery. The large, misshapen hooter he so hated was remodelled, his teeth were whitened and capped, and his long face became more rounded under his chin. He has never been afraid to top up his cosmetic treatments to continue to keep the years at bay. The procedure worked, because Tom emerged looking much more traditionally handsome.

  The movie star Tom was the one that Lew Grade first saw at the London Palladium. Lord Grade, as he would later become, was a legendary figure in television history. He was born Lovat Winogradsky in the Ukraine, but his family moved to London when he was thirteen, and he had become Lew Grade by the time he was crowned Charleston Champion of the World in 1926. He later billed himself as ‘The Dancer with the Humorous Feet’ before deciding that his future was as an agent and impresario.

  Tom likes a cigar, but Lew Grade must have been born with a large Montecristo in his mouth. He was the archetypal cigar-chomping TV tycoon. His great talent lay in spotting potential and exploiting a gap in the market. After the Second World War, he signed some of the UK’s favourite entertainers, including Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Tony Hancock, and secured a foothold in the rapidly evolving world of television. His aim was to provide programmes for the ‘average working-class family’s evening’.

  By the time he first saw Tom Jones, he was the renowned boss of ATV (Associated Television). More importantly for Tom and Gordon, he had an eye on the American market and was always on the lookout for shows that could work for both the UK and US audiences.

  He recognised Tom’s potential when he watched a run-through for The London Palladium Show, a hugely popular variety show that ran throughout the sixties: ‘It was only a rehearsal and Tom was dressed casually, but he performed as if he was doing his actual performance.’

  Lew could see straight away that it was the music that mattered for Tom: ‘He was a very attractive sensuous-looking man, but that was incidental. Without the vitality he put into each performance, he would never have been a sex symbol.’

  Lew called his American contact, Martin Starger, the vice-president in charge of programming at the ABC network, to invite him to London to see Tom live at the Talk of the Town, the well-known London nightspot, where he was booked for a month’s residency. They chose a good night. He gave a rousing rendition of many of his best-known songs from the sixties. Lew Grade observed, ‘Even when he sang a ballad, you could feel the rhythm.’

  Lew must have been thinking of ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’, a song made famous by Ray Charles. Tom sang it as if his very life depended on extracting every ounce of emotion from the lyric. He was backed by the Ted Heath Orchestra, demonstrating how quickly he had mastered singing with a big band. It was Sinatra with balls.

  Grade and Starger were looking for a charismatic artist who could bring ‘variety’ to a younger audience. They both believed they had found that man. Lew told Omnibus that Martin was ‘over the moon’ and suggested that they produce a Tom Jones special in the first instance, with a view to commissioning a series if it was a success.

  Tom wasn’t keen when he heard the plan. He was uncomfortable with the idea of introducing acts, ‘Ladies and gentleman, put your hands together for Bob Hope.’ He did trust Gordon, however. He accompanied him to meetings in Lew Grade’s office, smoked one of their host’s fine cigars and sat quietly while the two men conducted a series of tough negotiations. Gordon already had a reputation for being fearless – he needed to be when he had discussions with the Mafia
in the US and looked them in the eye.

  Lew recalled their third meeting in his autobiography, Still Dancing: ‘I said, “Gordon, that’s my final offer, and I’ll tell you what else I’ll do. I’ll give Tom a box of cigars for every programme he does.” Tom, who’d remained silent at these meetings, spoke for the first time. “You’ve got a deal!” he said.’

  It’s a good story that doesn’t ring true. Gordon made all the decisions. Tom would have known when the enthusiastic poker player was happy with his hand. He had every reason to be pleased. The three-season contract was set to earn Tom £9 million, the highest figure ever paid to a single performer.

  Elvis Presley was the first star that Tom asked to be on the series This Is Tom Jones. The King was booked but never appeared. Apparently, there was a contractual problem. He had appeared on TV in 1960 in a special programme hosted by Frank Sinatra that welcomed him home from his national service in the army. The show was an opportunity for Elvis, minus sideburns, to show America his new toned-down image for an adult audience. It also gave him the chance to plug his new film, G.I. Blues, which co-starred the dancer Juliet Prowse, with whom he’d had a passionate fling during filming.

  Elvis told Tom that he had been contracted to make two specials with Sinatra and wasn’t allowed to appear on another show until he did. That was the official line, although the critics had been harsh about Elvis’s appearance alongside Frank and he may not have been too keen to sing alongside another vocal powerhouse.

  Sinatra was probably the only guest who could have matched the prestige of Presley, but he too proved to be beyond reach. When Tom started in Vegas, Frank and The Rat Pack were the kings of the strip. The two men became friendly and Tom has often quoted the piece of valuable advice that Sinatra gave him: ‘He said, “Tom, you don’t have to hit everything hard. If you keep hammering everything, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”’ Frank encouraged Tom to find his crooner voice and not focus so much on rock ’n’ roll.