Tom Jones - The Life - Sean Smith

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you needed to care for your voice. As Vernon observes, ‘That was something opera singers did.’

      On one occasion, Vernon suggested Tom should have a singing lesson with Brenda, the music teacher who lived next door to him in Rhydyfelin, to see if there was any advice he should be following. Tom dutifully agreed and popped round. At first Vernon could hear the familiar sound of la-la-la voices running up and down scales, and then it went dead quiet.

      Eventually, Tom came back, red-faced and flustered. ‘You’ll never bloody guess, Vern. She sat on my chest.’

      7

       The Green Fly Boys

      Tommy Woodward and Vernon Hopkins were kindred spirits united by a love of music and a desire to find a better life away from the terraces of the Valleys. They were also two young men, only a year apart in age, who enjoyed the company of women and wanted some adventure in their lives. Vernon, tall and dark, was probably the best looking of the two, but he acknowledges that Tom was better at talking to girls.

      Linda came to a gig only occasionally, when she could leave Mark with her mother for the night. Most evenings, the lads would try their luck with the few girls hanging around to meet the band, but Vernon admits that their success rate was pretty close to zero. One of the band might get lucky every six weeks or so, which was hardly something to brag about to The Rolling Stones.

      Vernon and Tom did manage to pick up a couple of air hostesses after a Saturday night gig in Ystrad Mynach, five miles from Pontypridd. They were so busy getting steamy with the girls in the car park that the others drove off, leaving them to make the long walk home. That would have been no problem if it hadn’t started to rain heavily. Fortunately, they found a shed to shelter under for the night. They managed to keep the girls warm until everyone fell asleep contentedly.

      In the morning, the sun was shining and it would have been a lovely day, except that they were all covered from head to toe in pigeon shit. They had spent the night underneath a dovecote, but hadn’t noticed in the throes of drunken passion. The boys found it much funnier than the girls, who kicked them both very firmly in the shins as a thank you. The walk of shame back home was not a happy one, especially as nobody stopped to give them a lift.

      Clearly, Tom wasn’t being faithful to Linda and, if the stories are to be believed, he has never been. She knew that. She heard the gossip. She felt uncomfortable seeing other women chatting up her husband and certainly didn’t want the knowledge of his philandering brought to her doorstep. Despite their success with the air hostesses, the Senators weren’t girl magnets, much as they would like to have been.

      If there weren’t enough fast women around in the Valleys, then perhaps Tom would have better luck with a fast car. Vernon was astonished when Tom, who hadn’t even passed his test, turned up outside the house in a sparkling new scarlet Ford Corsair. It wasn’t his. The car belonged to his brother-in-law, Tony Thorne, who was married to Linda’s younger sister Roslyn.

      He shouted, ‘Hop in, Vern. We’re off to Barry Island!’ They spent an hour or two sitting on the beach and eating ice cream. Vern told Tom that he was desperate to get away from Ponty; Tom was in whole-hearted agreement. They drove back happily, until Tom was pulled over by the police a few hundred yards from Tony’s house. The car had been reported stolen that morning. He had no insurance, as well as no driver’s licence. The matter inevitably reached the magistrates’ court and ended in a fine.

      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

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