Tom Jones has just been feted by the Brit Awards as "Best British Male Solo Artist". But Richard Cook is unmoved by the bawler from Pontypridd
There have been some shrewd managers in pop music. Few of them were as astute as Gordon Mills. Though he was born in Madras, Mills was a Welshman who had come up through a showbiz school of hard knocks, and he was trying his luck as a fledgling impresario-manager when he visited an old friend in Merthyr Tydfil in 1964. Together, they saw a man billed as "the twisting vocalist from Pontypridd", named Tommy Scott. Scott had already had a go at the big time but had not got very far. Mills thought he might. The film of Henry Fielding's novel had just been released, and Gordon told Tommy that he had to change his name to Tom Jones. After a flop single, they had a go with a song that Mills had co-written for Sandie Shaw, who had turned it down.
In the film Agnes Brown, which is about to be released, you can see Jones singing that song, "It's Not Unusual". It is somewhat unfortunate that it is the Tom Jones of 2000 pretending to be the Tom Jones of 1967, but there it is. The film climaxes with a titanic performance by the singer for the heroine of this period piece, and one wonders what was going through the singer's mind when he tried to recapture his old self. Jones has reinvented himself several times in a career that now seems stronger than ever. As long as his lungs hold out and he can stitch himself into the tightest trousers in his wardrobe, Jones seems invulnerable. Recently, he scooped a Brit Award. Twenty years ago, that would have been unthinkable. Pushing 60, Jones is receiving huzzahs as the coolest old-timer in pop.
Mills, who died from stomach cancer in 1986, would have smiled. He already knew that Jones was too old - in 1966. He had scored a few respectable hits in Britain, but Mills wanted Jones to be an international player in the Sinatra league. He could see the chart placings starting to slip. At the end of that year, he hit on the answer. He had Jones record a country death song, "Green Green Grass Of Home", which had been done previously by Jerry Lee Lewis. It sold a million singles in the UK alone and was number one for seven weeks. Then they released an album recorded live at The Talk Of The Town. In 1968, Mills delivered a further masterstroke by having Tom record another death song, "Delilah". These records were successful enough for Jones to conquer America: he won his own show on American television in 1969, which ran for two years and opened the doors of Las Vegas to him. Mills had his Sinatra.
For the next 15 years, Jones played mostly to the matrons of one generation or another, who hurled their underwear on stage to let him mop that enormous, fevered brow. For anyone who'd ever heard a public-bar chorus of "Delilah" at closing time, it was hard to take Jones remotely seriously beyond the professional toughness that let him work the demanding Las Vegas circuit. He had no British hits at all between 1977 and 1986. While his American earnings allowed him to live like a sultan, his visits home were reunions for his fan club, like Gary Glitter's Christmas shows. But as a taste for irony began to infiltrate even the chart music of the late 1980s, people started to remember that huge voice and the curly-haired matador looks. What would he sound like doing something contemporary? Jones tried his hand at "Kiss", a song by the maverick soul star Prince. The mere idea of it was enough to restore him to the papers. Interviewers discovered this funny, articulate, aware music-lover. Along with semi- forgotten divas such as Dusty Springfield and Sandie Shaw, Jones found himself reconsidered. It was ten years since punk had kicked over a lot of icons; now, a sort of make-believe nostalgia was starting to bring a lot of them back.
In the nineties, Jones's progress was serene but inexorable. He now has another canny manager, his son Mark Woodward, who has been quietly effecting the kind of nurturing that Danny Bennett has been doing for his father, Tony. Jones hasn't done anything too difficult: no concept albums, no jazz sessions, nothing silly or overambitious. Television appearances have been plentiful and catholic. Now, it seems, the movies are starting to gather up Jones as well.
He has recently scored one of his greatest latter-day successes with Reload (Gut Records), a collection of 17 duets with a pick'n'mix gathering of much younger stars. It is designed to show off Jones's range. Pop, dance, rock'n'roll, country, even a slice of nouveau cabaret in a duet with Cerys from Catatonia on "Baby It's Cold Outside". Yet the record is a sham, because Jones cannot really come to grips with the simplest task: of projecting something of himself into these songs.
Poor Tom. He never was much good at that. Scott Walker, the most gorgeous male voice of the sixties, once said: "Every time I hear Tom Jones, I want to jump out of a window." Jones has never really stopped bawling his way through songs. When they first cut "It's Not Unusual", he sang so loudly that he swamped the original arrangement and they had to bring in the overpowering brass line which is the record's other signature. When Prince sang "Kiss", it was in his most mewling, lubricious falsetto. Jones sang it like he was worried that the amplification had failed. In track after track on Reload, he is Hercules, while the others are obliged to sing as loudly as they can just to keep pace. Gimcracked around his bigger-than-pop persona, it is not much of a record anyway, but the one genuinely provocative track, "All Mine", finds him alongside Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy. Hannon's literate music is itself a kind of distillation of the adult entertainment that was Jones's pre-"Kiss" hunting ground. His singing sounds genuinely intense and candid, but Jones sounds like nothing but corned beef.
He can't help himself - it was just the same on the BBC's all-star version of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day", which has Tom almost screaming the line, "You've got to reap just what you sow", as if shouting into an empty field. He clearly thrives on the new attention, though. Even those who work closely with him admit a fondness for the twister from Pontypridd. The paradox of his tight, furious singing style comes in the outward relaxation of the man - at home in the company of any star from any showbiz generation. He seems to absorb the noise of his profession into that capacious frame, and to let it out like a chuckle. The lungs and the trousers will surely endure for a long time yet.
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