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One option was ruled out right away. The Trenchards were a good Catholic family, so there was no question of an abortion, which, in any case, was still illegal in 1956. One solution, followed by many families, was for Linda to go away and ‘visit relatives’ for the later stages of her confinement, give birth and have the baby adopted. She could then return to Treforest refreshed and rested after a lovely ‘holiday’ and none of the neighbourhood gossips would be any the wiser.
A third possibility was that Linda could leave Treforest for a while, give birth and then hand the baby over to her aunt, who had no children, which would at least have kept the child within the family. None of these possibilities seemed ideal and the adults continued to try to reach an agreement. The whole time, Linda and Tom sat together, holding hands and whispering affectionately to one another.
Eventually, Freda noticed them. Tom recalled the moment, ‘My mother, God bless her, said, “Look at them. We’re trying to decide what’s going to happen and they’re oblivious to what’s going on. How can we get in the way of that?”’
Thomas senior asked his son what he wanted to do. Tom replied without hesitation: ‘I said, “I want to get married to Linda and she wants to get married to me.” My father just looked at me, it all went dead quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Go ahead.” I always loved him for it.’
It wasn’t quite as simple as that, though. Linda was not yet sixteen and was therefore too young to be married legally. They would have to wait until after her next birthday, on 14 January, and by that time there would be no hiding her condition. There was the wider family to convince that this was the right course of action as well. At least Tom’s mother and father weren’t hypocrites about their son’s situation: they, too, had married after Freda became pregnant – and that was in the 1930s. Tom’s cousin Margaret remembers her Auntie Freda telling her that Tom wanted to get married: ‘He wasn’t forced at all. Some parents might have done that, but he wanted to.’
Linda’s friends weren’t judgemental. While there was some inevitable gossip behind closed doors, Vimy Pitman recalls, ‘Everybody felt immensely sorry for her, because she was such a nice person. Nobody put her down. I didn’t know of any other pregnancy when we were that young. It was all so shocking. She was far too nice to say anything nasty about. You wouldn’t say, “Oh look, what has she been up to, then?”’
Any childhood dreams Linda may have had of a romantic wedding were put firmly behind her when, eight months pregnant, she and Tom made their way to the Pontypridd Register Office in Courthouse Street on 2 March 1957. At that time, it was still important to be married before giving birth, however late in the day.
Register offices haven’t changed much. It was an impersonal affair, with the cheery registrar, the master of ceremonies, seated behind a plain wooden table, while immediate family sat in rows on the facing chairs. Tom’s sister Sheila was there with her new husband, Ken Davies, who was one of the two main witnesses on the marriage certificate. Tom’s grandmother Ada, Aunt Lena and Uncle Albert, parents of the twins, were there and, of course, so were his parents, watching their teenage son grow up before their eyes. Linda’s parents were joined by some of her close relatives, including her aunt, Josie Powell, who was also a witness. Nobody realised then that Linda’s father, Bill, a quiet man like Tom senior, had only a short time left. He was battling tuberculosis – a grim reminder of how close to death Tom had come.
The ceremony was mercifully brief and the family retired to the Wood Road for a celebratory drink on the way home. It was very low key, but there were more pressing matters for the newlyweds to consider – where they were going to live and how they would provide for their child.
The living arrangements were easily sorted. Tom just packed his clothes and sauntered round to Linda’s, where the now Mr and Mrs Woodward were given the basement area of 3 Cliff Terrace as their first marital home. Linda’s parents and her younger sister Roslyn were on the floor above. Their living quarters were below the level of the street, so there wasn’t much natural light, but Linda set about making the place presentable. It was very basic, however, with no fridge, Hoover or phone. The old stove she had to cook on was something from the 1940s. Visitors would bang on the grill with a boot to attract their attention, although that was liable to set the dogs barking up and down the road.
Tom had taken on some extra shifts at the Polyglove factory to try to build up a nest egg to get them started as man and wife, but it soon became clear that he would have to look for something better paid. He started work as a general labourer at the British Coated Board and Paper Mills on the Treforest Industrial Estate.
Tom was just leaving on his bike to cycle to work for a night shift, when the ambulance drew up to take Linda to the maternity hospital in Cardiff. ‘I couldn’t even take a shift off when my wife went into hospital.’ Even if he hadn’t been working, this was the 1950s and long before prospective fathers were expected to hold their partner’s hand while she gave birth.
