Tom Jones - the Life (8 page)

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.

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.

Johnny made a point of telling the boys that this was
the
Gordon Mills down from London and he was coming specially to see them. The more accurate representation of the event was that Gordon was a minor figure on the London recording scene desperate to find an act that could provide his breakthrough into management.

Gordon was brought up in the Valleys, but had been born in Madras (Chennai), India, where his father, Bill, was stationed as an army sergeant. His father worked as a carpenter when he left the service and returned to South Wales. Gordon inherited his dark, brooding good looks from his Anglo-Indian mother, Lorna. He was approaching his twenty-ninth birthday, five years older than Tom, when they met for the first time.

While he would achieve fame as one of the great pop managers, Gordon was first a talented musician and songwriter. He didn’t have a good enough voice to offer him an escape from Tonypandy, a mining town just seven miles from where Tom was brought up in Treforest. Gordon was, however, a superb player of the harmonica – a musical instrument that could be enjoyed when there was little money for expensive keyboards and guitars. His friend and fellow musician from those days, Albert Blinkhorn, who taught him ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’, observed that his talent was matched by the strength of his character and his powers of persuasion: ‘He could tell you a thing was black and, even if you knew damn well it was white, Gordon would convince you it was black.’

Gordon did his two years of national service when he was seventeen and found Tonypandy even more claustrophobic on his return. He got a job as a bus conductor, but, more important, came runner-up in the British Harmonica Championship, staged at the Royal Albert Hall. He pawned his radio to afford his fare to London, but it was worth it, because that success fuelled his dreams of becoming a wealthy man.

Gordon had to face exactly the same dilemma that he would later present to Tom – give up the life he knew and move to London or stay in Wales and always wonder what might have been. His friend Albert encouraged him to ‘take a gamble’, which was something Gordon, a keen poker player, was always prepared to do.

He landed a job playing variety shows with Morton Fraser’s Harmonica Gang, before striking out with two other members of the troupe and forming a pop act called The Viscounts. They had some minor chart success over the next few years, including their version of ‘Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)’, which was an anaemic doo-wop song and not one that Tom would have enjoyed performing. Gordon took the lead vocal, despite never having done more than sing in the bath. The Viscounts were much in demand as part of the all-star tours that were fashionable then, and appeared on the same bill as The Beatles and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas.

At a gig in Leicester, Gordon met a struggling singer called Gerry Dorsey, who was at the bottom of the bill. The two became firm friends, discovering in the process that they were both originally from Madras and had Anglo-Indian mothers. A few years later, when Gordon had become Gerry’s manager and renamed him Engelbert Humperdinck, his career path would inevitably become entwined with Tom’s. By a strange quirk of fate, after appearing at a charity concert in Manchester, Gerry felt ill and a subsequent X-ray revealed he had TB. He was in a sanatorium for six months and needed a further six to convalesce.

Back in London, Gordon and Gerry decided to share a grotty flat together in West Kensington, eventually moving into a place in Cleveland Square known affectionately as the Rock ’n’ Roll House, because it was full of musicians hoping for a break. They had turned up to a party there to celebrate the twenty-first birthday of the singer Terry Dene, when Gordon met another resident, the elegant Jo Waring, for the first time. She was Rhodesian, had been a Bluebell Girl in Paris and was working as a fashion model in the capital. For a while, she was almost as influential in Tom’s career as Gordon was.

Jo was instantly attracted to the tall, softly spoken harmonica player, and they soon moved into their own place together in Campden Hill Towers, a flat Tom would come to know well. Jo recalled: ‘Gordon had something about him. You felt sure that he was sure about his life. He was a positive man and I loved him completely.’

As a token of that love, she saved enough from her modelling work to buy Gordon a piano. He was delighted, because it meant he could start composing songs. He couldn’t read music, but he could pick out catchy melodies, and Jo would chip in with possible lyrics. One composition ‘I’ll Never Get Over You’ became a top ten hit for Johnny Kidd and the Pirates and found its way onto The Senators’ set list. A couple of months before he met Tom, he had success with another, called ‘I’m the Lonely One’, which was a hit for Cliff Richard and The Shadows. Tom may not have liked Cliff’s recording, but it made Gordon current, and therefore more impressive. Ironically, Tom recorded the song as ‘The Lonely One’ and it became a B-side of one of his hits, ‘I’m Coming Home’, in 1967. He made sure it didn’t sound anything like Cliff’s version.

When Gordon and Jo married, Gerry Dorsey was best man. Gordon returned the favour at Gerry’s wedding to his long-standing girlfriend, a secretary called Pat Healy, in April 1964. Pat, whom Gerry called Popea, was already pregnant with their first daughter. Two other important figures in the Tom Jones story acted as ushers. They were the songwriters Barry Mason and Les Reed. As a wedding present, Gordon and Jo paid for the new Mr and Mrs Dorsey’s honeymoon in Paris.

A month later, Jo Mills was a big hit when she travelled with her husband to South Wales. ‘She was very nice and sociable,’ remembers Keith Davies. The couple gave him a lift in their flashy Ford Zephyr to the Top Hat, because there wasn’t enough room in the van. ‘I went to get in the back and she said, “Come and sit in the front, love. I’m Jo and this is Gordon.” I didn’t have a clue who they were.’

The Top Hat wasn’t a big club and the place was packed. Everyone had forgotten that it was a members-only working men’s club and, at first, the doorman refused to let Gordon and Jo in, which was embarrassing. Tom had to leave the dressing room, seek out a committee member and ask permission, pleading that Gordon had come from London specifically to listen to him.

