Michael Joseph. - Over the Top and Back

Lets not begin at the beginning. Lets start somewhere near the bottom.

Early 1983, say. Early 1983 finds me sitting in a drab-colored dressing room in Framingham, Massachusetts, twenty-two miles west of Boston. Once this strip of Route 9 was pig farms and the occasional gas station. Now its known as the Golden MileMarshalls Mall, a Holiday Inn, a Howard Johnsons, a procession of neon signs along the roadside. Framinghams little touch of Vegas, they call it.

And here I am on this Golden Mile, which isnt particularly golden, if were being honest, nor actually a mile. Here I am backstage at the Chateau de Ville Dinner Theater, Framinghams premier function room, home to weddings and sales conference parties and the annual Natick High promand tonight, home to Tom Jones, international singing superstar and globe-girdling sex symbol, who must remember not to go too far downstage in this venue or the spotlight at the back of the room wont be able to reach him through the ornamental chandelier.

Here I am in the eighties in the dressing room of a drive-up dinner theater in the American suburbs. Bright lights round the mirror. Stage clothes in zippered covers hanging from a rail. Sandwiches and fruit under plastic wrap on a Formica table. Vase of flowers trying to make up for the lack of windows.

Two shows per night, to a predominantly white, middle-aged crowd, seated at tables, eating chicken or premium-plate surf-and-turf. Seven thirty until 8:30; shower and change; then 10:00 to 11:00, plus encores. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good night. And afterward a car back to Boston, moving fast to get there before the good restaurants shut. And then a meal and some drinksquite a lot of drinksand eventually a hotel bed.

Im here again tomorrow.

After which the caravan will move on to more of the same. One hundred and thirty-four nights like these in 1983 alone: the Circle Star Theater, San Carlos, California; the Holiday Star Theater, Merrillville, Indiana; Pine Knob Music Theater, Clarkston, Michigan. Tom Jones: Live in Concert. Singing the songs that made him famous: Its Not Unusual, Whats New Pussycat?, Green, Green Grass of Home, Delilah, Shes a Lady. Stringing them together in a show-closing medley, because thats what you do in the dinner theaters. Also doing Kool and the Gangs Ladies Night; maybe Dont Cry for Me Argentinabringing it up to date, or thereabouts.

Its 1983, and I havent had a hit for twelve years. Twelve years! Not just singers but entire musical movements have come and gone in that time: prog rock, glam rock, disco, punk rock, post-punk, new romanticism... The earth has shifted under popular music at least six times without noticeably impacting upon me or even causing me to break step or slightly change direction.

Whos selling records, as a singer, in 1983? Who do you have to be? Luther Vandross? Lionel Richie? Im neither of these people. Im Tom Jones.

Not that anybody in the audience in Framingham will seem to mind. They love me here. Ill only have to walk on, and the place will go up. And then Ill sing, and it will really go up. And, yes, no doubt there will be some underpants. Because thats become a ritual. Not peeled off and flung there and then, as in the beginning. But most likely brought in specially and lobbed into my hands or laid on the stage at my feet in tribute, because... well, because thats what you do at a Tom Jones show, isnt it? Same thing every night. And Im not complaining, either. Paid to sing. Paid to make singing my life. Paid handsomely for it, too. And brought underpants, albeit now in a kind of low-key, heritage way, with an eye on the upholding of a time-honored tradition. There are far worse jobs. Proper jobs. I know because Ive done some of them. There is no hardship here. Trust me, the meal after the Framingham show will be a good one. We will dine high, back in Boston: brandy, cigars, champagne. And then maybe on to a nightclub for more of the same. Dont cry for me Argentina, is right. Dont cry for me, anybody at all.

At the same time, though, here I am in the dressing-room mirror. Spangled bolero jacket. Slashed white shirt. Substantial silver neck-chain. Dark slacks fitting snug to the waist. Belt buckle the size of a manhole cover. Cuban heels. Framinghams little touch of Vegas.

Twelve years without a hit. This wasnt exactly the plan. Assuming there was a plan. Which, coming to think of it, there wasnt.

But does anyone really plan these things? You cant, can you? You can only do your best to scramble aboard a plane thats taking off and then see what happens. And in 1983 the path of my flight looks roughly like this: in the beginning, blasted almost vertically into fames skies, higher than I even dared to imagine; but since then, cruising. Worse than that: cruising and gradually losing heightbut slowly, gently, over the course of more than a decade, so that you dont notice how close the ground has got until one day (say, in a dressing room, between shows, in a dinner theater in suburban Massachusetts) you turn your head and look down.

Two questions, then, in the Chateau de Ville Dinner Theater, Framingham, Massachusetts, in 1983. And two questions for this book.

Firstly, how did I get here?

And secondly, now that Im here, how do I get out?

The Ed Sullivan Show, 1965.

I Had No Idea

New York City, 1965. I am on the set of The Ed Sullivan Show, standing alone on a white wooden cube under hot studio lights, waiting for my cue. Its eight oclock on a Sunday night in the golden age of pop and the dying days of black-and-white television. I am twenty-four years old and I am about to break America inside two minutes.

I seem to have no nervesunless you count an eagerness to get going, to get at it, a buzz of anticipation. But theres no fear. Self-doubt doesnt really apply at this point. Singing, as my twenty-four-year-old self knows itas my childhood self seemed always to know itis something that happens when I open my mouth and let it go. Singing I know I can do. Hasnt everybody around me always said so? There is no other position in life in which I am so absolutely and unshakably sure of myself.

And heres Ed Sullivan, off to the side. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we kick off the show with... Theres a huge pause here. Or it feels huge to meseems to creep on forever. Whats he doing? Has he forgotten? No. Hes just ramping up the anticipation.... Tom Jones!

Then theres applause and, above it, a burst of screaming. The band kicks in, and the camera sweeps in with it. Sweeps in on me: dark suit, jacket carefully buttoned, trousers tight and straight-legged. White shirt with massive collar. Chelsea boots from Anello & Davide, just like the Beatles. Hair long at the back, by the standards of the day, and therefore just a little dangerous. A topping of lightly lacquered curls. Big sideburns.

The set is a small landscape of white boxes of various sizes. As I sing, I must follow a course, carefully charted beforehand by the director, stepping down from one box and up onto anotherwhich raises the possibility of putting a foot wrong and, in front of a couple of hundred people in the studio and 15 million Americans watching at home, going down in a pile of splintered plywood. But those are the risks, and I am young and burning with ambition and more than willing to take them.

Also I know these boxes and these moves pretty well by now. I have been put through no less than a week of rehearsalsrun-through after run-through in a vast downtown warehouse, a space so big that, during breaks, me and the members of a band called Ruby and the Romantics, who are also on the show, fall to chucking about this new plastic thing called a Frisbee. Before I leave, I will find a store that sells Frisbees and take one home to Wales for Mark, my eight-year-old son.