On his return from the mill the following morning, Tom dumped his bike on the pavement and excitedly rushed into the all-too-familiar phone box to ring the hospital. It was 11 April 1957 and Tommy Woodward, aged sixteen, was informed he was now the father of a baby boy.
Tom dashed to the hospital in Glossop Terrace. He can chuckle now about what he must have looked like. He told the 1991 TV documentary The Voice Made Flesh, ‘I walked to the hospital with a shopping bag, which I wouldn’t have been seen dead with the week before. I had this bloody Teddy suit on with a shopping bag. And I walked into the hospital and I saw Linda and my son and I came out of there and I thought, “Who can touch me now!”’
He took the bus home, but decided to stop along the way at one of his favourite dance halls to toast the birth. ‘I went into the toilet and one kid said, “Oh, we heard that you had to marry Linda Trenchard.” And I grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up, you know, on the wall and then people pulled me off. I was so “lifted” by the fact that I had a wife and little boy. It made me feel much stronger than I was a week before. It made me a man.’
Despite that feeling of masculine bravado, Tom’s situation was far from promising. He was a teenage father of one with no prospects. To a certain extent, Tom’s life was following the norm for this part of South Wales: boys would leave school at fifteen, go down the mines or find a factory job and then look to marry and settle down. Circumstance may have dictated that Tom started a year or two earlier than most, but the majority of his school friends were married, with young families, while they were still teenagers.
Family life for Tom began with some grim news. Linda’s father had to go into hospital as his tuberculosis worsened. Bill Trenchard died from TB just six weeks after the birth of his grandson, Mark. He was forty-two. Linda tried to rally round her mother and younger sister, but she had to care for her baby. Tom did his best to be supportive and, for a short time at least, was very attentive to his young family. He went everywhere they went. Brian Blackler recalls that the first time he saw Mark Woodward was when Tom was walking on the Feathery with his little boy perched on his shoulders. He was clearly a proud new dad.
Tom’s routine began to follow a pattern remarkably similar to that of his father. During the week he worked hard, and on Friday nights enjoyed a beer with his mates at the Otley Arms in Treforest or the White Hart pub in the area between the village and Pontypridd known as The Tumble.
Brian also left the glove factory and started work at a local pit, the Maritime Colliery in Maesycoed, on the outskirts of Pontypridd, so Tom inevitably saw less of him as time passed. Tom still enjoyed the company of his old friends, but his best mate as the years went by remained Dai Perry. In Dai’s own words, they were like brothers, and they forged a lifelong bond, supping pints together and getting into scraps. It was a time when Tom’s nose was reshaped many times. He later complained to the renowned journalist Donald Zec, ‘I hate my horrible nose – it’s been worked over, bent sideways and patched up more than any other part of me. And always hit by a head – we liked to keep our hands nice and smooth like.’ His crooked teeth weren’t much better.
Generally speaking, Tom and Dai didn’t go looking for trouble. It had a habit of finding them, however, usually when one beer too many had been downed. On one memorable occasion, Tom was head-butted so hard, he ended up flying through the plate-glass door of a fish and chip shop.
The fight had been brewing for several days, after a row and a frank exchange of insults outside an Indian restaurant had resulted in Tom punching a man he described as a hooligan. The word went out in the days that followed that the man’s friends were looking for Tom to even the score. Dai warned him to be careful, but Tom was sure he could handle any trouble. He told Dai overconfidently, ‘He’s got no chance.’
Sure enough, the man – and his father – caught up with Tom as he ate some chips in the doorway of a Ponty takeaway. Tom has never been slow to tell the story of his comeuppance: ‘I told him, “Why don’t you run along?” Dai whispered to me, “Keep an eye on him,” but I didn’t care. I said, “Where do you want to go?” and while I was talking, he suddenly let me have it and I smashed right through the door into the fish and chip shop.’
He was still scrambling to his feet, ready to continue the fight, when the police arrived and moved everybody on. Tom, fuelled by the beer, followed the pair up to the Graig, where they lived, and jumped on them without even bothering to take his overcoat off. It was a big mistake, because there were two of them. That became three when the man’s mother charged out of their house, and four when his brother arrived as well. As Tom put it succinctly, ‘They beat the shit out of me.’ He still has the scar where one of them bit him on the finger.
Dai Perry looked on while his friend took a beating. Although he could have sorted things out for Tom, he did nothing because of an unwritten code of conduct: you couldn’t fight a woman or a much older man, especially if he was someone’s father. It was a question of respect, and Tom never held it against him.
