The Rolling Stones outside St. George’s Church in Hanover Square, London, 17th January 1964. Clockwise from bottom left: Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Keith Richards and Brian Jones (1942 – 1969).

Inside the Terry O’Neill Retrospective
at Fotografiska New York

By Mekala Rajagopal

Photographed by Terry O'Neill

June 6, 2023

It’s never been easier to feel close to your favorite star—all it takes is a few clicks to find a selfie on their Instagram. But before social media, and even the days of peak paparazzi, Terry O’Neill defined the concept of the celebrity story in photographs you can find at Stars, a new exhibition celebrating a half-century of the photographer’s legacy at Fotografiska New York. “I remember my parents talking about stars in the mid-seventies,” says Fotografiska chair Yoram Roth. “They may as well have been talking about Bible characters. These were people who were so unknown to them that every snippet of information was passed around like scripture. To see a photo in a glossy magazine weekly or monthly made you feel like you had access to something that we now take for granted.” Just before the show’s opening, Roth made time to walk us through some of O’Neill’s most iconic images of Faye Dunaway, Mick Jagger, Elizabeth Taylor, and David Bowie.

This much I Know /Tom Jones / ‘The knicker throwing started in the Copacabana in New York in 1968’

 

Sir Tom Jones: ‘The plan is very much for me to be on stage in 10 years’ time, doing Sex Bomb.’ 
Photograph: Rick Guest

THIS MUCH I KNOW

Interview

Sir Tom Jones: ‘The knicker throwing started in the Copacabana in New York in 1968’

The singer, 80, on enthusiastic audiences, singing Sex Bomb at 90, meeting a young Michael Jackson and losing the love of his life

Nick McGrath

Saturday 3 April 2021

I’ve been singing since I was a kid growing up in Pontypridd in South Wales. I would sing in school. I would sing in chapel. Any chance I got to get up and sing, I took it.

Tom Jones / We need to drop Delilah song for being too violent

Tom Jones

Tom Jones

We need to drop Delilah song for being too violent, says singer

Sir Tom Jones' classic and Welsh rugby anthem Delilah has been labelled inappropriate for rugby crowds over claims it promotes domestic violence.

Former Plaid Cymru president and folk singer Dafydd Iwan said the iconic ballad should be abandoned for its violent lyrics.

He said the song tends to "trivialise the idea of murdering a woman".

The Welsh Rugby Union disagrees though, comparing the lyrics to Shakespeare plays such as Romeo and Juliet.

Mr Iwan said: "It is a song about murder and it does tend to trivialise the idea of murdering a woman.

"It's a pity these words now have been elevated to the status of a secondary national anthem. I think we should rummage around for another song instead of Delilah."

Sir Tom said he was proud the song was used at rugby matches and said the song's subject matter simply reflected "something that happens in life".

Too violent?

The lyrics in question are: "At break of day when that man drove away, I was waiting.

"I cross the street to her house and she opened the door.

"She stood there laughing... I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more."

A Welsh Rugby Union spokesperson said: "Within rugby, Delilah has gained prominence through its musicality rather than because of its lyrics.

"There is, however, plenty of precedent in art and literature, prominently in Shakespearean tragedies for instance, for negative aspects of life to be portrayed.

"The Welsh Rugby Union condemns violence against women and has taken a lead role in police campaigns to highlight and combat the issue."

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Tom Jones

Tom Jones says critics shouldn't take Delilah so literally

Singer says it makes him proud to hear the hit sung by Welsh rugby crowds, and that those calling for it to be banned ‘take the fun out of it’

Sean Michaels
Friday 12 December 2014 08.05 GMT

Tom Jones has rejected claims that his song Delilah “trivialises” violence against women, arguing that critics shouldn’t be taking the 46-year-old song so “literally”.

Jones’ comments come as Dafydd Iwan, former president of the Welsh nationalist paty Plaid Cymru, called for Welsh rugby supporters to stop singing Delilah at matches. Jones’ 1968 hit tells the story of a man who attacks the woman who cheated on him. “Forgive me Delilah I just couldn’t take any more,” he sings. “I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more.”

“It’s not a political statement,” Jones told the BBC on Thursday. “This woman us unfaithful to him and [the narrator] just loses it … It’s something that happens in life.”

Iwan, who is also a folk singer, recently asserted that Delilah “trivialise[s] the idea of murdering a woman”.

“It’s a pity these words now have been elevated to the status of a secondary national anthem,” he said. “I think we should rummage around for another song instead of Delilah.”

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Delilah has long been part of the repertoire of the Welsh Rugby Union and supporters of the Premier League football club Stoke. “I love to hear it being sung at Welsh games,” Jones said. “It makes me very proud to be Welsh that they’re using one of my songs.” He claims that “the great thing about the song” is its chorus, “Why, why, why Delilah”. “I don’t think [singers] are really thinking about it … If it’s going to be taken literally, I think it takes the fun out of it.”

Thus far, the Welsh Rugby Union has shrugged off Iwan’s call for a Delilah ban. “[The Union] condemns violence against women and has taken a lead role in police campaigns to highlight and combat the issue,” a spokesman told the South Wales Evening Post. “[We are] willing to listen to any strong public debate on the issue of censoring the use of Delilah but we have not been aware of any groundswell of opinion on this matter.”

