Tom Jones sex bombs Tel Aviv

The Welsh wizard of song showed Tel Aviv that some people, like fine wine, get better with age. It shouldn’t be surprising that Sir Tom Jones was on top form in Tel Aviv on Saturday night. After all, it’s not unusual (sorry!) for him to deliver an outstanding performance on stage, a place he so clearly loves.

The Welsh wizard pulled off a virtuoso performance to a packed house at the Nokia Stadium, masterfully whipping through his greatest hits, and throwing in some lesser known yet equally impressive tunes for good measure.

Unlike fellow pop veteran Cliff Richards over the summer, Jones kept the dancing to a minimum, perhaps knowing what the people had really come for. Granted, he did grace the audience with a few hip swivels during “It’s Not Unusual”, the jacket did come off during “You Can Keep Your Hat On”, and he did mimic the knife murder at the center of “Delilah”. But the simple dark jacket, turtle neck and pants, and low-key visuals kept the focus on the true reason for thousands of people to pay hundreds of shekels – that soaring, hushed, rocking, soulful, operatic voice filling the auditorium as easily and as beautifully as it would a small room filled with friends.

The singer smoothly transitioned from a cover of Leonard Cohen’s haunting Tower of Song (the line “I was born with the gift of a golden voice” earned him a round of mid-song applause by an audience who knew a truism when they saw one) to the all-out pop of “Mama Told Me Not To Come”, “Sex Bomb” and show-closer “Kiss”. His performance of “Never Gonna Fall In Love Again”, was performed so powerfully, with such intensity, that only the sweeping vocals and emotion of “Green, Green Grass of Home” could top it.

Jones spent a fair bit of time bantering with the audience, promising his fans after the first number that they were in for “a great night”. A little later, he recalled his last visit to Tel Aviv, lamenting the transition from a head of black hair to the silver fox he is today. His hair may have changed color with the years, but those goose bump-inducing vocals are still very much intact.

He also judged his audience extremely well, throwing in a truly moving version of the classic “My Yiddishe Mama”, and recounting how he learned it from his father. I would be surprised if there was a dry eye among the  show-goers in the house.

The standing ovation that Jones was awarded at the end of the show was more than deserved. The concert might have only lasted as long as Rihanna’s last Tuesday (my only real gripe), but this 73-year-old grandpa taught the R&B prima donna the secret to a long and successful career – get on stage and sing your heart out.

So if you’re in Tel Aviv on Monday, and get the chance, a night in the company of Tom Jones is certainly worth every shekel.

You can read this review at the Jerusalem Post here

Tom Jones talks blues, roots music and latest album, Spirit In The Room with Music Radar

"Tennessee Ernie Ford doing Catfish Boogie... records like that were the start of rock 'n' roll" Tom Jones talks blues, roots music and his new album, Spirit In The Room “The album reminds me of all the stuff I listened to when I was growing up in Wales," says Tom Jones of Spirit In The Room. It's the veteran singer's second collaboration with producer Ethan Johns, and like their first effort together, 2010's Praise & Blame, the gritty, stripped-down production is light years away from the big and brassy Las Vegas orchestra trappings that attended much of Jones' late '60s and '70s work.

"The music I listened to early on was on the BBC," says Jones. "There was big band music and pop, but occasionally we would hear a more raw sound, and those were the blues records, the gospel records and some country things, too. Tennessee Ernie Ford doing Catfish Boogie and Blackberry Boogie – to me, records like that were the start of rock ‘n’ roll. That stuff caught my ear."

Jones and multi-instrumentalist Johns (the latter is the son of noted producer Glyn Johns) assembled a tight band of musicians (Richard Causon on piano and vintage keyboards, Ian Jennings and Sam Dixon on bass, and drummer Stella Mozgawa) and recorded songs in a loose, leisurely fashion at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Bath, England. "The whole thing was quite different from how we used to make records," says Jones. "We used to do three songs in three hours, with everything prepared beforehand. With Ethan, we went in and recorded from scratch – it was very free and open. And Ethan is a player, too, so I was talking to one of the people who would be making the music."