On the streets of Pontypridd, the Teddy boy rules did not, for the most part, include the use of knives. Drugs weren’t a feature of the lifestyle either, and Tom never saw the point of narcotics. Instead, it was a macho culture of beer, Woodbines and the occasional brawl. Brian Blackler is adamant that Tom didn’t deserve his reputation as a ruffian: ‘He could look after himself, Tom, but he wasn’t a fighter. I think most of the boys were like that in them days. We wouldn’t get bullied, would we? I never liked a bully and I wouldn’t get bullied and Tom was the same.’
Despite not looking for trouble, there were many nights when Tom greeted his wife with a black eye or a fat lip after a night out. There must have been a lot of bullies in Pontypridd then. An evening rarely ended without some sort of punch-up between those Teds who were looking for trouble. If you went out to a dance hall in town, you needed eyes in the back of your head to keep watch for any menacing Ted sneaking up on you from behind. The British Legion in Rhydyfelin was so notoriously rough that it became widely known as the ‘Bucket of Blood’.
The history of that era reveals that there were some massive fights between rival gangs of Teds. But Keith Davies, who later played guitar alongside Tom, observes: ‘Sometimes I think the whole Ted thing is overcooked. It was just a way of life for everyone. Everybody was a Teddy boy. I wouldn’t say Tom was a tough Ted. He was aggressive on stage though.’
Tom, meanwhile, was promoted at work to a job as a machinist. As a result, he was earning more money, but alternate weeks he had to work a night shift from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Even that small advancement was threatened by an overzealous trade unionist, who complained that he was too young to receive a man’s wage. Tom had to hold his tongue – and his fists – when some of the other staff tried to sabotage his machine so he would be out of favour with management. He began to hate his job.
Letting off steam with his mates was poor compensation for his general unhappiness at the way things had turned out for him. He was linked to some petty crime in the area, which gave Freda some sleepless nights, worried that the next knock on the door might be someone ready to arrest Tom. Mostly, though, it involved sneaking into the cinema without paying or nicking the occasional 45 from the record store.
He laughed the troubles off: ‘When the officials came to see my mother with the brasses nicely polished in the front room and a picture of granddad with his medals on, they went away saying, “No ruffian could live here!”’
Perhaps most alarmingly, he temporarily lost his appetite for singing, weighed down by his responsibilities. Linda, whose contribution to Tom’s career should never be underestimated, had to prod and cajole him into singing again, starting off while shaving in the mirror before work. She was delighted when he came home one afternoon in early 1957 with a new single in his hand.
Tom had been walking through the centre of Pontypridd, when he heard ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On’ by Jerry Lee Lewis for the first time. It was blasting out from the speakers at Freddie Feys’ record shop. He was immediately stopped in his tracks: ‘Good God. To me that was it! I loved that record and it was a white man singing boogie-woogie that he had heard black men play.’
Tom would never forget the effect Jerry Lee’s music had on him. He admired Elvis and would spend afternoons listening to Brian’s elder brother John’s collection of The King’s records. But he loved the man from Louisiana, who was known as ‘The Killer’. Tom liked his aggression and the way Lewis would chew his audience up and spit them out. He was a white man who sounded like he was black, and that was the effect Tom had always wanted.
At least money wasn’t as tight and he could buy a new Hawk guitar. He was earning £18 a week and they weren’t paying any rent. Until now, Tom had sung at school and family get-togethers. It was time for him to start singing in public.
Urged on by Linda, he approached his uncle, Albert Jones, to ask if he could perform at the Wood Road. ‘Could you put us on, Uncle Albert – you know, do a gig down there?’
Albert, who was quite a stern chap, replied, ‘It will never go down well here – rock ’n’ roll.’
Tom persevered, however, and eventually he had a lucky break, when an act they had booked failed to show one Sunday evening. Tom stepped up and sang three numbers, including the classic Elvis hit ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘Sixteen Tons’, a number one for Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1956. The reaction was much more favourable than Albert had expected, so Tom came back after an interval and sang three more. Afterwards, the club’s entertainment secretary, Charlie Ashman, was so pleased, he put his hand in the till and handed Tom a £1 note. In those days of pre-decimal money, he could buy thirty pints in the club for a quid. The only problem was that everyone knew how old he was and he could never get served there.
Tom was encouraged to think he could sing for money, or at least beer money, in the pubs and clubs around Treforest and Pontypridd. His mates supported him, especially when he started singing at one of their favourite pubs, the Wheatsheaf, at the bottom of Rickards Street. They would have a few beers in the downstairs bar before adjourning to the room upstairs, where Tom would belt out his mix of Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis and Ray Charles numbers, accompanying himself as best as he could on his guitar.
