Singer Tom Jones was quaffing ale at a local pub in his native South Wales recently when a debate broke out among the patrons. ”The older gentlemen had just finished playing `A Boy From Nowhere,` this big torchy ballad that I released in 1987,” Jones recounted. ”They said, `Oh my God, this is what you do best.` Then some young kids played `Kiss` (Jones` hit version of a Prince tune recorded in 1988 with avant-garde rockers Art Of Noise) and they were going `This is where you belong. This is you. ”Kiss” is cool.` And the older men were saying `No, no. The ballad is where Tom Jones shines.` ”
From the beginning of his long career, it has been easier to fit Jones, 50, into a pair of his tight pants than into any musical category. He has alternated between sentimental bravado and unbridled rock and roll, a strategy that, by his own admission, puts him ”between a rock and a hard place. Ever since I started, producers and managers were asking `where are we going to put you?` ”
”In the early `60s, you had to be either a `mod,` clean-cut in a suit, or a `rocker,` a greaser,” Jones continues by phone from a hotel room in Pennsylvania. (His current tour brings him to Pheasant Run`s Megacenter Friday-Sept. 2.) ”I wasn`t fitting in either with the Beatles or the Rolling Stones because I didn`t have that boyish look. I had a masculine look.”
So Decca/England, Jones` record label, scrutinized this son of a coal miner who sang everything from Jerry Lee Lewis to gospelly ballads and work songs, and decided, ”Let`s go for the sexy thing.”
Jones` first all-out rock single, released in 1963, bombed. He then teamed up with songwriter Gordon Mills, who also wanted to manage the brawny baritone. ”One day Gordon asks me to sing on a demo of his songs he was sending to (female vocalist) Sandy Shaw,” Jones recalled. ”When I heard this one song I said, `This is what I`ve been waiting for, this song is a hit!`
Gordon said, `It`s not rock and roll enough for you.` And I said, `If you don`t let me record this, you can`t be my manager.` They heard it as this cool Brazilian thing with da da da dum light Latin riffs, so why would I want to do it?”
With Jones` rock tremolo wrapped around the pretty pop ditty, ”It`s Not Unusual” soared to the top of the charts and became his first hit.
About the performance, Jones said in his Welsh lilt, ”I like to attack things. I want desperately to get across power. Power is very important. I wanted to blast the song from the very beginning, give it a rock edge. That attack thing.”
Later that same year, Burt Bacharach asked Jones to sing his newly penned ”What`s New Pussycat?” ”Burt sang me the song,” Jones remembered. ”I said `Are you pulling my leg here? What is the song?` And he said, `This is the song.` `This is a stupid bloody song,` I said, `why would you want me to record this?` He said, `I want this to explode.` ”
Another hit-a bit of fluff brought to the giddy brink by Jones` rock spin-and his career button was marked ”blast off.” As a solo artist amidst a sea of British Invasion bands, Tom Jones had survived the cut.
In 1968, he made his first appearance in Las Vegas, a place where edgy rock gets quickly co-opted by the dinner crowds. Jones now admits it may have been a miscalculation of sorts. ”You get labelled by that Vegas/Tahoe/Reno thing. It`s not that simple with me. Yet my image has overshadowed my talent.”
Slick showrooms, three years of his television variety show, and songs like ”Delilah” and ”Green Green Grass Of Home” cozied Jones into the mainstream. America thought of the singer as a swaggering sex symbol.
”It gets me mad, it gets me aggravated that`s all people think I`m about,” he acknowledges. ”That stuff about ladies throwing room keys and underwear at me. That`s not who I am. I have fun with it.” Knickers aside, says Jones, ”It`s the singing I take to heart. Singing gives way to my feelings. I`ve never been without my voice. It gives me confidence.”
Judging from the success of ”Kiss” with young music fans, and his upcoming album on the hip Chrysalis Record label, it would seem Tom Jones is veering more toward turtlenecks and shades than tux and ruffles. ”Last month I was in this club in L.A.,” Jones says, ”And Billy Idol was there and introduced himself and asked, `Fancy doing a duet?` So we did and the crowd went nuts.”
”But the preconceived notion,” he continues, ”from the people in the business was that it was strange. Rolling Stone (magazine) was shocked. They said `What`s that picture of you with Billy Idol?` ”
He may still be on the horns of a dilemma, but it doesn`t rattle him, Jones says. ”I`m a bit of an upstart, which sounds strange at my age but it`s true. I`m cocky; I`m not trying to strike a pose. If you come see me live, you`ll see there`s still a helluva lot of rock and roll in my show.”
