What's new, Pussycat? | Quite a bit for Tom Jones
BEACON-NEWS - May 16, 1991 By Steve Lord
BEACON-NEWS STAFF

If Elvis Presley's tacit message to American boys was that it was all right to have sex, Tom Jones added that it was cool to talk afterward. It was Jones who took the raw sexuality Presley spiced his rock 'n' roll with and added a touch -- just a touch, mind you -- of tenderness. Presley's message was to men: sex is there for the taking, without the traditional promises or gestures, by openly showing what you have. Jones, an impressionable teen-ager in Wales in the 1950s, heeded that message and incorporated those heated, "Elvic" thrusts into his own stage shows in the dark, smoky, working-class music pubs he ground his way through as a fledgling entertainer.

By the time he hit London in 1964, Jones had refined his act just a bit, taking Elvis' trailblazing attitude toward sex on stage and adding his own message, now geared to women, rather than to men. The soon-to-be characteristic tight pants, bump and grind, and barrel chest covered with thick hair might have inspired men, but it drove women crazy enough to throw their underwear on stage, each one hoping her panties would be one of the pairs Jones chose to wipe his sweaty brow with.

"But that wasn't planned, it just developed," Jones said, talking about his on-stage love affair with his female fans. "It was there when I was playing clubs in Wales. I was singing rock and roll . . . you can't stand still and do that." Perhaps in an alternate universe somewhere, Elvis is still performing, gliding gracefully and forcefully into his golden years, while Tom Jones is dead, a rock 'n' roll burnout who never quite broke the ties with his mother and, subsequently, never quite left childhood. Only in an alternate universe, though.

Tom Jones is very much alive and still living artistically, as he will prove to Fox Valley audiences with performances May 24 through May 26 at the Pheasant Run Megacenter in St. Charles. He has managed to nicely fuse his high-energy past with his middle age. Now a 51-year-old grandfather, he still wears the tight clothes, fields undergarments from his fans and sings the songs that made him famous -- It's Not Unusual, Delilah, Green Green Grass of Home, I (Who Have Nothing), What's New Pussycat, et al. But he also manages to surprise fans and critics alike with the directions he takes, such as singing the music from Matador, a new musical, which netted him the British Top 10 hit, A Boy from Nowhere; covering Prince's Kiss with the British avante-garde band, The Art of Noise; and his newest effort, the album Carrying a Torch, which includes the theme song and three other tracks written and produced by Van Morrison, whose band also plays on the tracks.

The combination of Van Morrison and Tom Jones may seem unusual. But Jones said it was a natural collaboration between artists who have been friends since the early days of British rock 'n' roll. "We both started in London in 1964, me by myself and him with his band, Them," Jones said. "We did shows together, package tours. When he writes a song, he just decides the song might be for someone else. He called me up and said, `I have this song, Carrying a Torch, and it sounds like a Tom Jones song.'"

Thus came the spice of his latest, just-released album. It is a chance Jones took, no different than when he decided to leave his vacuum selling job in the early 1960s, go to London and record It's Not Unusual, a song written by his manager, Gordon Mills. The song was considered too risque for the stuffy British Broadcasting Company, so it broke on Radio Caroline, the pirate station in the North Sea. It became the hit legends are made of, catapulting Jones onto television, where the English Elvis Presley (or, as he was known in those days, "the twisting vocalist from Pontypridd"), could strut his stuff. The English Elvis Presley? Well, maybe not quite.

But the comparison is valid. After all, Elvis inspired Jones; in turn, Jones repaid that debt by inspiring Elvis, who took liberally from Jones' Vegas act to make his own segue from teen idol to middle-age Vegas star. The freeze poses, bump and grind and tossing of sweaty garments into the crowd came to Elvis via Jones, whom the King had admired since he first heard Jones' Green, Green Grass of Home in 1966. The story goes thusly: Elvis finished a movie in California, and was driving himself and his entourage home to Memphis in his bus, when he heard Green, Green Grass of Home for the first time. Elvis made one of his group get off the bus, phone a Memphis disc jockey, and tell him when the bus would be getting into Memphis radio range. He wanted the disc jockey to play the song continually until Elvis arrived at Graceland. "The story is true; he told it to me himself," Jones said. "The song touched him. For me, Elvis Presley was the biggest influence, but there also was Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. I think we (he and Elvis) became friendly because we had similar backgrounds, being from working class families."

Jones' sexual image belies the real family man behind it, the man who has been married to the same woman for almost 35 years, whose son and daughter manage him, and whose grandchildren sometime accompany him on the road. "They love it," Jones said of his 8-year-old grandson and 4-year-old granddaughter. "When we were in England, at Wembly Stadium, I had my grandson hold a towel and water for me. I grabbed him and walked him on stage. Now he wants to do it all the time."

Jones said his marriage has held together through the sea of female fans and the frenetic pace of show business because his success came late. He was 24 when he recorded It's Not Unusual, already married for several years. "We got married when we were both 16," he said. "We were solid. We grew up together. It was not just, you know, a physical attraction. In Hollywood, I think people fall in love with the images, not the real people.

"My wife knew what I was aiming for. The one thing she can't do is be in the audience, with all the women. She tells me, `You get on with it; I'll watch you on television.' " Equally as solid is the base from which it all emanates -- The Voice. Jones chuckled when he said he has been a baritone since he was 6 years old -- "When I was a kid, I didn't have a kid's voice" -- and said that is the one thing he prides himself on above everything. "My vocal ability," he said. "The showmanship is second. I wouldn't want people to say, `Oh yeah, Tom Jones, he's the one who wiggled his hips.' "