Tom Jones

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, Today we'll hear Rick Rubin talk to one of his all time favorite vocalists, Tom Jones. In the mid sixties, when artists like The Beatles and Bob Dylan were starting a counterculture revolution, Tom Jones was getting his start singing old standards in fifties rock and roll at clubs around South Wales. Jones signed his first record deal in sixty four and went on to release now timeless hits like It's Not Unusual and Green Green Grass of Home. With the soulful baritone and unique interpretation of American arm being gospel, Jones became a mainstay at hip cabaret clubs in London, New York, and Vegas. It became commonplace for female fans to throw their underwear on stage during his performances. Of course, that later became a trope of the sex symbol crooner. On today's episode, Tom Jones shares stories with Rick from his remarkable career, including the first time he met Elvis on a movie set in Hollywood and the night he turned down an invitation to join Little Richard on stage in La out of fear he'd be deported. He also talks about why he thought Bert Backer Act's lyrics to What's New Pussycat or a joke? The first time he heard of this is broken record line of notes for the digital age. I'm justin Mirichmond. Here's Rick Rubin and Tom Jones. The last time I saw you was I want to say seven, seven or eight years ago in Las Vegas, backstage after you, after you sang and hit. It was beautiful night for me. I guess it was a regular night for you, because that's what you do all the time. It was a long time ago, though, it was longer than because I haven't been a Vegas now for about twelve years. Could it be that long? I can't believe it. Yeah, amazing. I don't think you've done the Johnny Cash albums either at that time. Really, I must have and you you hadn't done. I know you wouldn't done the Neil Diamond one. Really, Is that true? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah, because I remember when the Neil Diamond one, I called him and said how good I thought the album was, and that's it's It's quite a while after I saw you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a good one. I liked that one too. Yeah, I love that album. I think it's the best album he's ever done. Wow, that's incredible. Yeah. I loved him since young, like you, you know, like like same era of I saw you guys both when I was a kid growing up on TV. Yeah, and I got to see you perform when I was young. My parents brought me to see you at Westbury Music Fair on Long Island. So I saw you. Yeah, probably sometime in the seventies, I would imagine, would that makes sense? Yeah? But with Neil, you know, we started at the same time in the sixties. I remember meeting him in London in sixty five, you know when I when I had it's not unusual and he was he was writing then for different people, you know. I think he had done something with Lulu. Yeah, he'd done a few things with British artists at the time. Tell me about the world of music. Was nineteen sixty three when you started? Yeah, when I went. I went to London in sixty three. I recorded. In sixty four, I did a song called Chills and Fever, which was which was a sort of a rocket roll thing because in those days, Peter Sullivan, the guy that became my recording manager, he saw me singing in dancels and clubs in Wales, and I was doing basically fifties rock and roll, and so he thought that that would be the way to get me going, you know. Yeah, So we found this song called Chills and Fever, which was done by I called Ronnie Love I think his name was. It was an R and B record, you know, and we sort of we made it more into a rocket roll record, and I mean it just it sort of read just said slightly but nothing. It was a hit in Australia. I remember that. So then we had to rethink, you know. And I was doing demos in London, Gordon Mills with my manager and he was writing for Leeds Music and so I used to do demos for different things and then he wrote It's not Unusual and I did the demo on it. It was for Sandy Show really, who had some hit records at the time, and so when I heard it, I said, this is it. You know, this sounds like a hit record to me. Yeah, And then Peter Sullivan said, well, if you're going to do it, you know, we've got to pump it up because it was a milder song, you know, it's a sort of a Brazil sixty six type feel to it. But I was basically fifties rock a roll music. That's where I lived really, you know before that. But then you get strange with recordings, as I'm sure you know, but it sort of starts to lay a path, you know, because I did. It's not unusual with brass. People wanted the record company anyway, Decca Records, what did more of the same, And then Bert Backer acted What's New Pushycat for the Woody Allen film, and then I go again, you know, with a pop record, and I all the time I wanted to do like Wilson Pickett, you know, and I was into soul music by that time, but I could never get an original song, you know. If I was going to do a soul type thing, it was it would have to be covers, you know. So What's New Pushy Cat? Then we didn't know what to do after that, so then I did The Green Green Grass of Home. So it's always different things sort of pop up. Originally it was more fifties rock and roll for you yeah, oh yeah. When I was doing in the clubs and pubs and dance halls in Wales where I come from, South Wales, that's what I was doing. You know, it was Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley and Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, a little rich they were. They were the ones, you know when I listened to all the record those records today still sound fantastic. Yeah, Little Richard records, it sound like they're going to explode. They're so exciting. Oh, you know, to get away from those sometimes I'll try and listen to the radio nowadays, you know, which which says some there's some decent