The audience loved him at the Wheatsheaf, but it was practically his local and didn’t really count. The landlady, Joan Lister, recalled that the audience wouldn’t get up for a pint when Tom was on, which may or may not be true. He needed more than that generous appreciation, however, and for a while joined a local beat group called the De Avalons. He was the drummer, not the singer, but soon tired of that arrangement, much preferring to be the centre of attention.
He joined a concert party called The Misfits. These variety ensembles, which often included a comedian and a group, were very popular. They were like a mini evening of Britain’s Got Talent. Tom liked the set-up, because the money was good – anything from £2 to £5 for a night’s work – and he found he could earn almost as much at a weekend as the rest of the week in the paper factory. Tom was one of three acts, which included a singer who specialised in Frankie Laine numbers.
Linda had no objection when Tom decided to quit his job at the paper factory and sign on the dole. Tom was reassured by a workmate, who told him, ‘If you fail, you can always return. It doesn’t take a genius to work in a paper mill.’ He needed to be free from shift work so he could accept evening bookings. From time to time, he would take a job selling vacuum cleaners or working on a building site, carting bricks, but his heart wasn’t in it and these jobs rarely lasted more than a few weeks. His only ticket out of the Valleys was with ‘singer’ stamped on his passport, so he was much happier concentrating on that ambition than grafting for a few pounds a week. The reality was that he had started to drift.
The most significant member of a Tommy Woodward audience during this time was a young guitarist from Rhydyfelin called Vernon Hopkins. He had heard about a rough and ready lad with a big voice doing his time on the pub and club circuit around Pontypridd, so he turned up at the Wheatsheaf one night to watch Tom perform. Vernon was unimpressed with his act, but admired his voice.
‘His voice was great, but he would just stand there and sing. He wouldn’t even introduce a song. It was like he didn’t want to be there at all, but he had to do it, because he wanted the money. It wasn’t a good picture. He looked intimidating.’
5
The Girl with the Red Dress On (#u62725f21-d8e7-52b8-9c54-a268af863b50)
Not everyone found Tom scary. One of his long-standing drinking pals, Alan Barratt, wasn’t overawed, even though he was the smaller man. According to local legend, he once gave Tom a fearful pasting in an argument over a girl. Tom literally had to drag himself home on his hands and knees. The pair remained good friends and Tom was later rumoured to have helped Alan buy the newsagent’s in Church Village, where he settled, just a few miles from Pontypridd.
They were together one evening eating a takeaway outside a curry house, when Tom met a curvaceous fifteen-year-old called Gill Beazer. When he came across a girl he liked, Tommy Woodward was no longer one of the lads. He acted in a completely different manner. He had been impressed when, as a boy, he walked with his father around the terraced streets where they lived. The local housewives would come to the front door just to smile and say to his dad, ‘Good morning, Thomas.’ The friendly greetings brightened his day. He learned from his father and the other men in his family that women were to be treated with respect, consideration and as equals. He didn’t swear or act the macho man in front of them, and it made no difference how pretty they were.
Gill was most definitely attractive, though. The tabloid papers of today would describe her as a stunner. Tommy’s relationship with the shy teenager was a million miles away from his later image as Tom Jones, sex-obsessed superstar.
In the early summer of 1960, the curry house had just opened in Central Square, Trallwn, on the other side of Pontypridd. It was a general store as well, and Gill was browsing there when Tom, then aged twenty, showed up with Alan Barratt. They were there for two reasons: Tom loved curry and, to this day, lamb curry remains a favourite dish; he also liked a pint. He and Alan would pop into the Llanover Arms on the corner or the Central Hotel across the square. The hotel had a music room, where Tom would appear occasionally, so he knew it well.
Gill lived with her nan, Ruth, around the corner at the top of East Street, third house down on the right. Her mother left when she was a baby, and her father, a carpenter called Elias Beazer, made a new life in Rhydyfelin, where he remarried and had a large family. Gill still saw her dad, but was brought up by her grandmother.
In the evenings, Gill, who was a bit of a loner and had few friends of her own age, would often take a stroll around the square to soak up the atmosphere and have a passing conversation or two. It was a much more innocent time, when people looked out for one another. Gill was well known in the neighbourhood and would pop in and out of the shops – a cobbler’s and a hairdresser, a sweet shop, a greengrocer and the Co-op at the end. ‘I just used to like to go out of my door, onto the square and talk to whoever was around.’ There never seemed to be any girls her age, so she usually ended up talking to the boys, who would be chatting and trying to look cool on their motorbikes.
