Tom Jones: ‘I don’t feel anywhere near 78!’
As Sir Tom Jones nears his 78th birthday, the legendary singer tells us why he’s far from slowing downÉ
Sir Tom Jones burst onto the music scene in 1965, aged just 24, with the smash hit It’s Not Unusual. Now, 53 years later, having released music in every decade since, he shows no signs of stopping.
‘I feel great, I don’t feel anywhere near my age,’ he tells us. ‘I’m going to be 78 in June! I don’t feel like that, and that’s the truth. When I look in the mirror, I think, “Who’s that old man?” I catch myself by surprise sometimes. I go to the bathroom in the night and put the light on, and I’m shocked.’
Tom claims it’s the music that keeps him young – as well as a recent hip replacement that’s given him a new lease of life! ‘When you can do it and you don’t feel the strain of it, when you can still get up and sing… I don’t know any other profession where a 77-year-old could still do as well as they ever did,’ he says. ‘It’s the most fun you can have and it keeps you young.’
Having performed to screaming fans for so many years, it would be easy to assume that Tom doesn’t get nervous anymore, but he insists that’s far from the truth.
‘People say, “It must get easier,” but it doesn’t, and it shouldn’t,’ he says. ‘It should be exciting, but not so nerve-racking that you collapse!
You get nervous because you want it to go right, especially on live television because there’s millions of people watching and if you mess up, you can’t do it over. If the
‘When I look in the mirror, I think, who’s that old man?’
nerves go away, then you’re not that concerned, and I’ve never felt like that. Everything is important to me. If I’ve got to sing, then I want to do it right.’
While he has no pre-show rituals, Tom has three things he swears by when it comes to calming his nerves before going onstage. The first is eight hours’ sleep. He says, ‘When I was promoting Mama Told Me Not To Come and touring with the Stereophonics, I told them, “I always get eight hours,” so Kelly [Jones] calls me Tommy Eight Hours. You can party but you’ve got to keep your eye on the clock and make sure you get that sleep. If you’re up all night and you’ve got a show the following day… I tried it, it doesn’t work!’
His other two rules? ‘Drink water so you don’t get dehydrated. And always go to the toilet before going on stage – that’s the last thing I do, because you don’t want to end up needing to go mid-song!’
With a back catalogue of 40 albums and over 100 singles, it’s hard to choose just one song as his favourite. He tells us, ‘When you put a show together, you want the songs to complement each other, so you don’t do too many ballads straight, or too many up-tempo ones straight.’
But he has a special fondness for his first big hit It’s Not Unusual. ‘It’s still the most important one because it changed my life,’ he says. ‘That never goes away, you always remember that first one.’
Tom tells us he always wanted to be a singer growing up, and had no other job in mind. He says, ‘I think the best singers are like that. Anybody who really wants to sing starts early, because it’s the most fun you’ll have. If you’re going to get paid for it or not, you just do it because you love it, and that’s the way it should be.’ Despite his dreams of a music career coming true, it’s his knighthood in 2006 that Tom cites as his greatest achievement.
‘I never expected that,’ he says. ‘You hope for hit records and longevity, you hope you can sing for as long as you possibly can – but as a kid, I never saw the Queen knighting me.’
Wanting to pass on his years of expertise to a younger generation, Tom joined The Voice UK as a coach in 2012, and has appeared on every series except 2016, when the BBC abruptly axed him.
During his time on the show, he’s become famed for his name-dropping, and even during our chat, he references the huge stars he’s worked with, including Kylie Minogue, Elvis Presley and Shirley Bassey. And Tom confesses it’s these memories that make him realise just how long he’s been making music.
‘I’ve got a lot of memories, especially of all the entertainers I’ve met and worked with,’ he says. ‘I’ve got to be old or I wouldn’t have all those memories.’
But do women still throw their knickers at him now he’s in his 70s?
‘No, thank God that’s stopped!’
‘I’ve got to be old or I wouldn’t have all those memories’