stuff. But once I start to stop playing fifties rock and roll music, I got I got a job to get away from it. As far as listening is concerned, I'm boogie records, you know. I love boogie woogie. You know, Pete Johnson and Albert Hammonds and mid Lux Lewis, professor long hair, you know those people. I love that kind of stuff. How about the blues? Has the blues been a part of your repertoire as well listening? Yeah? Well, when I was young ish, I was always listening to voices. I liked the way people sounded. I think that's what it was. So like when I hit Majeleia Jackson sing, Oh my God, you know, those those gospel songs came to life. I mean, we were singing those songs in chapel, in the Presbyterian Chapel, same songs, you know, a lot of them were, but not like that. So that got me interested in black gospel music and rhythm and blues, you know, but mostly New Orleans type. You know. I loved Louis Armstrong. I loved that stuff that was coming out of New Orleans. The blues. As far as the blues were concerned, Lead Belly I'd heard, but my favorite was always Big Bill bruns was always more musical to me than some of the other ones that came a little later, like Muddy Waters, you know, and there was more of sort of electric blues with Big Bill Brunsy. He was playing acoustic acoustic guitar and like fingerstyle, you know, more than but very rhythmic, you know. He was very rhythmic within himself, just playing and singing. So as far as the blues was concerned, I would say Big Bill Brunsey was was the one that I was listening to. There. Have you ever considered making a gospel album? Yeah, well, when I did Praise and Blame, you know, with Ethan John's we did. We did some Ain't No Grave, you know, going to hold My Body down in and we did quite a few gospel songs then, but I've never actually recorded a whole album of gospel songs, which it could happen. And the same thing with blues. There's a lot of big Bill Brunsey stuff that I would love to I would love to do. There's a lot of possibilities. It's always, as you know, it's where do I Where do I go from here? You know what? But you've got to have some kind of theme. You've got to have some kind of idea to link the stuff together, as opposed to just going in there and recording a mishmash of material. Because I like so many different types of songs as well, you see, yeah, you know, I mean I still love Frankie Lane, you know when Frankie Lane came out, So I like those big sort of soulful ballads, you know, like I believe. Yeah, But then again that's of a gospel nature as well. You see, in the early days in Wales, what was the music scene, like you were of rock and roll age. It's funny because the perception of you is not in the world of rock and roll. No, I know, I know, but as I was saying recording those songs in my early record, it's it's not unusual, you know, and then what's your pushy at it? It sort of takes you that way. But my love has always been fifties rock and roll music before anything else. Yeah, Jerry le Lewis is still Jerry le Lewis. Yeah. And I suppose agewise, you were probably contemporary with the Beatles now, yeah, well, the same thing. See, we were all the Beatles, the Stones, Van Morrison, Joe cockab we were all listening to those earlier fifties Walker Role music. When when anybody has asked what was the first Walker Role record, it's always Rock around the Clock from Blackboat Jungle, you know, from the movie. And I know everybody will tell you the same thing, all of our age. And then when I when I realized that they when I'd asked musicians about them later on, that things were might individually would say had never done with a rhythm section before. That's why they sounded so hot. So, you know, I remember asking Count Basie about it, you know, I said, what do you think of rock a room music? You know, Why do you think it sounded so different? He said, because they spent more money on it. He said, this all comes from rhythm and blues really, but those early black records that were being made, they didn't have the money to spend, you know, to make them sound like the records. Then that came later, like when when Little Richard then came on the scene. They were black records still, you know, but they sounded much better than the earlier records. You know that the black entertainers recorded. Living in Wales, was it hard to hear this music? How did you get to hear it? Yeah? While on the radio, you see. But the BBC they had to play everything because we didn't have any regional stations, you know, we didn't have a gospel station or a country station. It was all the BBC. And then there was a station that came out of Germany called Radio Luxembourg that you could get if you had the right wilet, you know, the right radio set you could you could pick that up and they played more blues, gospel, country than rock and roll. And when I heard something and I thought, what is that? You know, why is that different? Because you know, I was born in nineteen forty so the big band music was still being played, you know, and and Frank Sinatra and those singers that sang with bands, you know, they were bands that were that were being So that was the music. I'm very Lynn you know in the war after the war, those songs that Very Lynn would sing. So they were the things that I've heard. But then you get that occasional American R and B, you know, a blues record that would come on or gospel, you know, and I knew it was different, and a lot of people my age, we were we were being influenced by that. You know, when you heard it, you think that's different, Why is that different? Why does that sound like that? Who is that? And then you look you look into it. Then what were the other big voices from your youth that you just felt like, these are the voices that are inspiring. Well, Frankie Laine was definitely one. And Billy Daniels and Old black Magic. You know when he sang old black Magic, I