A Great Tradition: Sex bomb Tom Jones continues longtime Las Vegas affair with MGM Grand performances. Tom Jones is on the phone while catching some rays by his pool in Beverly Hills, which even in January is exactly where you would expect him to be. Sure, he's 68, but that hasn't stopped him from being Tom Jones. In fact, he has worked his age into the persona. The singer didn't want to make just another album for "24 Hours," his first U.S. release in 15 years. So he made one rich in autobiographical resonance, with both the music and lyrics tying back to his 43 years as a sex bomb. It all started with Bono, explains the singer, who plans to perform as many as six of the new songs in his MGM Grand shows through Jan. 28. The two met in a Dublin nightclub more than two years ago, and Jones said, "I'd love you to write me a song." "(Bono) said, 'OK, but if I'm going to write one, it's going to be about you.' " The two went on to discuss Jones' past, with Bono confessing, "When he was a kid, he saw me on TV and he liked the way I dressed as well as the way I sounded. So all that stuff is in the song." When the two met up again in another club -- this time in London -- Bono sang the rough product of his labors with U2-mate The Edge and writing partner Simon Carmody.
The tongue-in-cheek ditty called "Sugar Daddy" captures the Tom Jones swagger by proclaiming "I'm the last great tradition" and boasts, "You don't send a boy to do a man's job." But it also confesses, "the older I get, the better I was."
Jones says he and his manager son, Mark Woodward, have talked about pop singers aging and people saying, "Maybe he shouldn't be doing this anymore."
"But you get a blues singer, and nobody's concerned about his age. ... With blues singers, people seem to enjoy that these men have experienced life. And I think maybe this is what happened with this (album) as well.
"Maybe it's because I've been around a long time, I think these songs are more fitting now."
After Bono went through the lyrics, he pointed out "That information you gave me in Dublin, there's a lot of that in this song."
"I said, 'Well, do I get writer credit?'
"He said, 'No.' He didn't even think about it," Jones recalls with a chuckle.
The singer remembered Bono's approach -- and took corrective action for royalties -- when the original recording sessions stalled out.
The first idea from S-Curve label head Steve Greenberg was to reinvent forgotten or little-known songs. That yielded the opening tune, Tommy James' "I'm Alive," as well as an eyebrow-raising Bruce Springsteen obscurity about a jaded boxer, "The Hitter."
Those covers were fine, but "we didn't have enough of them," the singer says. So Jones sat down with writers to help steer the direction for original tunes, and ended up with writing credits on seven of them.
For instance, he says, writer Lisa Greene asked him, "You've been married a long time. Have you ever done a song about that? How have you kept that going so long?"
And his reply, "No matter where I've been or what I've done, the road always leads back to Linda," his wife of almost 52 years. "The Road" became one of several songs where "I was coming up with ideas, and the songwriters were working on that. They would come up with lyrics, and I would put them into my own words."
Musically, Jones admits the '60s-cool sound of Amy Winehouse's blockbuster "Back to Black" album helped chart a course. He had suggested a retro approach in the past, but says record executives told him, "Oh no, that's old stuff. It won't work again."
"So thank God, when 'Back to Black' came out. I said, 'There you go. It can work.' It's in a new form with new sounds, but the arrangements, the vibrance of it, is definitely '60s."
The first U.K. single, "If He Should Ever Leave You," even samples the horn riff from Jones' 1967 song "I'll Never Let You Go." The singer says he found a great vintage microphone in a Los Angeles studio, which is important because he has been known to blow them out.
In the old days, he says he could hit a high C, "but I've sort of gone from a tenor to a baritone. I've lost about a tone off the top. But I've gained a lot on the bottom," as heard on the album's title track. "My lower register is much fuller than it was when I was in my 20s."
Last March, the keepers of the fan site Tom Jones International made an onstage presentation marking the singer's 40 consecutive years on the Strip. "Now Vegas is looked at as being cool. It was always cool to me," he says.
He misses the legendary entertainers from the old days, but he doesn't miss doing two shows a night. "I can go to a restaurant now rather than have my food between shows in the dressing room." MIKE WEATHERFORD
I love Tom Jones, probably more than any heterosexual male has a right to. Sure, I love his overblown '60s hits, his too-tight pants, his unbuttoned shirts and medallions and the impish grin that's caused countless panties and hotel room keys to be flung onstage wherever he's appeared for the last four decades and change.
But what I really love about Tom Jones is his ability, and his willingness, to sing just about any song in any genre. In his '60s and early '70s heyday, he'd do everything from "Cabaret" to "Soul Man" to "Ring Of Fire," often on the same album. In recent years, his repertoire has included Yaz's "Situation," the Stones' "Gimme Shelter," Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life," and Leadbelly's "Black Betty," to name just a few.
