Tom Jones - the Life Page 7

  The escapade prompted Vernon to invest in a car of his own. His old Morris was nothing like the flash Corsair, but did come in useful occasionally, transporting the band to gigs. By late summer of 1962, the group had become friendly with a young engineer called Chris Ellis, who used to come and watch them at the Green Fly and would lend an expert hand if a piece of the equipment wasn’t working properly. He soon volunteered to be their roadie, and was responsible for setting up the gear at concerts and driving the van. He remained an integral part of the Tom Jones machine for more than ten years.

  Tom was always the last to be picked up when they were travelling to a gig. He was never ready on time. One of the group would run over and bang on the grill with their heel and Linda would let them in. They would chat to Tom while he shaved in a small, cracked mirror that he had used for years. Then they would set off, all of them filled with anticipation, except for Tom. He would get in the back, lie down and fall fast asleep. He was a very deep sleeper. Vernon recalls, ‘Tom just used to lie there, out for the count. We always had a hell of a job waking him up when we arrived.’

  The Green Fly continued to be the focus for events, both good and bad, in the story of The Senators. On one night, three of his old Teddy boy mates decided to drive over to watch Tom perform. The evening went well, the beer was flowing and Tom decided to catch a lift back with his friends. On the way, they were involved in a nasty collision, which left them all injured. Roy Nicholl had a broken jaw, Johnny Cleaves had a serious head injury and Dai Shepherd needed thirty-six stitches. Tom escaped with a bang on his forehead that gave him concussion and forced the cancellation of several gigs. They were all very lucky.

  The band, and Tom in particular, were getting progressively more desperate for something to happen. They were stuck in a provincial rut. Most Tuesdays after collecting his dole money, Tom would drift into the Pontypridd Observer and chat to Gerry Greenberg. He was forever trying to persuade the reporter to include a mention of the band in his pop column ‘Teen Beat’. Gerry did profile Tom in the column, in which readers learned that Tom had green eyes and that his ambition was to perform with Jerry Lee Lewis; his principal dislike was sarcastic people. It was good exposure, but publicity in the local paper wasn’t going to be enough to get them noticed in London.

  On one occasion Tom arrived at Gerry’s office with a badly cut mouth and swollen cheeks. Gerry recalls, ‘He was in a mess. He was struggling to speak, so I asked him, “What happened to you?” And he said the band were over at the Green Fly when they were jumped on by a gang. One of them jumped on him from behind and put his hands in his mouth and ripped it apart. I said, “God, that must have been painful, because you look in a right state.”

  The Senators gave the impression of being a rough pub band, bashing out a series of rock ’n’ roll standards from the fifties. Out front, Tom cut an intimidating figure in a leather jacket. Behind him, the rest of the band incongruously wore blue blazers and white trousers. They were exciting, but they weren’t current. The Beatles had their first top ten hit, ‘Love Me Do’, in October 1962 and music was never the same again. The boys from Pontypridd were in danger of being left behind.

  After another night at the Green Fly, they were approached by two ambitious young songwriters, Raymond Godfrey and John Glastonbury, who told them they had enjoyed their performance. They were seeking an up-and-coming band to showcase their songs. None of the band, according to Vernon, was particularly impressed by the duo, who looked like students and, for some reason, called themselves Myron and Byron: ‘They didn’t fit in at all. They were a square peg in a round hole. Byron was all right, quite affable, but Myron – I hated him. He was really slimy. Tom didn’t like him at all.’

  Raymond Godfrey later said that he and John Glastonbury were really only interested in Tom, as he was the one with the obvious talent. This was the first indication that outsiders listening to the band would concentrate on the singer.

  The Senators could go on playing local gigs for years to come, but here were two people talking seriously and enthusiastically about London for the first time. Myron and Byron told the boys they wanted them to make a demo of their songs, which they would take to record publishers and producers in the capital. It was a start.