get I get a kick out of you. You know, that was different that he sang it, different to what Frank Sonato did, Billy Eckstein when he did I Get a kick it was like you know he meant that he was really getting the kick it was, you know, yeah, the way with the words so oh in Tennessee Ernie Ford. When I first heard those boogie records that Tennessee Ernie Ford did Catfish Boogie and Black Betty Boogie, and I think they were the beginning of that rock and roll sound you know that was being done because it was a heavily piano I think it was Moon Mulligan was playing piano I think on those records, so that they were definitely different, but they were boogie records. You see. Were you a fan of any of the previous generation singers like the Sinatras that came before rock and roll was well or not so much, not so much afterwards. Funnily enough, I learned to appreciate Sinatra when I got older. No, I wasn't. I wasn't a fan of of that music, you know, and roll. When rock and roll kicked in, it was like a breath of fresh air. You know, it was like, oh my god, you know, this is this is tremendous. And all the musicians, you know, when singers at the time hated it, you know, the established singers because they couldn't do it, yeah, you know, And it's a strange thing because I was talking to musicians when I was in the fifties. I was working in a glove factory making gloves, and all these glove cutters, these guys that were making the gloves by hand, they were musicians, you know, they were amateur musicians, are playing in dance bans and everything, and rock and roll would come on the radio and I would be like with the ruler, you know, banging this desk. Work to do one too was like Jesus. So they said, what is that crap? You know? And I said, well, what's the matter with you? It's tremendous. And they were trying to get me to listen to, you know, other other music, and I said, nah, no, this this is it, and they said, well it's it's it's nothing. It's easy to do. Then I would go and watch them in these bands that they were playing in and they would try and play them, you know, and they couldn't do it. They just could not do it. It's a strange thing. Elvis Presley used to talk about it when he first went on television to try and get those TV bands in America, like the Dorsey brothers. When he went on there, they couldn't play it. Yeah, Quincy Jones was telling me, he said, they it wasn't happening. Yeah, and until he until he brought his rhythm section in, you know. So it's a strange thing. And boogie, you know, boogie music is the same. You know a lot of piano players they don't think much of boogie boogie, but get him to play it. Yeah, it's the it's a feel thing. It's like, if you don't feel it, it's not it's not about playing it right, It's about feeling it. And the same the way you sing, even though you have essentially what feels like an operatic voice, there's a groove always when you're singing. So I asked about the blues earlier. It's like it feels like there's a groovyness always. Yeah, in your interpretations, you know, there's always a blues There's a blues element on all the songs that I've done, you know, even the ballads. There's I tend to lean towards bluesy notes, you know, whenever I can inject them in there. Yeah, you know, it sounds more like you, and it makes it feel more personal and it makes it feel more soulful and more from the heart than just singing the notes of the song, you know. Yeah, well that's that's what I felt about a lot of the singers that came prior to to that, you know, the big band things, and the songs didn't didn't register with me, except for the ballads. I mean, I always loved my Funny Valentine, and I always loved Autumn Leaves. You're recording of Autumn Leaves is staggering. Oh, thank you, I love it. I was twenty four then, so good. Yeah, well, let you see that first album that I did, you know, along came Jones. I had to do that song. I always loved that song since I was a child. But then you know, Memphis Tennessee is also on There You See Ye and I Need You Love It. You know, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa Dan Dan. You know, it's like on the same album. Yeah, how how old were you when you went to London? I was twenty three and then I recorded that I was twenty four. And how did it work out for you to get signed? And tell me? Tell me the first experience going to London. Well, when I did. I did an audition, you know, they'd heard me sing demos, you know, we were sending demos to different record companies and Decca Records. Peter Sullivan he heard the demo that I sent and asked me, when I come to London and do an audition, you know, which I did, and he said, fine, we'll sign you if you fancy it. You know, for three singles. It's like three three three strikes that you're out, you know, It's like you get three. Yeah, So we did Chills and fever where because he'd he'd heard me singing, you know, and saw me in these clubs when he came to see me and thought a rock and roll record would be the way to go. So that was the first one, and then it's not unusual it was a second record, so that I was that I was flying, then amazing and that and that essentially has been I guess it's the song most associated with you still to this day of everything. I think, yeah, yeah, it is. Well, well, I think maybe because I had a TV show with the late sixties early seventies, and we always opened the show singing that live. You know, I sang it every time live on the show. So I think people heard that, you know, more than than anything else. Because anytime anybody sees me, if they're going to sing something at me, you know it'll be It's not unusual. Tell me about the TV experience. What was that like having a TV show? It was fantastic because I could then get people on that I that I wanted, Like Jerry le Lewis was on one of the shows, Little Richard was on the shows, and then a lot of motown action