She began joining other underage girls to sneak into pubs where they could get served, providing they stayed at the back, away from the men-only bars. Perhaps because of that and her large bust, the boys would talk about her and she developed a bad reputation that was entirely unjustified.
She knew nothing about Tom when they met. Treforest seemed a world away from Trallwn. She didn’t know he was a local singer and she had no idea he was married with a young son – information that he certainly didn’t volunteer. It would be a common theme, where Tom was concerned, that women he became involved with didn’t know his marital status. Gill told him she had just left school and was working as a shop assistant in the Star Supply Stores in Pontypridd, waiting for a better job to come up in the Aero Zip factory on the industrial estate.
One thing struck Gill at that first encounter: Alan, who was a couple of years older than Tom, was much more handsome than his friend. Gill observes, ‘Alan was a very good-looking guy. He had black curly hair and was smartly turned out. He was looked-after smart, if you know what I mean. He was slighter than Tom, although Tom was slight, mind. Tom wasn’t particularly handsome, because he had this long jawline.’
Alan may have been better looking, but it was Tom who had the charm. He had a bent, lopsided nose, crooked teeth and an elongated jaw, but he was easy to talk to. ‘He just had this lovely personality as far as I was concerned,’ recalls Gill, who readily agreed to meet up a day or two later by the railings on The Parade, the street below the curry house.
‘He told me when he wanted to meet me there, but he didn’t come. I just hung about for an hour and eventually he turned up. No matter when he made arrangements with me, it would be an hour or two later that he would turn up.’ Gill didn’t realise that he had responsibilities elsewhere.
Nothing happened between them on The Parade other than a walk and a chat. They just seemed to like each other’s company. It was very relaxed and Tom suggested that she might like to hear him sing at a gig or perhaps take in a dance one evening soon; he would call her to let her know when.
The next time she saw him, he was walking underneath the bridge by the railway station in Pontypridd, looking unrecognisable in a double-breasted navy blue pinstriped suit. Gill assumed he had paid a trip to the magistrates’ court nearby: ‘He might have been a naughty boy, but he was very smartly dressed.’ She didn’t quiz him about it. It wasn’t her business and she wasn’t a pushy sort of girl anyway. She admits, ‘I never had any confidence in myself.’
Tom’s luck with the law had, in fact, run out when, desperately short of cash, he had broken into the old tobacconist’s shop in Treforest with a pal. They were hardly criminal masterminds. The stupid petty crime was unearthed when, by all accounts, they tried to sell their haul down the Wood Road. The police, hearing the rumours of some dodgy cigarettes for sale, put two and two together and found the goods hidden in Tom’s mother’s house.
Even the dole office knew of his misdeed, noting in its records: ‘Applicant is on bail pending being heard for a charge of breaking and entering at the next quarter session.’ Tom has not denied this transgression and later admitted he had once been placed on probation.
Tom started calling Gill to suggest when they might meet up. Neither of them had a phone. Tom would step out to his red phone box and she would be in hers outside the Central Hotel, just across from the top of East Street. Tom would dial the number – 2026 – and wait for someone to answer the ringing phone. It didn’t matter who it was, he would simply ask the person to pop over the road and tell Gill that he wanted to speak to her. She would dash for the phone, pleased to hear from him.
Gill had the same routine if she was staying the night at a friend’s house. She would simply ring the phone box and ask whoever answered to go and tell her nan what she was doing, please, so she wouldn’t worry. She never knew the number of Tom’s phone box, presumably because he didn’t want to run the risk of his wife answering. Gill recalls, ‘I would have to wait for him to do things and I suppose I was patient enough to wait without even thinking about it.’
She loved it when they went jiving at Judges in Porth or the Bucket of Blood in Rhydyfelin: ‘I was a good jiver and so was he.’ But, in the main, she would just be his girl when he went to a gig. Often she had no idea where they were, although Franchies in Taff Street was one she enjoyed. Neither of them had any money – Gill used to make a lot of her clothes – so it would be a trip on the bus to the gig, where she and sometimes other friends would cheer him on. Tom would usually be paid a couple of pounds and perhaps some beer. Afterwards, there was no hanging around. He needed to get home to his family, so they would catch the bus back to Pontypridd, get off in Merthyr Road and he would set off for Treforest, while she walked back to East Street. She recalls, ‘He would do the gig and then he would be gone. We never had any money. We never had anything at all.’