The songs, a haunting, soul-enlivening blend of Americana and blues-tinged covers by such names as Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Blind Willie Johnson, Paul McCartney, Odetta, Paul Simon, Richard Thompson and Tom Waits, among others, (along with the Jones/Johns-penned Travelin' Shoes, based on an original by Vera Hall-Ward) were picked by artist and producer with an eye towards, as Jones puts it, "getting down to the nitty-gritty. You can do that with roots music – there's nothing artificial in it."

Jones' minimalist, unvarnished approach to recording with Johns has been compared to Johnny Cash's late-period work with Rick Rubin, and the singer acknowledges the similarities. "With Johnny Cash, God bless him, he was doing that near the end of his life," says Jones. "The way that they made those records is sort of along the same lines. I think the beauty in what Johnny and Rick Rubin did is that, once you take the bare-bones approach, you get into the lyrics of the songs, the essence, without big arrangements trying to sway you. It really suits me."

Spirit In The Room will be released in the US on 23 April (it came out in the UK last year). On the following pages, Jones discusses the selection and recording process of seven of the album's 13 cuts.

1 Tower Of Song - Originally recorded by Leonard Cohen

“I love Leonard Cohen; he’s an incredible writer. With this song, I connected with it as I would with anything when I hear it and say, ‘Hey, that could be me.’ I’m singing about myself, my experiences, what I feel. That’s what I thought when I heard Tower Of Song. ‘My friends are gone and my hair is gray.’ Well, that’s true: Most of the friends I grew up with are dead, and my hair is gray. Those words really hit home.

“When we recorded our version, Ethan said, 'I want to get this as live as possible.' The microphone was wide open; it wasn’t a directional mic. There’s a great room sound, very ambient, as if you’re walking in on a band rehearsing.

“Of course, you get a good sound when you’re at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios. We did both this album and Praise & Blame there. A very natural-sounding room.”

2 (I Want To) Come Home - Originally recorded by Paul McCartney

“I know Paul, and I’ve asked him over the years to write me a song. He’s tried it – he sent me one, but I was recording with Wyclef Jean, and the song he wrote me didn’t fit in with what we were doing. But I’ve always wanted something by Paul McCartney.

“Actually, here’s a story: When he wrote The Long And Winding Road, he gave it to me. I was talking with him one night in London way back, and I said, ‘I’d love for you to write me something, Paul,’ and he said, ‘I will.’ But what happened was, we had a record coming out, and I couldn’t stop it. Paul wanted me to do The Long And Winding Road, but he wanted it to be my next single. So we just couldn’t do it.

“From then, any time I see Paul, I always ask him about a song. Ethan heard this one, and he loved it. Everything that Paul has done is so popular, but this song, which was in a movie, wasn’t that well known.

“I listened to it, and I said, ‘That’s fantastic.’ Again, it applies to me. It could be me, my life. The production is minimal, and it works very well with what we wanted to do with it."

3 Dimming Of The Day - Originally recorded by Richard Thompson

“I’ve sung Richard Thompson songs before; I’ve always thought that he was a powerful writer. When we were getting ready to do this album, I definitely wanted to see what else of his might work. A few other people have recorded Dimming Of The Day, so I listened to what they did to see if I could take it somewhere else, which I think I did.

“We put a very simple beat to it, a natural style of production. The key to this song, and this whole album, is that you don’t want to over-arrange. That gets in the way of the song, gets in the way of what I’m trying to put across. For me to deliver a song like this well, it’s got to sound like I wrote it myself. Getting the right production can make a big difference.”

4 Traveling Shoes - Written by Tom Jones and Ethan Jones, based on Traveling Shoes by Vera Hall Ward

“Ethan and I were listening to some old blues songs, and I said, ‘Why don’t we elaborate on some of these?’ These kinds of songs have been done before, but the trick is to move things around; you take what was originally there in some form and change the pieces here and there. With a lot of blues, it’s hard to even say what the original of something is sometimes. They’ve been done and redone so much, but that’s how they continue to live on.

“I play guitar when I write, if it’s in a certain key. I’m not a great guitar player, but I do enjoy playing, and I know a few keys. Ethan is a far better guitarist than I am, so I let him take over in the recording."

5 Love And Blessings - Originally recorded by Paul Simon

“I know Paul. I’ve listened to a lot of his songs, and I knew that I wanted to do something that he wrote. He’s such a beautiful writer. Ethan played this one for me and asked me what I thought, and I said, ‘I love it.’