of Stevie wondered had just come on the scene. Ray Charles came on. Janis Joplin came on, and she wouldn't do variety shows in those days. You know. She said, I'm only doing it because it's you. Wow. And I said, well, thank you, and we did it. We did a hell of a duet together, I remember. Great. Did you do duets with everyone who came on? Everybody? Yes, wow, fantastic. Yeah, it was tremendous. And Wilson Pickett, you know, we did Hey Jude and Barefoot and Gray and Ray Charles, you know, and yeah, everybody everybody that was around in those days. But I had a push for Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis you know, because they said, oh fifties Rocket rolled and I said, look please. Once the show was a success, I had more of a of a saying it. I mean I tried. I wanted to get Chuck Berry. I wanted to I wanted to get Fats Domino, you know, I wanted a lot of people. But if they weren't selling records at the time it was, it was difficult to get them on. We have to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more from Rick Rubin and Tom Jones. We're back with more of Rick Ruben's conversation with Tom Jones. How has the live experience changed from the time you were young to now? Just in terms of what's it like, What was it like when you started, what was monitoring like, what were the audiences like, what what were the venues like? Talk about all of the different things you've seen over the years, because you've you've seen it changed completely from the early days. I imagine. Oh yeah, well, growing up in Wales, you know, I would saying first of all, in school, you know, and in chapel you know, that's what I that's what I learned to get in front of an audience gatherings and weddings and parties in the house. And I come from a large family with the aunties and uncles and cousins, and we all were all singers really, So there was a lot of singing going on in South Wales, and everybody loved singing, you know, and there were a lot of singers. So I would go and watch them when I was old enough to go into the local club, Workerman's Club, and there were singers that would get up there and sing songs Frankie Layne songs, you know, and songs like my Mother's Eyes. You know. There was this big rugby player that used to get up there and all a Sunday night, Me and my teenage you know, we'd say, oh, come on, Glenog his name was Glenog Evans, great name, come on, give us a song, you know, sing my mother's eyes, you know, sort of half making fun of him. Well by the time he finished, there wasn't a dry eye in the place, you know. I mean, this felt I could like, I mean, he'd do it, you know, he just stand there and sing the shit out of my mother's eyes and you think, oh my god, that's it. So I got that and then listening, as I say, to too early, to the blues and to gospel and stuff on the radio. You know, that's what I was listening to. So I would I would incorporate that sometimes when I would get up in, but I would always like, For instance, when I took a rock and roll band into a workermen's club. This was in the late fifties, they had never seen electric guitars in these clubs and drums, you know. But I was saying, I was singing with this local band in a YMCA. So I said to them, do you fancy coming into one of these workingmen's club because I've I used to play guitar and saying, you know, just like that in these clubs. Would you fancy it? Oh, well, we've never done it. I said, well let's try it. So we go into this workermen's club, and they had a habit. If they didn't like you, they would shout pay him off, which means pay you not to play. Yeah, just pay them and get them out here. So when we were walking in with the amplifiers you know in the guitars and the drum, oh Jesus Christ, you know, we don't want any of this crap. But I've been there before. You see, I've been to these clubs, you know, I'm saying, and I get up and saying, oh, look, fellas, you know, please give us a shot here because you know me. Oh yes, you were lovely Tommy. Tommy's got a lovely voice. But we don't want this rock and roll. So I said to the band the first time, I remembered it so well, and I said, look, we'll start off with I believe fully enough. Yes, I said, we'll do it. We'll do it. I believe We'll do my mother's eyes, we'll do we'll do my Yiddish, your mamma, because I heard Billy Daniels do it. So we would do these things. And then when everybody was like, yes, yes, we get it, we love it, all of a sudden that that that you check my nerves and you ran up, you know what I mean. It's like they were like in you know. So that was it. Yeah. And then in one night I remember from just pay them off when we first walked in about halfway through the night, the fellow that had booked us there, he said, if I called the police station and get an extension on the liquor, you know, the Liquor Loves only went to like eleven o'clock. He said, if I could get the Liquor Loves to twelve, would you play until midnight? Wow? I said, yeah, if you if you pay us a few you know, a few more pounds. So it was all in one night from pay them off to could you could you stay till midnight? I move, move all the tables and chairs back, and they all had a dance, you know. So we took rock and roll music into these workingmen's clubs and then they would have they'd have dances on different nights of the week. And they were starting then to get a lot of younger people coming in because it was a mother's of moms and dad's place to start with, which you wouldn't get a lot of teenagers going into. So then they would start to come into these places. So we built a reputation of playing pop music really, you know, but but a lot of fifties rock and roll. But it was in there and they were loving it. So cool, What a great story. I love. I love hearing about the and you ended up turning them onto rock and roll and they ended up loving it. Yeah, And I I thought to myself. If it's as long