Looking back with the privilege of hindsight, Gill believes Tom wanted company: ‘He needed someone when he went to these gigs – he needed someone in the audience there for him, someone whom he could focus on or relate to. He didn’t want to go on his own.’ He was clearly fond of her, however.
On one evening she was due to accompany him to a gig in Caerphilly, eight miles away. Tom suggested she get the bus, which left from the Broadway, with him and his friend Gwyn Griffiths. The bus ran only once an hour, so Tom had to catch it or he would be late. Gill and Gwyn, whom she already knew, caught the bus as arranged, but, typically, there was no sign of Tom. As they travelled down the Broadway, they saw Tom running along, clutching his guitar and trying to catch them up. He banged on the side to attract the driver’s attention and Gill started shouting to him to stop the bus as well. Thankfully, he stopped and let Tom on board.
She had dolled herself up for the occasion, wearing her long brown hair up and putting on a red dress that an aunt had brought over from Jamaica as a present. Gill will never forget that gig, because after his usual smattering of Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis, Tom turned towards her, midway through his next song, focused his gaze directly on her and sang, ‘See the girl with the red dress on …’ It was his power-packed version of ‘What’d I Say’, the song that took the legendary Ray Charles into the mainstream in 1959. Jerry Lee had made a rock ’n’ roll recording of the track at the famous Sun Studio in 1960. ‘I was elated,’ says Gill. ‘He was singing to me.’ It was lovely for Gill, but it also revealed that Tom hadn’t forgotten the advice of his Uncle George and was selling the song to his audience. It was a technique he continued to employ as a Las Vegas headliner.
Gill thought there was more to the relationship than there was. Perhaps she was naive, but she acknowledges simply: ‘Yes, I thought he was my boyfriend.’ That changed when she saw him in Pontypridd with a young blond boy who was clearly his son and turned out to be Mark. ‘I didn’t have bad feelings towards him about it. I’m a “what will be, will be” sort of person. I think that a little bit of something is better than nothing. That’s the only way to explain why I went on seeing him.’
Gill admits that she and Tom enjoyed plenty of ‘kisses and cuddles’, but she denies there was anything more. If they weren’t going to a gig or jiving, then they would simply stay and chat on a street corner or go for a walk in Trallwn or the nearby village of Ynysybwl. She strongly believes that the image of Tom as a rough and ready macho man is completely wrong. She explains: ‘I think people got the wrong impression of him. He wasn’t at all as he was portrayed. I never found him to be a forceful person. He never expected anything from me and he told me that, and it was very important to me. He said to me that whatever I wanted physically would be OK. He was never, ever nasty with me and treated me as an equal. He was a gentle person.’
Everyone assumed that Gill was sleeping with Tom, because for nearly two years they were often seen together. They never went all the way, however. Eventually Gill found a proper boyfriend, whom she would marry. She still saw Tom occasionally. He would pop in to find out how she was doing and make sure she was all right. They lost touch when Tom’s career began to move forward, although Alan Barratt would call round to catch up from time to time. When Gill had a son, Alan brought her a card from Tom on the boy’s first birthday that contained two crisp pound notes. By strange coincidence, in later life, she became the best friend of Marion Crewe, who was Dai Perry’s sister and was close to Tom, whom she adored. Gill remained on the fringes of Tom’s world and would say hello on the sad days he came home for funerals.
Gill paints a contrasting picture of the young Tom Jones from those who have portrayed him as some sort of yob. The most likely explanation is that there were two sides to Tom, fashioned from his upbringing in this quiet part of South Wales. He would act the big man over a pint or two with his mates, swear like a navvy and was quite prepared to nut someone if they were threatening him. Facially, he looked much tougher than he actually was. He wasn’t a huge man by any means, being slim and fit and about 5ft 10in tall. But his badly misshapen nose and teeth meant he could look menacing without even trying. He liked dressing as a Teddy boy because he thought he looked ‘slick’, as he put it.
The reality, at least as far as women were concerned, was entirely different. ‘I think he was quite shy underneath,’ says Gill. Her view of Tom is one endorsed by Linda: ‘He is the most mild-mannered man you could wish to meet – and so patient with everyone. He is kind and gentle.’