  Alva Turner decided he didn’t like the way things were going, so he left. Fortunately, they managed to recruit a new drummer right away – a seventeen-year-old Pontypridd shoe salesman called Chris Rees. He changed his name to Chris Slade and would go on to become one of the best-known rock drummers of the past forty years. After he left Tom in 1970, he played with, among others, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in the seventies, AC/DC in the nineties and Asia in the noughties. Keith Davies was also having doubts about continuing as a guitarist with the group and left abruptly after a gig one night. He remained as part of the set-up, however, travelling to venues with them and helping with the equipment. He was happier without the pressure of playing every night. He was also in love and, now aged eighteen, planning to marry soon.

  He spent the night before his wedding in the front room of the house in Glyndwr Avenue, talking with Tom and Vernon and getting very drunk. Tom turned to him after more than a few beers and said, ‘Don’t be a bloody idiot now, Keith. Do yourself a favour. Get up to Treforest Station now. There is a milk train that goes out at six. Get on it and don’t bloody get off.’ Keith ignored that advice and celebrated his golden wedding in 2013. He was in such a state on his wedding day, however, that he can’t remember anything about it.

  He and Tom didn’t always get on so well. One Christmas Eve, after a couple of shows, the band were having a few beers in the Labour Club in Treharris. Vernon started playing ‘Moonlight Sonata’, while Tom messed around on the keys. Keith, a little drunk, unintentionally closed the lid on Tom’s hands. The next thing he knew, he was up against the wall and Tom had to be calmed down by the others. Later, while Keith was putting the gear back in the van, Tom came to apologise.

  Keith recalls, ‘He said, “I’m sorry,” and me, like a big kid, said, “Fuck off.” And I turned back to carry on with what I was doing. The next thing I knew, I had this hand on the back of my collar and I went flying out the back of the van. I always remember it was a lovely night and I was looking up at the stars, and he gave me a little dig with his foot. Cut my mouth and all that nonsense.’

  The atmosphere was terrible for a short while, until one night before leaving Cliff Terrace, Tom asked simply, ‘You all right?’ He also went out and bought Keith a new white shirt to replace the one that had been damaged in the spat. That brief altercation stands out as the only time there was any trouble between Tom and the band.

  Before Myron and Byron could take the sound of The Senators – and Tom – to London, however, they needed to make the demo. After much investigation, the duo decided that the perfect place would be the toilets in the YMCA. Tom already liked to sing there while he was having a pee because the acoustics were so good. They recorded four tracks, written by Myron and Byron, reel to reel on an eight-track portable stereo.

  Meanwhile, Myron and Byron started taking on more responsibility for the band, eventually signing them to a management contract. They found them gigs that were out of their comfort zone. They were booked as a support act to Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas at the Grand Pavilion in Porthcawl. Kramer was one of the ‘Mersey sound’ acts that sprang up in the wake of The Beatles’ success and was, for a while, hugely successful. He was managed by Brian Epstein and took a succession of Lennon and McCartney songs into the charts. Billy J. was a heart-throb in the old mould – more Cliff Richard than Mick Jagger, and definitely not Tom Jones.

  The Senators raised their game that night and were rapturously received by the Welsh crowd before the headline act closed the show to less than enthusiastic applause. The crowd started chanting for Tom and the boys to come back on, which, after being approached by the management, they were happy to do. They played for another half-hour. Vernon recalls, ‘We converted a lot of Da
kotas fans to Senator fans that night.’

  At the end of a memorable night, Billy J. Kramer was still a star, however, and Tommy Woodward, aka Tommy Scott, wasn’t. He kept telling the people at the dole office in Pontypridd that things were definitely moving for him at last. The officials at the Labour Exchange, as Jobcentres were called then, were sceptical about the whole thing. They thought Tom was too smartly dressed for the average unemployed person and guessed the band was more successful than he was letting on.

  A dry assessment from a supervisor at the employment office in 1963 reveals: ‘He does not want shift work but I believe the reason for his not liking shifts is because he is a member of a vocal group, which is supposedly an amateur affair. From the adverts one sees in the local press, however, it seems that this group had a good thing going.

  ‘From the way he is able to dress, it would seem that Mr Woodward’s little hobby is highly lucrative and this would account for his non-enthusiasm in securing employment. Consider and submit as soon as possible to anything which wouldn’t dirty his fingernails! Nothing on offer at present.’