as it's presented properly, you know what I mean, as long as you go into their place, rather than try to get those older people to come into a dance hall with a band playing all records being played, rock and roll records. You know, they wouldn't be they wouldn't they wouldn't want to go and do that. But go to them with it and present it in a way. As long as you can do some ballads as well, you know, as long as you can do stuff that they can understand, then you can do Johnny be Good, you know. Yeah, what were the first performances you did once you were in London? What were those like? Well, it was I was doing them mostly in South Wales and then came in and did the record contract, you know, got the records out. Then I was playing quite a lot of American basses because the Americans were still in Britain, you know, in the early sixties, you know, air force bases especially, so we would go and play these places. So I became very popular in these American Air Force bases when I had It's not unusual what even before that, before I had the hit record, we would play them and so I knew a lot of American songs, you see, which the gis loved. So I was you know, we sort of built up a bit of a reputation in these American servicemen's clubs. What was the first time he came to the United States? That was to do an At Sullivan show. Fantastic, yeah, in the early sixty five. It was amazing. It's not unusual. Came out in January the twenty second, nineteen sixty five, and it was number one by March the first, you know, in Britain, and it was released in the States and he went to number ten on the one hundred Top one hundred. So then they booked me on the Ed Sullivan Show, and I became he liked me, you know, so I think I did like six d Sullivan shows. Wow. Great, Yeah in sixty five, and the TV had gone to color, so they couldn't transmit in color from New York, so the Ed Sullivan Show had to go to Los Angeles to transmit in color. So then I went to to La I met Elvis Presley. Wow, how was that Trema? I mean, when I used to sing in these clubs in ways, right, and I would do Elvis Presley songs of course, and my friends used to say, wow, Tom, you know you sing that as good as Elvis Presley. I said, well, I'll tell him that, and they said, oh, come on, you know, I said, I said, I got a feeling that I'm going to meet Elvis Presley. I had this feeling. So when I went to Paramount Studios in the LA to talk about a song for a movie, and they said, Elvis is here today and he would like to meet you. Jesus. I mean this was in September of sixty five. Wow, you know, And I said, my god, I didn't even know that he knew anything about me. So I went on to the set and he was in a mock helicopter. He was doing this the trades Fair I think the movie was with this little girl in this helicopter. And I'm standing in the back of the set close set in this hangar with the Memphis Mafia, and they stopped filming and he waves, you know. So I'm like just standing there and they said to me, Elvis is waving at you, you know. Oh really, So I waved back and I had a song out at the time. It was my third single. It was a ballad called with These Hands, and Elvis Presley come out of the helicopter and he's walking towards me, singing with these hands. And I thought, my god, if the boy's back home could see me now, you know. And he did it like Alvis Presley, you know, he pointed at me at the same time, you know what I mean, the way Alvis used to put his hand up, you know, and he's like with his hair, I will cling to you. And I thought, my god, here comes Elvis Presley singing my song. It was like it was surreal, unbelievable, unbelievable. It sounds like a dream. What you're describing a dream. It was like a dream. And he said to me, how the hell do you sing like that? Honestly? And I said, it's listening to people like you. He said yeah, but I was brought up with it, you know. He said, I was going into black gospel churches as a boy. Do you have any black gospel churches in Wales? I said no, you know, the only black people are down in Cardiff, in Tiger Bay, you know. But I said, it's it's from the radio that i've I've these songs. And he couldn't believe that I sound like I sound coming from where I came from. Yes, you know, yes, unless you were born there, you know, unless you were born that he couldn't understand it. Yeah, but in the same way he got to hear it by being there. You got to hear it by hearing it on the radio. But it was still it was still coming through one way or another. The inspiration was there, and you were exposed to it and you got to feel it. Yes, I knew the difference when I would hear my Halio Jackson sing, you know, I would know the difference for the sound of her voice. So I was attracted to it. So just like Elvis was more attracted to black gospel churches as he was to white you know. So you've got to be attracted to it in order to know what it is, and whether it's on the radio or whether it's life, you've got to go to and think, well, what is what is that? You know? Why is that sounding so wonderful and uplifting and unreal that they sound like they mean it? When you when you came to the US to do the Ed Sullivan Show, would you also do live performances for audiences as well. I couldn't bring my band, you see, so that was a problem. So I had nobody to do shows with. Really. I remember the first time I met Little Richard was in sixty five, and I'd seen him do shows in England, you know before. But I was in Los Angeles doing the Ed Sullivan Show. So I said to my manager, I think I'll stay for a couple of weeks, you know, just to see what's happening in LA. And so he said to me, well, look, your visa has run out. Now. You know, you only get a visa for a week to do the Ed Sullivan Show. Now you know, if you're going to stay any longer than that, you're not on a visitor's visa. You know, you don't have. You're illegally in the country, right, So he said, for