“We did it in the same rhythmic pattern as Paul, but we changed it quite a bit in the middle section – he had himself singing with the background vocals. Ethan played a real rock guitar, quite bluesy, which sounds incredible.

“I’m a big guitar fan, especially when it comes to the blues. Ethan is a great blues player. He’s got a bloody wall full of guitars. What's great about him is, you can talk to him about your ideas on how the guitar should go, and he gets it. He’ll try things out until you say, ‘That’s it. That sounds good to me.’”

6 Charlie Darwin - Originally recorded by The Low Anthem

“It’s a message song, but it's not morbid. It’s telling you about the world and the kinds of things that Charles Darwin was warning us about. I’m a historian – I love history – and when I heard the part about the Mayflower coming across, I could see it. These desperate people looking for a better world... It struck a chord in me.

“When I did it, it sounded so real. There’s a big piece in the song – it happens twice – and I said, ‘I hear English church singers in these parts.’ It’s not a gospel choir; it’s an English church choir. So that’s what we did – we went to a church and recorded a choir singing those parts. I had that sound in my mind, and I’m so pleased that we got it across. We kept the song, but we brought it somewhere new.”

7 When The Deal Goes Down - Originally recorded by Bob Dylan

“To me, it had the feeling of an old music hall song. That’s how I heard it. It reminded me of what I used to hear in pubs when I was growing up in Wales. The people would sing songs that were much older than them, things from the First World War and even before that. It had a structure as if it was from a very different time.

“That’s the sound we tried to get. We did it with a old pipe organ – you have to pump it with your feet as you play. That’s Richard Causon playing it, and he sounds incredible.

“I’ve never met Bob Dylan. For some reason, we’ve never been in the same place at the same time. I’ve always been a fan. He’s one of the best lyricists who ever lived. It’s never flowery with Bob Dylan – he says just what he means. On the Praise & Blame album, I did What Good Am I?, which he wrote. You can take a Dylan song and do it your own way, because the way Bob records, he does it very sparse. God bless him.”

By Joe Bosso March 27, 2013

To read the full review at musicradar.com click here

Spirit In The Room: ***1/2 Philly.com Review

Spirit in the Room (Island ***1/2) Even when he became a big pop star and the quintessential Las Vegas showman in the '60s, with hits such as "It's Not Unusual" and "What's New Pussycat," Tom Jones was a more than credible singer of blues and R&B. It's a talent he revealed again on 2010's great, gospel-drenched Praise and Blame, and more recently on his Jack White-produced cover of Howlin' Wolf's "Evil."

On Spirit in the Room, the 72-year-old Welshman tackles bluesman Blind Willie Johnson's "Soul of a Man," but he also ventures into different territory. Most of the material comes from contemporary songwriters such as Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Tom Waits, Richard Thompson, and Joe Henry. Jones shows the old sexy strut on Wait's boastful "Bad as Me," but mostly he takes an understated approach that reflects the stripped-down but evocative arrangements. The mood is often autumnal or reflective, but thanks to Jones' unerring and worldly-wise interpretations, the performances still pulse with spirit.

By Nick Cristiano

http://articles.philly.com/2012-08-12/news/33168149_1_antibalas-afrobeat-pop-culture

4* Spirit In The Room Review: Record Collector

4**** - Finding his voice on his 40th long-player It arguably started with Johnny Cash, then producer Rick Rubin applied the same methods to Neil Diamond; take a veteran performer, a "heritage" act, in music biz parlance, and place them in an earthier, more intimate environment. "Unplugged" isn't an entirely accurate description, but a word in the promotional material for Spirit In The Room pretty much hits the nail on the head - "unvarnished".

At various points in his lengthy career, Jones has bordered on self-parody, all booming voice and larger-than-life persona, and the thing that he's really good at - ie, singing - has tended to be a secondary consideration.

Here, working in tandem with producer Ethan Johns, the often overlooked interpretative skills he possesses are given free rein, be it on a subdued but superbly passionate reading of Leonard Cohen's Tower of Song or a yearning take on Richard Thompson's Dimming Of The Day.

The song choices are exemplary, allowing soulful testifying on Paul Simon's Love And Blessings, a country-blues swagger on Odetta's Hit Or Miss, and a surprisingly dramatic but not overly theatrical howl on Tom Waits' Bad As Me. In essence, Jones takes a back seat to the material, his voice serving the specific needs of the song rather than the other way round, and he hasn't sound this good, so on top of his game in years.

