SIR TOM ON FEARS HE HAD FAILED LINDA Singing my wife’s favourite Dylan song was a first step to recovery after her death
It was such a blow I didn’t think I could carry on performing
SIR Tom Jones says singing Bob Dylan’s What Good Am I? helped him on the road to recovery after his wife Linda’s death.
He revealed how it was one of her favourite songs, but it had made him question whether he could have done more to save her.
The Voice coach told how a therapist recommended he should sing it to help him face up to the fears that plagued him following her death from lung cancer in 2016.
“I saw a lady in LA and
I told her about the song and she said, ‘That’s the first one you should try – get the one you’re scared of over with’,” he said.
“That song is the one I was scared of.
“She loved it. But the song is, ‘What good am I if I’m like all the rest, if I just turn away when I see how you’re dressed’. It’s like, ‘Why couldn’t I have stopped it?’ I was reading into the lyrics, thinking ‘Jesus Christ, was I partly to blame?’
“Because she had lung cancer, I thought, ‘What could I have done?’ I couldn’t really have done anything because by the time we found out it was too late.
“But then you start to think, ‘What if I had forced her to go to the doctor’s?’ Because she didn’t go. You think, ‘S***, maybe I should have said she had to’.”
Sir Tom, 78, and Linda were childhood sweethearts and together for 59 years.
After her death, aged 76, he struggled to carry on, turning to the therapist for help.
He took a few months off showbusiness. He also cancelled some gigs last year when he fell ill with a bacterial infection.
Otherwise, he has continued to wow fans around the world, keeping in shape with a twice-weekly boxing session.
Now, almost three years on from Linda’s death, Sir Tom says time has been the biggest healer and allowed him to carry on.
“I didn’t think I could do it to begin with – it was such a blow,” said Sir Tom, whose 1960s anthems included It’s Not Unusual and Delilah.
“Other people who have lost people have said, ‘Just give it time – don’t do anything now, don don’t t go ma making any big decisions now’. And then things sink in and you realise, ‘ This is it, this is the w way it’s going to be’.
“So you look at it m more realistically as t time goes on.
“There are friends o over the years who have b been through this, of co course. That’s another th thing about growing old th that I don’t particularly lik like, that you lose friends.
“But the great thing ab about going on and doing som something you love is you sta start to make new friends. So it’s worked out.”
Sir Tom returned to The Voice last night, alongside new friends will.i.am, Olly Murs and Jennifer Hudson.
He was controversially axed from the show in 2015 when it aired on the BBC, after four years on the panel. But he was brought back when it moved to ITV.
Last night he choked back tears when he turned his chair for the son of his late pal Lonnie Donegan, whose song Never Gonna Fall In Love Again he had performed in 1967.
He and Peter Donegan went on to sing the song in an impromptu duet on the show.
And Sir Tom says he will never love again after losing Linda: “I don’t think so, no.”