God's sake, don't get up in a club or something and draw attention to yourself. So I said, no, okay, I won't. So I'll go to see Little Richard. He play in a club just off sunset. So I'm backstage with him and were chatting away and it was great. And so he introduces me when he's on stage, and he asked me to get up on the stage, and I wanted it because I knew every little Richard song. So he said, come on, let's do this one. And I said, I can't. I can't, I can't. You know, I can't do it. Honestly, I would love to, and I still think of that now to this day. I think, my god, you know, why didn't I just do it? You know, but I was so scared of of immigrations, you know, I locked me up or something. But then I got him on my TV show. You see, then we did it, you know where it really mattered, you know that millions of people could then see it. So so I got my I got my wish at the end. But I would have loved to have just done that with him that night. You know, in sixty five, where did you do your TV show from? From London? Just north of London, right, yeah, Elstree Studios, And which is funny, where we do the voice from now? You know, I'm a coach on the on the voice UKA and we'll do it from the same place. Fantastic thought, my god, after all this time, you know, because that was like sixty nine, seventy seventy one when I did this is Tom Jones. So it's still a pain in the ass to get there, you know, on the road. But it's it's great that I'm still I'm still doing it, you know. So I always think of that. I think if somebody had told me back then that I would be doing still going to the studios in Elstreet now, it's it's a great feeling. It's it's a great I love it so cool. If you're up for it. Let's listen to my very favorite of your songs. Never going to fall in Love is my favorite of them all. Oh, thank you, and let's listen to that together, and then you can tell me anything you want to tell me about that one. Okay, I've been in love so many times, thought I knew the score, but now you've treated me so the wrong. I can't take anymore. And it looks like I'm never gonna fall in love. Okay, I'm never gonna fall Hello, I'm beating into fall in love. All these thingss I heard about you, I thought they were only lies. But when I caught him in his arms, I just broke down and crime and it doo slide. I'm never gonna fall in lovely, lie, no, no, no, nonna fall love. I mean it. I mean it for locking. I gave my heart so reasonly I justust aside my pride. But when you felt for someone has baby, I broke the bone side and then looks like I'm never gonna fall helloking, That's why I'm I saying no gonna Please don't make me fall so beautiful yeah, yeah. So where that song come from, Well, it was originally a song called I'm Never Gonna Cease My Wandering, which was from the depression, you know, in the thirties. And I knew the song in Wales in one of these workingmen's clubs as a fellow used to get up and sing it, I'm Never Gonna Cease My Wandering, and I thought, what a great song that is, yeah, you know. And so then I did some shows with a fella called Lonnie Donigan Yes in England skiffle Yes, skiffle yeah, which was really old sort of lead belly type blues, you know, they called it skiffle. So I did some shows with him and he said, look, I've just written a song and you would sing the shit out of it. So he played me a demo that he had done on it never gonna fall in love again. And I said, well, that's never gonna cease my wandering. He said, yes it is, but he said, there's no horace and never going to cease my wandering, you know. He said. We changed the words and then put that fall and that wasn't in any original. That wasn't there, which is the most commercial part of the song. And I said, oh, I gotta do it. I got I'm gonna try this. And so I said to Peter Sullivan, Lorne Donna Going has written a song, and I want to do it. Okay, let's do it. So we did. And then when when I did it, we used to get an ascetate, yeah, to take home, you know, to play it at home. And I took it home and we only had the one right, so my wife took it to my manager's house. We lived close in England. She said, this is what Thomas just done. While they were fighting over this ascetate, my wife and my manager's wife to keep it. That night, my wife says, you know, it's my husband saying it. She said, yeah, but my husband managers. There was a big fight over this one ascetate because that was the only copy that we had at that point, So to get two women fighting over, you know, over the song. I thought it was a good this is good, this is this is gonna be a hit, and of course it was not good. Yeah, it's such a great song, the energy of it, and and yes, the hookiness of the chorus. It's got a real sing along chorus and the vocal performance is just stunning. And you save the big note for the ends, almost like a Roy Orbison type. I mean, you're not singing like him, but but the drama, the big note at the end where you can't like, you can't think it could get any more dramatic, and then you go there. It's so beautiful, but a great song. Yeah, we'll be right back after a break with more from Tom Jones and Rick Rubin. We're back with the rest of Rick Rubin's conversation with Tom Jones. So talk more about live performances and where were the types of places you played once you started having success and anywhere in the world. Right, So it went from I played these Air Force bases, American places in and around London and we would play then ballrooms, you know, dance halls. People that had hit records in those days would play either theaters or dancehols, you know, one show at night, and some of them were on peers. You know. They used to have you know, peers in seaside resorts and you'd have a dance hall at the end of the pier, just like in the state, said the same thing. So we would then go and play these dancehols in the summertime, especially on the end of these peers. But then we