  Godfrey and Glastonbury tried their luck in London, hawking their demo without success, until they managed to attract the attention of one of the best-known men in pop. His name was Joe Meek and he was a nightmare. His legendary status now owes much to the dreadful circumstances of his death rather than his achievements during his lifetime, although he was by far the most successful figure that Tom had come across. He was a maverick tortured by his sexuality at a time when sex between men was illegal in the UK; it remained so until 1967.

  Meek was an innovative producer with an unmistakable style – not as instantly recognisable as Phil Spector perhaps, but one who put his stamp on popular music in the early sixties. Sadly for him, he went out of fashion almost as quickly as he came in. Many of the studio techniques that are taken for granted today, however, were first introduced by the tone-deaf Meek in his home studio in a flat above a handbag shop in the Holloway Road, North London.

  His first major hit was the summer of 1961 smash ‘Johnny Remember Me’ by the actor John Leyton, a lament for a dead lover that featured Meek’s trademark eerie electronic sound. When the song was played on the panel show Juke Box Jury, Spike Milligan dismissed it as ‘son of “Ghost Riders in the Sky”’. The track did have the galloping beat that Tom had liked so much in the latter – he could have drummed ‘Johnny Remember Me’ on the desk at school.

  Meek’s reputation as the UK’s foremost independent producer was firmly established by the success of ‘Telstar’ by The Tornados in December 1962. The instrumental was one of the first British records to top the Billboard charts in the US and sold an estimated five million copies worldwide. The New Musical Express (NME), which named Meek the most influential producer ever, commented, ‘It was unlike anything anyone had heard before, packed full of claviolines, bizarre distortions and weird sonic effects, all achieved in Meek’s home recording studio above a shop.’

  Meek clearly thought he heard something in Tom’s voice, because he lost no time in signing a one-year production agreement with Myron and Byron. The Senators made the first of several seven-hour journeys to London to record in Joe’s flat. When they got there, they didn’t know where to look when they were greeted by Meek’s sometime lover Heinz, the singer and bassist with The Tornados, sprawled naked on the bed. The boys were happy to indulge in some blokish humour about keeping their backs to the walls, but they hadn’t come into contact with anyone as blatant as Meek.

  The producer had very close ties with Decca, who would press and distribute his recordings. The idea was that The Senators would lay down some tracks in his home and he would take it from there. They recorded seven, including a song called ‘Lonely Joe’, which Meek had written and hoped might make a single, ‘I Was a Fool’, written by Myron and Byron, two others called ‘Little Lonely One’ and ‘That’s What We’ll Do’, finishing off with some Jerry Lee Lewis to keep Tom happy. One they particularly liked was ‘Chills and Fever’, a strong bluesy track released in 1960 by Ronnie Love and his Orchestra.

  Tom got the message that Joe was at least as interested in his crotch as his tonsils when the producer asked him to stay behind for a word after their first photo session. He asked Tom to show him his stage moves, which, of course, involved a lot of sexy gyrating. He then made a lunge for Tom’s lunchbox. Tom dashed out of the flat, down the stairs and into the van, where the boys were waiting patiently. He explained his haste, ‘The bloody bastard made a grab for my balls, Vern!’

  Tom talked light-heartedly about his experience with Joe on The Merv Griffin Show in the US in 1979: ‘He was homosexual. It was a bad experience for me, coming from Wales; there’s no such thing, or we don’t like to think there is, anyway.’

  The band persevered, however, and made another seven-hour trip to London. When Tom failed to sing one number just as Joe requested, the mercurial Meek stormed in, pointed a gun at Tom and fired. Apparently it was a starting pistol, but nobody knew that at the time.

  This was clearly not a match made in heaven. During the following months, Meek lost interest in the boys from Wales. His biographer, John Repsch, said that part of the problem was Decca’s interest in P. J. Proby, who was just starting out. Meek also apparently didn’t much care for Myron and Byron or the musical abilities of the band. Once again, it was Tom who was sparking all the interest.

