| Product: |
Tom Jones in general |
| Date: |
14/05/01 (33 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Great voice, Very cool
Disadvantages: None
When I was a pretentious teenager I didn't have any time for people like Tom Jones. "But this doesn't mean anything," I'd warble. "Songs have to mean something to be any good." Now, having washed all that adolescent angst out of my system, I realise how wrong I was.
Tom Jones is God. It's that simple. What I failed to grasp when I was younger was that great pop music comes in all shapes and sizes. So if you're the kind of person who likes that kind of thing, there's plenty of misery music by irritating art-school drop-outs like The Smiths and The Verve. You can listen to it and get thoroughly depressed and then pat yourself on the back for being deep enough to share their pain. If, however, you've come to realise that bad sixth-form poetry put to a generic indie back beat isn't actually that interesting, you start to cast your net a little wider. And if it's any kind of net at all, then Tom Jones should fall into it pretty quickly.
Tom Jones has been going strong since the mid-sixties. He's released many many classic tracks, the most famous probably being "It's Not Unusual" and "Delilah". Starting from a (probably) humble background in Wales, he has gone on to be a huge star worldwide. He was playing Vegas before Elvis (in fact, Elvis allegedly copied his act when he had to change from Young Vibrant Fifties Elvis to Fat Sweaty Seventies Elvis). His voice is superb - not many white vocalists have that kind of power. And his best songs are brilliant - vibrant, exciting, funny, and refreshingly simple.
A lot of people don't get Tom Jones. They think of him as a fading sex symbol, much like Cliff Richard, incapable of realising that he doesn't have the ability to make women swoon anymore. He is seen as out of touch and faintly ludicrous. Why? I think he's great.
Like Elvis, you often see Tom Jones' music in the Easy Listening sections o
f music shops these days. I guess that's fair enough. He harks back to a time when there was more variety in the kinds of pop music on offer. Now all we get (if you're talking about pure pop - not rock, rap, dance, soul or any of the other genres) is a succession of manufactured boy and girl bands, the members having had all their individuality surgically removed the day they signed the contract. They record bland cover versions of bland songs from the seventies and eighties.
However, in the sixties and seventies, lots of different kinds of music were capable of attaining popularity. Petula Clark and Burt Bacharach were hugely successful sixties music icons - in those days what they did was pop. Now it's been re-branded as easy listening, but I really don't see how "Downtown" is any less of a pop record than "Viva Forever" by the Spice Girls. It has a hell of a lot more energy, for one thing. Paul McCartney, one of the greatest rock stars of all time, used to write songs for Cilla Black, who is now featured on Music To Watch Girls By compilations. What we have now is an artificial distinction between two types of music that are effectively the same.
Anyway, back to Tom Jones. His most famous work is, as I said, nowadays described as easy listening. And it's superb. It's the kind of music that brings a smile to my face every time - even the sad songs like "Green Green Grass of Home" or "I Who Have Nothing". He can do comic love songs ("What's New Pussycat") with just as much assurance as he brings to his more epic numbers ("Thunderball"). He brings good-natured energy to the most unlikely projects. Think of his biggest eighties hit, a cover of Prince's "Kiss" that he recorded with The Art of Noise. Or his recent Reload duets album. Some of the most inexplicably popular singers of the moment were queuing up to record with Jones. And I bet that most
of them will be forgotten in ten years time while Jones is still going strong (OK, not Van Morrison or Robbie, but most of the others could easily vanish without trace).
Tom Jones has never written any of his own music. This is something else that a lot of people regard as a problem. Ever since the sixties, singer-songwriters have been revered. People like Dylan, Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards etc. have brought about a situation whereby you have to write your own material to be taken seriously. I was once told by a friend that Hendrix was obviosuly a greater artist than Elvis becasue he wrote most of his own songs (not that I think Hendrix is bad, you undertand. Elvis is better, though). By the same token, Gary Barlow must be a greater artist than Yehudi Menuhin. There's nothing wrong with singers not writing their own material, as long as the songs are good and sung well. And Tom Jones certainly knows how to sing well.
Tom Jones knows exactly how ridiculous it is for a man of his age to be doing what he does. It's this self-knowledge that makes him so enjoyable. Frank Sinatra was a great, great singer, but he obviously took himself immensely seriously until the day he died. Think of the occasions when they made cameo appearances as themselves in movies. Sinatra appeared in Cannonball Run II. When he appeared he was treated with exaggerated respect by all the other characters, and always tried to make it clear that he was in charge - incredibly, he managed to turn in a pompous cameo in a terrible eighties caper movie. Compare that with Tom Jones' wonderfully knowing cameo in Mars Attacks. In a film that was positively overflowing with memorable performances, Jones still manages to hold his own. And he was pretty damn funny.
I saw him perform live a few years ago (before Reload made him trendy again). There were a lot of middle-aged women in the audience, and a certain amount of knicker-throwing took place. I don't think
it was meant seriously. Tom certainly didn't take it seriously. He was obviously enjoying himself - presumably he wouldn't do it any more if he didn't enjoy it - and he knew exactly what he was doing. His voice is still genuinely astounding, and he still has the moves, even if his dancing is a lot more self-conscious now. When it came to the "Think I better dance now" bit in "Kiss" I was staggered - I don't think I've ever seen a human being move quite like that, certainly not a Welshman pushing 60. I still rate it as the best concert I've ever seen.
Anyway, sorry if this opinion didn't always stick to the main point. Tom Jones is great, but there's a regrettable trend in modern music journalism to regard anything that isn't deadly earnest or ironic in a post-modern way as junk. Jones' music is fun and groovy and occasionally quite sad, but not in a depressing way. He's fantastic. Trust your feelings. You know I speak the truth.
Only annoying thing - how come none of the greatest hits compilations available contain the majestic "A Boy From Nowhere"? I think I can honestly say that it's my favourite song of all time.
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