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Tom Jones - An Extraordinary Life. Gwen Russell
Читать онлайн.Название Tom Jones - An Extraordinary Life
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781857827750
Автор произведения Gwen Russell
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство Ingram
Linda was indeed an attractive girl. ‘She was a very, very pretty girl and popular,’ says Jean Thomas, one of Tom’s cousins on his mother’s side. ‘She was a catch, stunning with short, blonde hair and she had what they called a “DA” [duck’s arse], a little tuft at the back of her neck. She was also very fashion conscious and had the first of everything. I remember clutch bags; she was one of the first to have a clutch bag. They knew one another in school. I think she was just in a class lower and I think she was a bit cleverer than Tom and I. I always remember she was in the A classes. She also liked fashion and boys, as girls do.’
Shortly after they met, however, Tom was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which caused him to be bedridden for nearly two years. Never exactly an academic child – he was actually found to be dyslexic in later life – he could not have been too upset at the news that he would be off school as he recovered in bed. But no one could foresee the influence this period at home was to have on his later life. Tom spent a year listening to the radio where, for the first time, he began to listen to American music – Blues, Rhythm and Blues, Rock’n’Roll – and he loved it. ‘The exaggeration,’ he said. ‘The drama. It’s like Gospel as opposed to the Church of England.’
Nonetheless, the family was very worried. For some time Tom was extremely ill, so much so that there were concerns that he wouldn’t pull through. He was a tough little boy, though, fighting against his illness and determined to get better as soon as he could. The adult Tom never complains about those days: rather, he prefers to remember the way they opened up the musical world to him. Had he but known it, he was already learning his trade and this period was a crucial one in his development. Later, when he started to make records, many people assumed he was a black singer and the way he made his American breakthrough was by being featured on radio stations that played black music. According to him this was something that just happened: ‘I was listening to the BBC radio in the late forties, early fifties, when I was a kid and anytime a Gospel or Blues song would come on, I would think: “What is that?” It was rubbing off on me. I didn’t know why, I just liked it. In school I sang the Lord’s Prayer, and my teacher said to me, “Why are you singing this like a Negro spiritual?” I didn’t know what the term was, I was very young – seven, eight – it was very natural for me to do it.
‘What attracted me to Rock’n’Roll was the sound. I toured with Count Basie once and I asked him what he thought of it, and he said, “What they’ve done, which we used to do, is to concentrate on the rhythm section, get that rhythm section hot. When Jerry Lee Lewis pounds out and the rhythm section kicks in with him, you can balance it because you don’t have all those other instruments to worry about.” When I heard Jerry Lee’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On”, the piano starts like this…’ [Tom started to jab an imaginary keyboard as he spoke] ‘and Sam Phillips [the owner of Sun Records] had a slap-back echo because he didn’t have an echo chamber so he created a tape delay. He’d have two tapes running, with one a little stronger than the other. It’s only a simple thing that Jerry Lee is playing but because of that slap-back things hadn’t sounded like that before.’
But this was all to come and the other effect of the months in bed was that Tom formed an exceptionally close bond with his mother Freda. A generous man, who looked after all his family once he had become rich, it was his mother to whom he felt particularly close and he never forgot how she had looked after him when he was so ill. That determination to get well again must surely have had a hand in shaping his character for he was by no means an overnight success: for years he was forced to slog before he finally made his breakthrough and despite moments of despair, he never gave up. His longevity in such a fickle business can also be attributed to a determination to keep going, for there were to be some major blips in his career when it must have seemed as if it might indeed be all over. But no matter what frustrations there must have been, he never gave up.
Tom regained his health and, aged twelve, he returned to school. But he took to academia no more than he ever had done, instead spending his time chasing girls and playing truant. His was a rough childhood and it toughened him up. Sometimes he got into trouble, although he says his mother’s impeccable house often saved him. ‘When the officials came to see my mother,’ he explained, ‘with the brass nicely polished in the front room, picture of granddad with his medals on, they went away sayin’, “No ruffian could live here!”’ Sometimes he got into fights, which was to bring on an obsession with his nose that would last for decades. ‘That’s why I hate my horrible nose – it’s been worked over, bent sideways and patched up more than any other part of me,’ he once said. ‘And always hit by a head – we liked to keep our hands nice and smooth, like!’ In fact, his nose was one of the first things about him to change once he became famous: at the earliest possible opportunity he had it whittled down.
In later years, Tom played down this aspect of his life, although he was always perfectly honest about what had gone on. When he first became famous quite a bit was made of his wild youth, something he gradually began to edge away from. ‘People say to me from time to time, “Oh yes, you used to get involved in punch-ups years ago, didn’t you?”’ he said in 1969. ‘I can’t disagree with that. Now I’ve grown up, I’ll be twenty-nine in June. So have all the boys I used to hang about with when we were tearaways. They’re quiet now. Married. They don’t fight any more.’ In the background, though, there was always the singing. Freda later said that she sensed her son would go far. Asked what quality it was that she considered had taken Tom to the top, she replied, ‘Determination. One day he came and said to me, “Mum, the day will come when I will prove myself.” He was about fifteen then, but I knew it had been in his mind long before; it was the one thing he wanted and he stuck at it.’
Tom left school at sixteen with no qualifications and no clear idea about what he wanted to do. As a boy, school had not been important to him although in later life he regretted not taking his studies more seriously. ‘I sometimes wish I had paid more attention in school,’ he once confessed. ‘I used to listen to Radio Luxembourg under the bedcovers at night rather than do my homework. I have made up for it since. There’s nothing like travel to finish off an education. There are very few countries I have not been to, and I am credited for being one of the first white performers to insist on singing to mixed audiences in South Africa.’
One thing was clear back then: he was going to have to marry Linda, who was also sixteen, not least because she was pregnant – in actual fact the couple had just turned seventeen when the wedding took place. But Tom assumed his responsibilities cheerfully: for some years now the two had been sweethearts and the match was regarded favourably by the family. ‘They are so easy in each other’s company, they are pals,’ said Linda’s mother, Jean. ‘There’s a spark. I think they were going with each other since about thirteen. She loves him and he loves her that’s for definite. I have seen them quite a few times together, even when they were young. They used to go drinking. I can see them now smooching; I remember them getting married. Tom was seventeen in the June, and she was seventeen the following February, just a bit younger. They got married and my Gran always said, “They were made for each other.” There’s definitely something there. I have been in their company. You can tell how much they love one another.’
A great deal has been written about the unusual nature of Tom and Linda’s marriage, in that while he turned out to have a bit of an eye for the ladies, in later years Linda became extremely reclusive. But there has never been any question of divorce. The reason is that the marriage has incredibly strong roots dating back to their friendship as children, which turned into courtship, which ultimately became a bond that goes far deeper than many other, more superficial unions. There are very few people in Tom’s life that knew him before he was famous and know exactly what his background and childhood was like, but one of them is Linda. When they met they weren’t even in their teens and all this has provided the basis of an enduring partnership.
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