The real man doesn’t sound like a love-them-and-leave-them stud. Inevitably, he changed when he became a superstar and had to live up to his image as a sex god. Women were willing and readily available to him then, but at this stage of his life that happened only occasionally. Looking back on her own experience with the man who would become Tom Jones, Gill reveals the moral dilemma of Tommy Woodward: how to reconcile becoming involved with other women while being happily married. She observes, ‘He loved his wife dearly.’
6
Senator Tom (#u62725f21-d8e7-52b8-9c54-a268af863b50)
Vernon Hopkins hadn’t forgotten about Tommy Woodward; he just didn’t need him. He had seen Tom once or twice around the Pontypridd pubs, apparently flogging a dead horse, still in Teddy boy gear, the Hawk guitar around his neck, banging out the same Frankie Laine, Jerry Lee Lewis and Ray Charles numbers. Tom didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Although he always believed it was his destiny to be a singer, he was stuck in a rut.
Vernon, a young man filled with energy and a passion for music, changed that for him. He had a steady job as an apprentice compositor with the Pontypridd Observer, while playing with his group, The Senators, who were gradually building a local following. They had even appeared on television.
The band had started out as a three piece – just Vernon and two Rhydyfelin teenagers, Keith Davies and Jeff Maher, who lived next door to one another. By coincidence, the trio had their first gig at the Wood Road in Treforest. Keith, who was a devoted fan of The Shadows, played their famous hit ‘Apache’ and other Hank Marvin classics, but it was clear they needed a singer if they were going to progress.
One of the club members told them his son could sing and would come on stage with them. Keith already knew Tommy Pitman from Rhydyfelin, but didn’t know he could sing. The Senators were happy to give him a try the next time they played at the club. It went well. Tommy jumped up, sang ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and some other Elvis songs, with a dash of Buddy Holly for variety.
Tommy had recently been demobbed after finishing his national service with the RAF in Cyprus. While there, he had joined a group that wanted an Elvis-style singer. They performed regularly on the island, on television as well as in live shows, so he was an accomplished performer by the time he sang at the Wood Road.
Everything seemed set fair for the group. They added a drummer, Brian Price, and decided to call themselves The Senators after the model of Vernon’s Höfner guitar. They soon became much in demand, with some regular gigs, including the YMCA near the Old Bridge in Taff Street, Pontypridd, on Friday nights. They were also booked to appear on a new pop show called Discs A GoGo. This was hosted by the former Radio Luxembourg DJ Kent Walton, who would become much more famous as the commentator on professional wrestling every week on ITV’s World of Sport. They had to audition at the studios in Pontcanna, Cardiff. Tommy sang a Cliff Richard song – only to learn that for the show, a Christmas special, the producers wanted the band to perform ‘Jingle Bells’. ‘Well, that’s me out for a start,’ said Tommy. ‘I’m not going to sing “Jingle Bells”. I’m a rock ’n’ roll singer.’ So the rest of The Senators went ahead without him and performed it as an instrumental.
The Senators were going places. The one problem for the band that Vernon couldn’t have foreseen was that Tommy Pitman was losing his enthusiasm. He was older than the others and didn’t relish playing for what was, in effect, a teenage jive club. He recalls, ‘I wasn’t mad on singing, to be honest. I got a bit fed up with the YMCA on Friday nights. There were no drinks or anything like that – just dancing. I used to go down with my mates and have a couple of beers in a nearby pub and then we’d start playing a few cards until I’d go, “I’m not going up to the Y tonight.”’ Friday night, he decided, was drinks night with the boys.
The rest of the band coped the first time, but something had to be done when it happened again. They laboured through the first set, but Keith Davies observed, ‘I can only play “Apache” so many times.’
Vernon said, ‘I know a fella who goes round the clubs. He’s called Tommy Woodward and he’ll probably be in the White Hart.’ So he set off down the High Street to try to find their substitute.
Sure enough, Tom was with his friends, propping up the bar, when Vernon dashed in. He said Pitman hadn’t turned up and asked if Tom would like to earn a few bob by singing the second set. Vernon remembers Tom giving a little cough into his hand. He has the same mannerism today; it’s a sign that he’s nervous about something. He downed the rest of his pint. ‘OK, Vern, I’ll do it for a couple of quid.’
Just when Vernon thought it was all settled, Tom remembered that the YMCA was a booze-free zone. He stopped in his tracks: ‘I’m out for a good drink, Vern. Out with the boys, like.’ Vernon, thinking quickly, said he would buy a crate of beers and smuggle them in just for Tom. That sealed the deal.