Terry Staunton

CD of the Week: The Evening Standard 4/5*

4**** Tom Jones could have capitalised on his current prime-time fame judging The Voice and given his greatest hits yet another repackaging but instead he’s stuck to the serious gospel soul of his 2010 album Praise & Blame. Classy touches include the presence of Ryan Adams producer Ethan Johns, plus a hushed take on The Low Anthem’s beautiful obscurity, Charlie Darwin. Other songs are less obvious choices by big names including Paul Simon and Paul McCartney. Like the twilight reinventions of Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, at 71 Jones is finally singing songs that suit him, with stripped-back instrumentation that casts his ocean liner voice in the best possible light. “I got to be me, baby, hit or miss,” he sings on Odetta’s Hit or Miss. This one’s another hit.

David Smyth - The Evening Standard

Tom Jones, Spirit in the Room, A Telegraph Review

Tom Jones' Spirit in the Room is a beautiful album of great songs performed with taste and sung with tender resonance, writes Neil McCormick.

3***

“It’s all about the voice,” is Tom Jones’s repeated catchphrase as a judge on BBC’s singing competition, The Voice. But is it really? At 71, the former Welsh pub singer has enjoyed an extraordinary run for an interpretative pop vocalist. He’s always been strong on lung-busting volume, gritty tone and fluid delivery, but it is a more unclassifiable quality of earthy, masculine drive that made him iconic, a raw sexuality connecting his easy listening oeuvre to the swinging grooves of the Sixties and beyond. With advancing years, you might imagine that strutting appetite to be waning but Jones has skilfully negotiated the late phase of his career with a shift towards autumnal rumination and pathos. Usually a singer for whom bigger is better, on 2010’s superb Praise & Blame Jones tackled spiritual blues and gospel with a stripped back, roots-rock flavour. For the follow up, producer Ethan Johns adapts the formula to understated arrangements of contemporary and classic Americana. The obvious reference point is Johnny Cash’s late-period recordings with Rick Rubin. The same tone of weary, hard-won wisdom runs through Spirit in the Room, yet Jones’s connection to the material is sometimes tenuous. As impeccable as the song choices are, from obscure Americana artists like Joe Henry (All Blues Hail Mary) and the Low Anthem (Charlie Darwin), I’m willing to bet they come from his producer’s record collection, rather than his own.

Jones’s interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s Tower of Song misses layers of irony, humour and humility, stretching Cohen’s bone dry “I was born with the gift of a golden voice” into a defiant boast. Adding a superfluous “babe” to the declaration “there’s a mighty judgment coming” has the unfortunate effect of conjuring images of Jones being eternally pelted by women’s knickers. I am being harsh, though. This is a beautiful album of great songs performed with taste and sung with tender resonance by one of the most distinctive voices of British popular music. Straining at his producer’s leash, Jones seems to most enjoy himself hamming it up on Tom Waits’s Bad as Me and Vera Hall Ward’s Travelling Shoes. When Jones really connects with the material the results have undeniable emotional heft, with an elegiac delivery of Paul McCartney’s (I Want to) Come Home and a brooding interpretation of Blind Willie Johnson’s dark blues Soul of a Man. The album has to be judged a late-period triumph, even if I am not entirely convinced The Voice’s avuncular judge is quite as deep as the material demands.

Download this Charlie Darwin

To read this review on The Telegraph.co.uk please click here

Tower of Song : The Line of Best Fit meets Tom Jones

“I don’t like sitting around too much,” states Sir Tom Jones as he welcomes me to the hotel lounge that will be his press-hosting home for the day. “Something to drink?” he offers hospitably as he generously fills a glass. I thank him and place it on the table, knowing full well that I’ll be far too nervous to ever touch it. It’s a miserable London day outside, drizzly, grey and dull. And in front of me is Tom Jones, dressed entirely in black save for a handsome grey scarf, his LA/St Tropez tan radiant against the darkness of his attire. Where does one even start when looking to write an introduction to Tom Jones? Would it be best to begin with the illustrious body of work that he’s produced during his (very nearly) 50 year long career? How about the innumerable collaborations and celebrated friendships, which see every person that comes into contact with the Welsh crooner being placed within two degrees of separation from his ol’ pal Elvis? Of course, his off stage antics and reputation as the ultimate ladies’ man are worthy of a mention, with every band that’s ever had a pair of knickers thrown on stage at them owing something to the jovial gentleman sat in front of me today. Above all though, it’s that voice. That unmistakable, soul filled husk of a Valley voice that’s adorned stages around the world, adverts for anything you’d care to think of, sold more than 100 million records and soundtracked everything from Edward Scissorhands and The Simpsons, to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He’s currently starring as a judge and guru on BBC1′s The Voice and at 71 years old, has just played his first major role in a tv show, King of the Teds. So no, he really isn’t one to sit around. As many projects as he may have on the go, today we’re talking about Jones’ first and truest love, the reason that he does what he does, the music.