  Things ended badly with Joe Meek. The deal with Decca failed to materialise and Meek tore up his contract in front of Myron and Byron and threw it in the bin. An angry Tom was so incensed by Meek’s treatment of the band that he and Chris Ellis charged over to the producer’s flat to confront him and demanded to know why he had been stringing them along when he clearly had done very little. Tom told Vernon afterwards, ‘He thought I was going to kill him! It was pitiful, so we left him to it.’ On the way out, they looked for their recordings, but had no luck – an omission that would turn out to be costly later.

  Joe Meek never recaptured his early success and, despite another number one hit with ‘Have I the Right’ by The Honeycombs, he was declared bankrupt. In February 1967, he shot dead his landlady, Mrs Violet Shenton, who, on occasion, had made tea for Tom and the boys. He then turned the shotgun, which belonged to Heinz, on himself.

  Tom had come within touching distance of a breakthrough in London. He had better luck with someone who would become even more notorious than Joe Meek. He was helped by the DJ Jimmy Savile, whom he met at the now closed Aaland Hotel in Bloomsbury. Myron and Byron had found out that Savile habitually stayed there when broadcasting in London, so they took a room, while Tom and Chris Ellis slept in the car. The intention was to hand Savile a tape of the band and hope he would pass it on to a record company.

  One morning, frustrated after a bad night’s sleep, Tom stormed in to find out what exactly his managers were doing to make contact with the DJ. He was banging on their door, when Savile poked his head out of his room to find out what all the noise was about. Tom explained he was in a pop group from Wales and asked if Jimmy could give them some advice. The conversation was brief, but that evening Tom and Chris went back, knocked on his door and poured out the whole sad story of their London disappointment. Savile promised to do something with the tape.

  He recalled the encounter in his autobiography. He described Tom and Chris being ‘earnest and solemn of face’. He remembered several discussions in which they told him of their progress and he suggested a course of action: ‘It started things going the right way and the caterpillar of Tommy Scott and The Senators turned into the world-beater winged wonder of our own Tom Jones.’ The egotistical Savile didn’t claim to be responsible for Tom’s success, but he did say ‘when a top man has time to talk or eat with new arrivals, it gives a tremendous boost to the morale of the beginners’.

  By some means, the demo tape ended up at Decca and was eventually discovered by a young producer there called Peter Sullivan. He was so impressed by what he heard that he
made a special trip to Wales to hear Tom sing. He thought Tom had a voice that was entirely different to the lightweight lead singers of the time. At a later date, Peter would be an important figure in the musical world of Tom Jones, but for the moment he felt Tom wasn’t ready.

  The man who would have the greatest influence on his career had yet to meet Tommy Woodward.

  Part Two

  Tom Jones

  8

  The Black Hole

  Gordon Mills was not a man to mince his words. When he first caught sight of Tommy Woodward at the Lewis Merthyr Club in Porth one Sunday lunchtime, he declared, ‘Who’s that scruffy bastard?’ Gordon was like that: one moment he could be completely charming, the next ruthless and rude. Keith Davies called him ‘Mister Moody Mills’. He was, however, a hugely charismatic man who demanded your attention.

  Gordon was visiting his mother for the weekend and had been taken to the club by two old school friends from the Rhondda Valley, South Wales: Gordon Jones, whom everyone called Gog, and Johnny Bennett, a club singer who had become a fan of Tom’s voice. Tom wasn’t singing that lunchtime, but Gordon was introduced to him – as Tommy Scott – and they sat with the rest of The Senators, watching a bad comedian try to entertain everyone.

  Gordon was with his beautiful blonde wife, Jo Waring, a London model who was expecting their first child. At one point, the comedian told a risqué joke that led to Gordon waving a warning finger, as if to say, ‘There are ladies present’ and ‘Don’t do it again’. Perhaps he was a man who shared Tom’s old-fashioned mixture of chivalry and chauvinism where women were concerned.

  Johnny persuaded Gordon to come and hear the band play that evening at the Top Hat Club in Cwmtillery, a mining village twenty miles north of Pontypridd and basically in the middle of nowhere. Tom observed drily, ‘It sounded posh, but it wasn’t.’ The notorious Mandy Rice-Davies, a central figure in the Profumo scandal, had launched a singing career and was supposed to be the night’s big act, but she had laryngitis, so Tommy Scott and The Senators moved up to the top of the bill.