Finally the security gave it up, Tom Jones fans ran to the stage to dance.. The evening started in a solid mood as the bigger part of the audience was from the senior age-group, and the youngers were not extreme figures either. Everybody waited for The Voice patiently, sitting on their seats. There were only seats, as the promoter thought the audience who come to a Tom Jones concert, can stay seated during the best dancing-songs.
A few minutes after 9 Tom Jones appeared on the stage dressed in black and smiling, as we could always see him in the last years, only his hair became white since the video of Sexbomb.
PART Anthony Newley but even more Otis Redding, the Welsh singer Tom Jones was a musical shape-shifter long before “American Idol” turned versatility into karaoke posturing. With a voice as husky as it was pretty, Mr. Jones at the peak of his popularity in the late 1960s could slide from soulful rasp to pop croon with a credibility today’s would-be Idols could barely imagine.
Stevie Wonder with Tom Jones on an episode of the 1969-71 variety show “This Is Tom Jones.” If there’s another singer who could credibly share a stage with the likes of Janis Joplin, Johnny Cash, Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder — and come through with dignity intact, as Mr. Jones did more often than not in his 1969-71 television variety show — please contact Simon Cowell ASAP.
Sometimes a concert isn't just a show. It's a time machine, transporting you back to when life was less complicated, adulthood and its concerns were a distant spot on the horizon, and you could feel so happy it seemed like the sensation would never end.
For about 90 minutes Thursday night, Tom Jones took the crowd at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall expertly by the hand. He flirted. He teased. And he reminded them how it felt the first time they saw the Welsh sex bomb swivel his hips and lustily belt out "It's Not Unusual."
Forty years ago, the women of Las Vegas were captured by a hot new name on the Strip. Well, almost new. In one of the more bizarre coincidences of Las Vegas show business history, the Desert Inn lounge already hosted a topless spoof of the "Tom Jones" movie with Albert Finney that still was popular in 1968.
"The movie was so big that (people) thought I was going to act in a play," the Tom Jones more familiar to Las Vegas once recalled. And Flamingo Las Vegas executives hedged their bet for his March 21 debut by co-billing the Welsh singer with "America's Favorite Mother-in-Law," Kaye Ballard.
The North Charleston Performing Arts Center was transformed into a Las Vegas ballroom Friday night as legendary vocalist Tom Jones worked his unique brand of musical magic on a crowd of about 1,400.
It had been more than two years since the Welsh-born singer last stood on a Lowcountry stage, but if the squeals of delight from the women in the crowd were any indication, Jones' popularity has not diminished a bit.
Jones, filling the place with the rich, booming baritone voice he's famous for, belted out hit after hit from his vast repertoire of music. He was supported by an 11-member band of musicians and backup singers. The audience yelled with appreciation when he sang "She's a Lady," "Delilah," "Black Magic," "Fly Me to the Moon," "SexBomb" and "What's New Pussycat?" "The show was spectacular," said Penny Andersen, a lawyer and longtime Jones fan.
I totally expected this DVD collection from Tom Jones’ TV variety series to be completely lame ... boy, was I wrong! Yes, the collection has its hokey moments and it’s pretty hilarious to watch the little old ladies soiling themselves every time Tom gyrates, but the show is pure genius. Tom’s booking agent for the show must be commended. Besides all the great music, the shows are filled with comedy legends Richard Pryor, Bob Hope, Peter Sellers, Pat Paulson and comedy troops The Ace Trucking Company (with Fred Willard) and The Committee (with Howard Hesseman). But for me, it was the musical guests who took the show to a whole new level. The Who and the Moody Blues shine with solid performances. Tom’s duets with Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Stevie Wonder, Little Richard and Joe Cocker are stellar. He not only displays great musical taste, he has the chops to back them up. I swear John Belushi swiped his Joe Cocker bit from Joe’s performance on the show. I loved how Tom always ended his show rocking out in front of a crowd of screaming women. I’m sure those same women will be screaming in ecstasy at the sight of the DVD, reliving their memories of Tom shaking his hips on the telly some 30 years prior. | RDWThis Is Tom Jones
Time Life (DVD)
Back in 1968, when Tom Jones began a series of shows at the Copacabana in New York, crazed female fans started throwing their undergarments on stage. Nearly 40 years later, the embarrassing tradition continues, as evidenced throughout a packed gig at Pechanga on Friday night. Backed by a proficient 11-piece band (including horn section), the Welshman - now 67 - was in robust vocal form and played up his sex appeal at every turn.
This decade has seen a career resurgence for Jones, particularly abroad. "Reload," a 1999 CD of duets with Van Morrison, The Pretenders, Robbie Williams, Barenaked Ladies, Stereophonics and others, went No. 1 in England and moved 4 million copies worldwide by the following year.