Eventually, with Gordon and a pregnant Jo uncomfortably crowded in by the bar, the gig began with Tom singing ‘I’ll Never Get Over You’ in a rather blatant attempt to please Mills. He continued with the normal set, starting with a powerful rendition of ‘Spanish Harlem’. At the interval, Keith was getting the usual tray of drinks for the boys, when Gordon started chatting to him: ‘He said, “I would love to have that boy under my belt. Love to have him.”’

Keith couldn’t wait to tell Tom what Gordon had said, but he recalls that Tom was rather cool and said that he would have to speak to Myron and Byron about it. Gordon was also careful not to reveal his hand that night, especially as both Myron and Byron were in the audience. Vernon Hopkins remembers that he pretended he was more interested in Bryn the Fish’s voice than Tom’s.

In fact, Gordon was hooked halfway through the opening number: ‘I realised I had never seen anything like him before. He was an uncut diamond and needed a lot of polishing. From that moment on, I decided I wanted to manage him.’

Tom was more agitated about that night than he let on. He had been so close to a breakthrough with Joe Meek, then the meetings with Jimmy Savile and Peter Sullivan. His ambition was like a slumbering bear waking up. He didn’t want another opportunity to slip through his fingers and was therefore very keen to impress Gordon. Linda had put in a rare appearance at the gig, but apparently had one drink too many and wasn’t helping.

Gordon revealed his true feelings to his wife when they were driving back to London. Jo never forgot the journey: ‘Suddenly Gordon pulled the car over. I wondered what the matter was and he said, “I have got to do something with him”, and I just said, “How wonderful.” The rest of the journey was just us excitedly making plans. It was a wonderful journey.’ Tom explained it succinctly: ‘He said he saw something in me that he didn’t have – that he would like to have had.’

Gordon made several trips to Wales to try to persuade Tom and the band that they needed to sign with him and move to London. One worry Tom had, especially after his experience with Joe Meek, surfaced when the two of them went to a coffee bar in Pontypridd. He told the story on
The Merv Griffin Show
in 1979: ‘Gordon said, “Now if I become your manager, you know I will be in control and you must listen to me” and he put his hand on my leg. So I said, “Before you go any further, you’re not one of these queer fellows, are you?”’

Tom had a robust attitude to homosexuality. You shared a pint with a man and a bed with a woman. Later, when he was established as one of the world’s leading entertainers, he said, ‘I don’t mind being treated as a sex object as long as it’s by females.’

Eventually, like a persistent double-glazing salesman, Gordon wore Tom and the band down and they agreed a harsh contract that promised him 50 per cent of their future earnings. He also managed to dispense with Myron and Byron by offering what would prove to be a very sweet deal of 5 per cent of future earnings. That was not his best bit of business.

Vernon Hopkins was enthusiastic for the move and told Tom he thought he should give it a shot. Chris Slade and Dai Cooper, who had replaced Keith Davies on guitar, were happy to move, but Mike Roberts didn’t want to leave his job with the BBC, so they had to recruit a new guitarist, Mickey Gee, who worked for a local brewery.

Tom, unlike the others, wasn’t a single man and couldn’t make the decision on his own. One can only speculate what would have happened to the career of Tom Jones if he and Linda had added to their family – he might never have made it to London at all. But they had discovered that Linda was unable to have another child. Margaret observes, ‘I think she would have loved more children. Tom would have loved a daughter, I think.’

Linda, as always, gave her husband her blessing, which, in effect, made his mind up for him. Her decision to let him go was immensely brave. She couldn’t just pop to London for an afternoon when she felt like it – there was no Severn Bridge or M4 motorway in June 1964.

Just after his twenty-fourth birthday, Tommy Woodward enjoyed a beer or two with his best mates in the White Hart, before kissing his wife and child goodbye. He joined the other four Senators in their old Morris van and bid Treforest farewell.

Tom took one look at the basement flat at 6 Clydesdale Road, in Notting Hill, and declared, ‘This place is like the Black Hole of Calcutta.’ They certainly hadn’t signed a contract with Disney that would guarantee a cushy life and the best of everything. This was a grade-A dump – dark, damp and smelling of mice. Naked light bulbs hung from the ceiling, two small gas fires provided token heating and the five lads shared two bedrooms – three in one, two in the other. Tom shared with Vernon and Dai Cooper. The well-kept miners’ cottages he’d left behind were like palaces compared to his new living quarters.

Spin doctors might have called the area ‘bohemian’, but the reality was that it was poor and underprivileged. When the sun went down, the drug-pushers and prostitutes gathered on the street outside. The hookers would pop in for a cup of tea and a cigarette when they needed a break from shivering in the cold night air. Today you need £1 million to live in the neighbourhood, but The Senators were surviving on the £1 a day that Gordon paid them as an allowance. Vernon still remembers cleaning his teeth with salt because they couldn’t afford toothpaste – and they were always hungry.

The highlight during these tough times was when Linda clambered into the passenger seat of Chris Ellis’s Mini and they drove up to London for the weekend, surrounded by tins of baked beans, so the boys would have something to eat in the week ahead. On these occasions, Jo insisted that Linda and Tom stay at their flat at 97 Campden Hill Towers. She couldn’t bear the thought of Linda slumming it in the Black Hole.

Every so often, half starving, they would target a restaurant, usually an Indian one, eat enough for days ahead and then, at the appropriate time, make a bolt for the door – usually with Tom leading the way. There was no mention of their dire circumstances when a cheerful piece appeared in the
Pontypridd Observer
at the end of July 1964. The enthusiastic article, written by Gerry Greenberg, featured Tom lying, ‘We are having a great time.’