started getting interests coming from northern nightclubs in the North of England. So my manager and my agent, they said, we get a lot of requests from clubs, dancehols as well, and theaters as well. But these clubs now, you know up in the North of England, they're putting on a lot of cabaret shows which were like mini Vegas. When I went to Vegas, i saw you know, the showrooms in Las Vegas, and they had things very similar, not as grand, but in the North of England they had these nightclubs, you see, because they had casinos as well, you know coming in there. So then I started playing these northern clubs while they were like glorified workingmen's clubs that I had played in South Wales. So that's what what happened. So it's been a problem, maybe a nice problem, I don't know. But my audience has always been a wide variety of people, you see. So I could play the kids, you know, even in Wales, I could play a ymca to teenagers on a on a Friday night and play a workingmen's club on a Saturday to adults. So the same thing basically has gone through my career. I would play the Talk of the Town, for instance, which was a huge nightclub in London in the sixties, and my agent, my American agent, came to see me there and he said, you've got to play the Copacabana in New York. This is where where it's hat. So I said, okay. So then I played the Copacabanner and they were saying, to be funny enough, they said, are you scared, you know, because it's like a lot of gangsters go in there. And I said, excuse me. If you've played, if you've sung to coal miners and their wives and girlfriends, you know, the mafia does a scape. It's the only differences. They got guns, you know, we didn't have guns. But to get over to those people, you know, you've got to be able to deliver. So that was a big thing. In sixty eight. I played the Talk of the Town in sixty seven in London, and then sixty eight I went into the Coopa in New York and it was tremendous, you know, to play a place where all these giants of American show business had played before. Everyone. Yeah. Then that led to the Flamingo in Vegas and the Douville in Miami. You know, so a lot of these clubs then nightclubs. But then when my TV show hit, you know, became so big that I started playing arenas. Wow, you know, basketball arenas which people people have never played before, you know, they've never they'd never had musical venues. Maybe Madison Square Gardens, I think maybe it was the only one, but all all these big basketball arenas. Then I started playing because the club's got too small. Even though I was still playing Las Vegas. You know, I would still go back to Vegas, which I used to moan about because I say, how come I can make as much money or one night, you know, playing an arena and they got to play you know, a week, two shows a night in Las Vegas. But they said, well, you know that's that's the way it is. But there you go. You do it when you're young, you know. It's it's you get in front of up in front of people, whether it's two thousand or twenty thousand, you're performing, and that's that's what I do. How the audiences react to different songs in different parts of the world, is it pretty consistent or are there variations? It's about the Yeah, it's about the same, you know. I mean, I'm always aware if it's an English speaking audience. Yes, if you know, if I'm in Britain, or I'm in America or Australia or Canada or you know, I'm aware of it. But all of European countries, you see, all the different countries, they love all all the stuff that I do, you know. So a surprise that I had in the seventies when I went to Japan, so I said, to promote there any songs you think would go over you know, more in Japan than and he said, well, you have to do Danny Boy. I said Danny Boy, because I had done it on my TV show, you know, and they saw me doing Danny Boy, and I said, well to the Japanese people understand the story of and he said, it's the emotion. Wow, they feel your emotion when you sing it. Yeah, so that was a big surprise to me that that I had to keep Danny Boy in the show in Japan especially. Yeah. Yeah, but what I play Israel, you know, ma Yiddishamama in Israel is fantastic, fantastic. What's the part of your working life that you most enjoy being on stage? That's the fun part, you know, That's that's the part like all roads lead to the stage, yes, you know, everything that I do is it all sort of helps getting me to getting the people in there, you know, so that I can go on. But to be on the stage giving it, you know, and receiving from the audience is a tremendous feeling. There's nothing else like it. It's like the closest thing to sex. You know, when you're going up the steps onto the stage, you know, or just walking from the wings onto the stage is anticipation. Is the build up before you make love, you know, and when you're when you're actually you know, when you're when you're in it, it's like and then the coming down afterwards, you know, the relaxing part after you do the show. Yeah, if I go to dinner after the show, the food taste better, the wine taste better, everything beautiful. It is better after that show. Do you get nervous at all before going on stage? Well, as I say, like before sex, you know, before before making love. Let's say, you know, when you get that exciting feeling, you know, and then you get at it, of course. And then the only time if I get nervous is if I've if I've got a cold or something, you know that I feel that I'm underpowered. I'm will it work? You know? Will my voice work as well as I wanted to? So I'll get a bit nervous then, but no, excited yes, but nervous no. And how long does it take to come down after the show? Like? How soon can you sleep after a show? Oh? A long time. I'm a night owl anyway, you know. So it's show business is perfect for me because I I live at night anyway, I always have done ever since I was a kid. So it's uh, it's