“We did it in the same studio as we did Praise and Blame, which was my last album, with the same producer, Ethan Johns,” Tom explains of putting his most recent album Spirit in the Room together, his sentences bathed in his trademark Welsh lilt. “We used basically the same process – a small amount of musicians, no headphones, no separation, all in one room. Except for the drums, we had to put the girl that played them in a room because drums spill. Then when I talked to Ethan about it, we thought we’d just kick it up a notch, we’d spread it out more than Praise and Blame, which was more of a gospel kind of thing.”

Spirit in the Room, remarkably Jones’ 39th studio record sees the singer release his second album of covers in a row, this time angling more towards rock and blues influences than the gospel and soul of his previous release. ”Well I thought, what if we pick a song from songwriters that I like to listen to? And then I thought about which ones they’d be. [We recorded a track by] Bob Dylan which didn’t make the ten but will be released as a bonus track, and Tom Waits, Paul McCartney and Paul Simon, then some old blues. Odetta’s track ‘Hit or Miss’ is on there, which is one of the few songs that she actually wrote. She was a folk-blues singer, Odetta, and she wrote this song which I thought was great because it’s all about being yourself. You’ve got to do it your own way, hit or miss. Whether you succeed or not, you’ve got to do it your own way. We looked for meaningful songs that would sound real coming from me, not to do something that wouldn’t sound true.”

And that’s exactly what he’s done. By selecting a mixture of humble and relatable tracks, Spirit in the Room is about as true an album as they come. It marks a comfortable spot where Jones feels happy to create what feels most pure and honest to himself in his current position. Gone are the days of dying his hair and clinging on to the rapture of youth, this is an album for the grown up Tom Jones.

“We looked for real songs, like Leonard Cohen’s. I like him. With ‘Tower of Song’, we were thinking about either doing that one, or ‘I’m Your Man’ was another one. But we thought maybe [the latter] would be a little too… cliché. I’ve done macho songs before, so, you know… But ‘Tower of Song’ is about as real as I can get, it’s about what I do!” says Tom, before going on to emphatically quote the tracks lyrics. ” “My friends are gone and my hair is grey/ I ache in the places where I used to play!/And I’m crazy for love, but i’m not coming on…” (laughs) If I could write that well, I’d write that. And then he sings about Hank Williams, and I always liked Hank Williams. “I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does he get/Hank Williams hasn’t answered me yet/But I hear him coughing all night long…”, it was all very meaningful. The reviews for Praise and Blame, which was released two years ago now, were really great and they said, ‘Now Tom is stripped down, you can really hear what he’s wanting to say…’, thank God for that! [The idea] worked so well, so why not stay on the same track but widen it?”

Although getting a bit more serious on this release, there’s still a tinge of that trademark humour and playfulness flowing through the record, found most prominently on Tom’s cover of a Tom Waits track. “I love [Tom Waits’] new album which is called Bad As Me, so I thought I wanted to do one of those songs as there are so many great songs on it. Ethan suggested ‘Bad As Me’ and I thought… Christ… he’s already done such a good job of it himself anyway, and I don’t want to be blasphemous, because there’s a few ‘Mother Superiors’ on there… But I thought, as long as I can do it convincingly enough, with the laugh, the chuckle, then it could work. And it did. So with the arrangement, we tried to make it more floaty, with an almost middle eastern feel to it. And we pulled it off… I hope! A lot of people like it. I’d love to hear a dance mix of it, because the beat it really strong on there. That could be screaming in a club.”

By Francine Gorman, 18 May 2012 http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/interviews/tom-jones-97743