Tom Jones International

Please don’t forget to check out the radio interviews and video in the three posts directly below this one!




Read this review in the knowledge that it’s only one person’s opinion and that person doesn’t quite approve. Read the second story with a grain of salt…..just another way to capitalize on stuff best kept private. May be true — or not — but we believe it’s really none of our business.




Tom Jones: 24 Hours












Pete Paphides/Times online.

It takes some balls to turn an admission of guilt into a romantic love song. We all know that, as a singer, that’s one quality that Tom Jones has never lacked. So perhaps it’s not that surprising to learn that, on his new album, Pontypridd’s most celebrated export has taken the opportunity to apologise to his wife Linda for all his past infidelities.

Having apologized so publicly, a part of you hopes that he may then go on to plead forgiveness for other indiscretions. That version of Prince’s Kiss springs to mind – as does his decision at last year’s Live Earth concert to cover Arctic Monkeys’ I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor in much the same way bears cover other bears’ territory.

Mercifully, however, 24 Hours signals an important development. Unlike recent albums, there are few arch interpretations of other people’s tunes. What covers there are – in particular, an electrifyingly raw demolition of Tommy James & The Shondells’ I’m Alive – are well-chosen.





The most significant development here though – as evidenced by The Road and the title track’s momentous come-hither to the afterlife – is Jones’ belated decision to get involved in the songwriting process. Co-written by emergent young studio popticians Future Cut, bespoke creations like Give A Little Love and Feels Like Music hark back to a world – somewhere between light entertainment and guttural R&B – that, back in the 1960s, belonged to Jones. With Latin-flavoured belters like In Style And Rhythm given a close analogue intimacy, it’s not too great a leap to imagine Jones mounting the stage at some late-night Soho haunt like the Bag O’Nails and letting rip whilst Michael Caine, Nanette Newman and assorted Beatles engage in small talk.

It would be miraculous, of course, if it were all as charming as that. Jones has walked the tightrope between supernatural self-confidence and rutting arrogance for so long now that an occasional loss of balance is inevitable. When he grunts, “Daddy always gives you what is good for you,” on Sugar Daddy, the effect is as immediate as swallowing a bad oyster – no matter that the song was penned for him by U2.

With the right song, however, listening to Tom Jones remains a pleasure as simple as that watching a bloodhound sticking its head outside the window of a speeding car. On this form, long may the road continue.

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My, my, my… Sir Tom Jones says sorry to his wife in song




Simon de Bruxelles/Times online




Sorry may be the hardest word for many people, but Sir Tom Jones has finally apologised to the woman who has stood by him for half a century while he earned his reputation as a career ladies’ man.




While Sir Tom does not quite say “sorry”, he does tell his wife Linda that he knows he has caused her pain.

The Road is one of the songs on Sir Tom’s new album 24 Hours that he has written himself – and the first he has publicly dedicated to the woman he has been with since they were childhood sweethearts in the South Wales mining town of Pontypridd.

The apology may not have come easily, but the lyrics speak for themselves. He sings how he: “Felt the weakness, when I was strong,/ Held sweetness, when it was wrong.”

He says he has seen her crying “tears of rain” and left her “shattered on the ground”, but promises: “The road always returns to you, and my love, it still belongs to you.”

The singer, 68, made famous by hits such as It’s Not Unusual, the Green Green Grass of Home and Delilah – and for whipping his largely female audiences into a sexually charged frenzy, is at an age when most of his contemporaries are on pensions and going to bed with nothing more exciting than a mug of Horlicks.

His new album is his first of original material for more than 15 years and he is back on the road promoting it while Linda stays at home in Los Angeles.

He said: “My wife is a quiet person. She doesn’t like parties and I wouldn’t want to force her into that. I respect her privacy.

“I hope the song straightens things out. It was almost like going into a confessional box. We still have the same basic feelings and the same values and we are both Welsh. We come from the same place, so I can’t bulls*** my wife,” he said in an interview with Wales on Sunday.

In 1987 he paid £50,000 to a model who brought a paternity suit against him, and also had a long affair with Mary Wilson, of the Supremes.

But he said that his wife did not see

herself as long-suffering. “We both came from working-class backgrounds. With all the trimmings that came with my career, she always sees the positive side of it.”

Since 1965 Sir Tom – he was knighted in 2006 – has sold more than 100 million records and built up a fortune estimated at £170 million.

The couple’s only son, Mark, is Sir Tom’s manager and he is hoping his father will emulate the success of Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond who both made career-defining albums late in their musical journeys.

The photo above, erroneously captioned “Tom and Linda Jones” in this same rehash story in today’s Daily Mail is from 1969.