great. You know. I like to be awake at night. I think the world looks better at night. You know, when you're in a city, if you if you go out into a city in the daytime, it's bedlam, you know. You go out at night, things like a much calmer, Yeah, and most people are asleep, so there's less energy. Yeah, and it's a it's a more peaceful world at night, Yes, I think so. So it's it's great, you know, to go to a restaurant and you know, and and just relax with some friends and it's it's that's it's lovely. It's it's a lovely feeling, the whole thing. And if I'm going to do a runner, you know, I'm getting a limousine and go somewhere else or come on, jump on a plane, whatever it is. It's just a great feeling when when you've achieved that that show. Are you ever surprised by what songs people react to that you've sung, Yeah, going as big as as they have. Yeah. You know, when when I recorded the Green Green Grass of Home, I heard the Jerry Lee Lewis version. It was I bought it on an album in sixty five in a colony record shop in New York and he was called Country Songs for city Folk and he was doing country songs of the day, you know, of that time, and the Green Green Grass of Home was a Porter Wagner song. So he did that. But that's the first time I heard it was Jerry Lee Lewis doing it. So I thought, oh, I got to do that. You know, that's a great song, you know, a surprise thing. You know, the man is in his cell dreaming about all this, which I thought was tremendous. So I thought, well, let's try it. And it became a monster, you know, it became huge, which I didn't expect. I thought it was going to be a good record, and I think that was thanks to Les Read as well, who did the arrangement, because he, you know, he stretched it. He made it more of a pop record as opposed to a country record. You know. Yeah, so I didn't expect that. Oh and watch the Pushy Cat when I assured that. When Bert Bakrack sang that and played it to me, you know, he played the piano and sang it live, I thought he was joking. I said, you, you know, you must be joking. I can't say that. He so he demoed the record and he said take it away of I listened and live with it and see what do you think? And then I went in and recorded it. I still didn't think that there was going to be anything, and then of course you know, it was the Woody Allen film. Yes, the film was a hit, the song was a hit, and there you go. It's a strange song. It's definitely a strange song. Oh the chord changes, I mean I never heard car change just like that. You know, da da da da da da da da da da what you know? What is this? It sounds like a like a German drinking song, you know, like a beer hall song. Dash right exactly. So you don't know, you know you I didn't. I didn't think that that was gonna be as anywhere near what happened to that. Is it as much fun making music now as it's been from the beginning for you? Oh yeah, definitely. I think it's even more. You get more freedom now as when I first started off. You'd get with an arranger, you know, you'd picked the songs, you'd you'd set the key, you get the arrangement done, so all those things were done before you stepped into the studio, and then you'd have a three hour session to do three songs, and like the first hour was taken up by getting the balance, and then you'd know you'd do the other two after that, So you'd have to get three songs within three hours. Wow, And studio time was very expensive. So they told me, you know, in the record company, so it was different, and they had a singles division and then if you were selling a lot of singles, then you'd you could make an album. Then you'd go to the album section of the record company. So they had two different two different sections, and then you'd have a bit more time, but still you'd still have to try and get three songs in three hours. Now I'm going to be recording with Ethan John's you know, great, We're going to start off and go to the studio in the real world in Peter Gabriel Studio in Boxing Wilsha and which I've recorded many times, and then well we'll live there, you know. We'll go in there for a few weeks and start kicking stuff around, you know, with a rhythm section, and and see what happens. Do you ever love a song and then record it and feel like it's not right to to release. Yeah? With letd Cohen, for instance, I wanted I wanted to do a Leond Cohen song so and I loved I'm Your Man, so we went in. I thought, oh, I gotta do this, you know, yeah, you know, I'll do anything for you. You know, I'll be this and i'll be that whatever it is. I'm your man. And we were all set to do that. And then we tried it and it was okay, but it wasn't as good as I thought it would be. Then Ethan said, look, if you really like Leonard Cohen, but about Tower of Song, And I said, let me listen. Well, when I heard it, I loved it, and so we then tried it. You know, well let's try it and it was great, Oh fantastic. Well, thank you so much for doing this. It's such a pleasure. I'm a lifelong fan. I continue listening and anytime, and this was an opportunity for us to speak. And I went back and listened to a stuff that I haven't listened to recently, and again every time I hear it, it blows my mind. So I thank you. Oh good, well, thank you. I'm coming from you. That's that's a compliment because I've loved the things that you've done, you know, the records that you've made tremendous. Thank you so much. All right, Rick tick Hare, thanks to Tom Jones for taking us through his incredible career. To hear more of our favorite Tom Jones songs, check out our playlist at broken record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscrib to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Bentaladay, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafey. Our executive producer is Mia Lobell. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app or theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.