They ran back to the Y as fast as they could go without exhausting Tom, who wouldn’t be able to sing if he was gasping for breath. It’s not easy to get up and start singing with a band you’ve never really met before, let alone rehearsed with. The Senators had also just gone through some changes: Jeff and Colin had left to start their own group and had been replaced by rhythm guitarist Mike Roberts, who was in television, and Alva Turner on drums.
The legend of that first gig has it that Tom bounced on stage and was off. That’s not strictly true, because he was fretting about not knowing what the first number was going to be. ‘Christ,’ he said to Vernon, ‘we’ve never even practised together.’
The familiar swagger was back, however, when he walked on and turned to Keith, who had no idea who he was, and said confidently, ‘Do you know “Great Balls of Fire” in C?’
‘No,’ came the reply, ‘but you sing it and we’ll play it.’
With a voice so strong it made the walls tremble, Tom burst into ‘You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain …’
The rather square and sober 200-strong audience had never seen anything like the menacing figure now before them. He looked as if he would jump off the stage and nut you if you didn’t applaud in the right place. They were too shocked to clap after the first number. Tom marched off to take a lusty swig of light ale from behind a curtain, before continuing in the same vein, standing defiantly in centre stage, legs braced as if he were pulling a cart. Gradually, however, freed from the restrictions of playing his guitar, he began to move about and engage with the audience, who responded by starting to dance. Tom found his rhythm, and Vernon recalls, ‘He was like a man possessed.’ He was helped in that regard by polishing off four light ales while he performed.
Tommy Pitman was a good singer, particularly effective with ballads, but Vernon realised that night that the other Tommy, Tom Woodward, was the future for the band. Keith Davies agreed, ‘He had a much stronger voice than Tommy Pitman. He was just more aggressive all over. They were just two different types of singer.’ Tom wasn’t concerned about that – he just wanted to grab his couple of pounds and make it back to the White Hart before they called last orders.
Tom went round to Vernon’s house a few days later for a run-through and sang an old-fashioned Edwardian ballad called ‘Thora’ in his best gospel style. ‘I’m not having no bugger in this band who sings hymns,’ said young Keith, who would ultimately be persuaded by the obvious quality of Tom’s voice.
Tom began rehearsing regularly with the band on a Wednesday at Vernon’s house in Glyndwr Avenue, Rhydyfelin. Five young men were crammed into the front room, with amplifiers on every chair, and a piano and drum kit wedged in as well. Vernon recalls fondly, ‘You wouldn’t believe the size of it. We rehearsed many of the numbers that he later made famous in that room.’
Five became six the day that Tommy Pitman came down to find out if he was still in the band. Vernon was nervous about so many blokes in a confined space, worried that the two Tommys would come to blows as they competed to be The Senators’ vocalist. He even persuaded his sisters to lay on tea and sandwiches in an attempt to keep everything civilised. In the end, the two Toms behaved impeccably.
Vernon knew he wanted to keep his new singer, but they put it to the vote. Keith supported Vernon’s view that Tom Woodward should stay. Tommy Pitman pointed out that he owned part of the equipment. The next suggestion was that they should have two vocalists. Tom wasn’t having that and told them, ‘It’s either me or Tommy.’
Vernon tried to make the decision painless: ‘The thing is, Tommy, you left us in the lurch and we have been getting on all right with Tom, so I’m going to say we stay as we are now.’ Tommy accepted the decision and the two singers left together, as they lived in neighbouring streets in Treforest.
Tommy Pitman recalls, ‘We weren’t going to fight about a thing like that. We walked back together and chatted about different things. I said, “I paid for half of this sound system and you are coming in for nout.” He said, “OK, I’ll sort you out.” Ha! I never got nothing. When we parted, I said, “I’ll see you. All the best.”’
In fact, Pitman wasn’t too dejected. He had already had an offer to join a group called The Strollers, which Jeff and Colin from The Senators had formed. They were a smarter-looking band, more Shadows than Jerry Lee, and Tommy, who liked to wear an Italian suit on stage, thought they were a better match for him. He recalls with a glint of good humour, ‘It wasn’t too long before I was in Butlins for a season with them. So I thought then I had the best of the deal, obviously.’
The Senators were Vernon’s group. He made the key decisions and was the driving force. Tom was just the singer, but Vernon was in no doubt about his ability. Although they would later have their differences, Vernon acknowledges, ‘Right from when he joined, he was as good a singer as I have ever performed with. His voice was so pure.’
