Tom Jones International

Don’t forget the TJI Question of the Month, in the post below.

There is video of an interview Tom did the other day with the Australian TV show Today Tonight. The transcript is at the bottom of this post. This interviewer did a better job than that last one. If you follow Tom, you won’t find anything new, but it’s nice — except they mistook a photo of Tom with his sister for a photo of Tom with his wife. (They did that in yesterday’s interview, too.)

To watch the interview, click the thumbnail at left. Then, come back here to read the new interview and, if you wish, the transcript of this video interview.

Tom Jones performing at Sandalford Wines

Sally Browne/PerthNow/March 03, 2010 11:27AM

WHEN Elvis is telling you one thing and Frank Sinatra is telling you another, it’s hard to know who to listen to.

But that’s what it was like for a young Tom Jones when he first made it in America.

Click here to

In 1965, when British fever was in full swing, the Welsh singer had his first big hit with It’s Not Unusual —it was No. 1 in the UK and top 10 in the US. Not long after, the former construction worker from Pontypridd got to meet his idols, whom he had watched on TV as a teenager.

He became good friends with Elvis, who took a keen interest in his work. “I did an albums of standards once,” recalls Jones, “and (Elvis) said, `We don’t do that, Tom. We leave songs like that to Sinatra.’ And I said, `Well, OK, then’. And when I was talking to Frank Sinatra, he said, `You could be a great jazz singer. You should do more big band stuff.’

“So Elvis was wanting to be more rock ‘n’ roll and Frank was advising me to sing more swing stuff, but I said, `I like it all’. The singers’ friendship continued until Presley’s later years. Jones still has a recurring dream where he goes back in time to warn Elvis about his future.

“It was shocking,” he says about Elvis’s death. “I didn’t realise he was that sick. I could see that he was getting heavy and then he pushed away a lot of people so I couldn’t get to talk to him for the last few years of his life be cause he wouldn’t answer any of my calls anymore.” The piece of advice Jones remembers Sinatra telling him is about his voice.

“Frank Sinatra did tell me not to sing so hard all the time,” he says, “he said, “because you lose your voice, you’re going to blow it, you’re forcing, so he said relax a little bit more, you’ve got plenty there, you’ve got plenty of volume. You don’t have to prove it every song be cause you’re going to hurt yourself.”’

But at 69 years of age, Jones’s voice has not faded.

Swing or rock ‘n’ roll, pop or dance, Tom Jones has done it all. He has had hits every decade, reinventing himself from a wild boy in tight pants and billowing shirt to a respectable be-suited crooner to a Vegas staple to a 50-something sex bomb, recording duets with acts of the day, including The Cardigans, Stereophonics and Mousse T.

And the legendary women’s underwear has kept flying.

Next year Jones returns to Australia _ his last tour hear was with John Farnham.

“We toured together because he had gone out before apparently and said that was going to be his last tour,” Tom chuckles.

For his upcoming shows, promoters will be giving away a free copy of Jones’ latest album 24 Hours with every ticket sold. Believe it or not, 24 Hours marks the first time the singer has con tributed to the song- writing process in his five decade career.

It was Bono who first sparked the idea of him doing an album of personal songs.

The pair where chatting in Dublin, as superstars do, when the elder singer asked the younger if he would write a song for him. Bono said sure, but that he would like to write something about Tom Jones. So he asked him a few questions.

“We talked for I don’t know how long,” says Jones, “so he wrote down a lot of stuff that I told him about my life.”

The result is Sugar Daddy, on which Bono and U2 guitarist the Edge guest star.

Jones certainly has plenty of stories to tell. Never is about his relationship to a career in music and The Road, is about his wife, whom he married as a teenager in Wales. While Jones has lived the superstar life, and partaken of the inevitable perks that go with it, he has never left his wife Melinda. She leads a quiet life and avoids the showbiz scene.

“Wherever I’ve been travelling all over the place the road always leads back to Linda,” says Jones. “That’s where the title comes from. When we got married we were teenagers. She says to me sometimes, if I get a little loud, `Look I didn’t marry Tom Jones, I married Tommy Woodward’, which is my last name, so I said, ‘Yeah I know that’. Because we’ve been together for 52 years now.”

Although he’s a frequent visitor to the UK _ when we chat he is staying at his son and manager’s house outside London _ Jones and his wife have called LA home for years. The pair now live in a guarded estate off Mulholland Drive, but used to live in Bel Air, where tour busses were a frequent distraction, not that the good natured Jones minded too much.

“When I first bought the house from Dean Martin, on the weekend I went out to get the mail and I’m there in a bloody robe and I’m looking at these letters and I hear ‘Yoohoo!’ and I turn around and there’s all these people with these video cameras, but none of (the videos) ever surfaced!

“‘I thought, Oh Jesus Christ, they’re going to be seeing me in a robe, I hadn’t combed my hair, but it must have been for their personal use because I’ve never ever seen any of them.”

Jones has never let his success get to his head, and remembering his working class roots is “very important”.

“Maybe the most important,” he says. “The early years of any child’s life is so important and I was lucky to have a great childhood in Wales, I came from a big family of aunties and uncles and cousins, we all lived in the same town it was a wonderful experience. I had a great start, and that’s carried me through.”

What did his coal miner father think of his singing son?

“We all sing in Wales,” he says, “so he knew, but he didn’t know I was going to be so successful, so he was knocked out. Because I retired him. “The financial side has been very important, so I could look after my family, which I always wanted to do, and fulfillment — I’m doing something, still, that I love to do and I’m getting paid for it. I thought that as a kid if I could become a professional singer and get paid to do something I love, that would be it, and that happened and it’s still happened, I’m still living it.”

24 Hours is out now.

Tom Jones plays Sandalford Wines on March 14. Tickets from Ticketmaster.

Wineries the way for the stars

Reporter: Sally Obermeder/March 01, 2010/Australia: Today Tonight

It’s the new arena for international stars — Elton John, Whitney Houston, Cliff Richard & Rod Stewart are just some of the big names that are choosing the outdoors.

No longer is it entertainment centres, now it’s the ‘stadium under the stars’ — wineries.

Often a more relaxed environment, winery concerts are beneficial for local tourism and some say it can also be more profitable for the artist, thanks to the large venue numbers and lower costs.

And the latest name to hit the grapes is the legendary Tom Jones.

“I still move around quite a bit, not as much as I used to, because of course, the older you get your energy is not like it was when you’re young,” Tom said.

One of his greatest loves is wine, but the Welsh crooner is more famous for his love of women. When you listen to him now though, there is only one woman that has ever mattered. On his new album, he’s written a ballad to acknowledge his wife of 53 years, Linda.

“Well, I mean we’ve been married a long time and no matter where I’ve gone or what I’ve done the road always leads back to Linda.”

You’ve spoken in the past about your affairs, was that an apology song for her?

“Not an apology, I was just sort of saying, it is like it is. Just trying to put it into words and that’s the way it came out. There’s a line in it called “I left you shattered on the ground” and she said I don’t remember that part and I said well don’t take it literally, but she loved it,” Tom said.

In the five decades he’s been married to Linda, he’s sold 100 million albums and is now worth $250 million. And it all started with the song he initially thought was Nothing Unusual.

“That changed my life and without that song who knows how long it would have taken me.”

And while he might be turning 70 this year, there’s no sign of him stopping.

“No plans for retirement no, I dread it. I dread the day when my voice is not working as well and then I’ll have to say well I can’t do this anymore. I love singing and I hope I can do it as long as I live.”