THE GUARDIAN

Tom Jones / The best celebrity memoirs of 2015

Sir Tom Jones's wife Melinda Rose Woodward dies
Tom Jones says critics shouldn't take Delilah so literally
Q&A / Tom Jones

Tom Jones  / I might have become a miner like my father 
Tom Jones / ‘Fame allows you to release things that were already in you. It’s like drink in that respect’

Sir Tom Jones's wife Melinda Rose Woodward dies

Melinda Rose Woodward pictured with Tom Jones in 1970

Sir Tom Jones's wife Melinda Rose Woodward dies

Lady Woodward has died in Los Angeles after a ‘short but fierce battle’ with cancer

Hannah Ellis-Petersen
Monday 11 April 2016 16.47 BST

Tom Jones’s wife Melinda Rose Woodward has died from cancer.

Jones had been married to Lady Woodward for 59 years. The pair had known each other from childhood and began dating at 15. She opted to stay out of the limelight when her husband first found fame in 1965, with hit song It’s Not Unusual.

A statement said Woodward, believed to have been 75, had died at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles after a “short but fierce” battle with cancer. She was surrounded by her husband and family who “have asked for privacy at this difficult time”.

Just last week Jones pulled out of a gig in Manila, the Philippines, due to a “serious illness” in his immediate family. 

In his autobiography, Jones described how he first fell for Woodward after seeing her at school when they were both 12, living in the Welsh town of Treforest, Pontypridd. The pair married in 1957 shortly after her 16th birthday. Writing in his autobiography, Jones said he had “never had that feeling for anyone else … I don’t think you can fall in love more than once”.

But Jones had a notoriously difficult relationship with his wife, and admitted he had been unfaithful several times.

Speaking in 2015, Jones said his wife had “beat me up” after learning of his numerous affairs. At the height of his fame, Jones claimed he had sex with 250 groupies in a year and his reported liaisons included affairs with Mary Wilson, of the Supremes, and Marjorie Wallace, a former Miss World.

Woodward had suffered two previous cancer scares. Towards the end of her life, the Welsh singer said in several interviews that his wife had “lost her spark” and was suffering from depression and agoraphobia, rarely leaving their Beverly Hills home.

Woodward did not travel with her husband on his world tours or even come to Buckingham Palace when Jones collected his knighthood in 2006. She also stayed back in Los Angeles when Jones began filming as a judge on BBC talent contest The Voice in 2012.

“She is an unbelievable woman,” Jones told the Sunday Times magazine, prior to his wife’s death. “She’s the most important thing in my life. All the rest is just fun and games.”

Woodward and Jones had one son, Mark, 59, who also acts as the singer’s manager.

THE GUARDIAN

Tom Jones / The best celebrity memoirs of 2015
Sir Tom Jones's wife Melinda Rose Woodward dies
Tom Jones / We need to drop Delilah song for being too violent
Tom Jones says critics shouldn't take Delilah so literally
Q&A / Tom Jones

Tom Jones  / I might have become a miner like my father 
Tom Jones / ‘Fame allows you to release things that were already in you. It’s like drink in that respect’

The best celebrity memoirs of 2015

From Tom Jones to the green grass of Old Trafford, via Sue Perkins’s diaristic mash-up and Steve Coogan’s entertaining confessional

Viv Groskop
Sunday 6 December 2015 10.00 GMT

R

eports of the death of the celebrity memoir are much exaggerated, if this year’s giant crop is anything to go by. The new trend? The hybrid memoir that is actually a manifesto, a diary, a collection of essays or even a long list of life tips. The best example of this genre is Spectacles by Sue Perkins (Michael Joseph). She takes the quirky route with transcripts of dialogue, short diary entries, a FAQs section and virtually every paragraph punctuated by the spectacles logo. It has a narrative but it doesn’t shove it in your face. She’s honest, real and a decent writer.

Particularly enjoyable is her characterisation of BBC1’s failed game show, Don’t Scare the Hare (for which she provided the voiceover), as a “cluster-fuck omniflop”. And how satisfying to read about just how long it took the producers of Bake Off to realise that “watching nice people make nice cakes is all you need”.

From the more classic autobiographies, it’s worth picking up Steve Coogan’s Easily Distracted (Century) for the 1970s pudding-bowl haircut pictures of him alone. This is a simple, readable confessional – “I was happy with Anna, but had endless flings”; “I went to a party, took two tabs and went bonkers” – interspersed with Coogan’s trademark caustic asides and loads of telly and performance insight. Coke, drink, Spitting Image, Alan Partridge... If you love Coogan, this delivers.

With large print and some beautiful vintage photographs (Elvis and Tom!), Tom Jones: Over the Top and Back (Michael Joseph) is – honestly – a magical journey from Pontypridd to Vegas. Meticulously researched and evocative of a whole era, this is an excellent piece of journalism. (Kudos to the biographer-ghostwriter Giles Smith, who is credited in the acknowledgements for “helping with the words”. Jones’s voice is perfectly captured here.)

For serious music fans? It has to be Elvis Costello’s Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink (Viking). Utterly definitive and clearly, painstakingly penned by Costello himself, who doesn’t want to miss a detail. Patti Smith’s M Train(Bloomsbury) is more novelistic and lyrical (“September was ending and already cold”), complete with a collection of pre-Instagram, personal black and white arty shots. She calls it “a roadmap to my life”. It’s classy, elegant and addictive.

Something completely different? Well, this reviewer is not the target audience for Leading by Alex Ferguson with Michael Moritz (Hodder & Stoughton). However, it’s a gripping enough business/motivational read, in the mould of Alastair Campbell’s Winners and How They Succeed (in which Ferguson was a case study): “Nobody should not look at football for lessons about the way to fire people”; “I have yet to encounter anyone who has achieved massive success without closing themselves off from the demands of others or forgoing pastimes.” The ideal read for football fans who love self-help books. (Is that a large demographic?)

A personal favourite? Dedicated to his Jack Russell, Misty, Brian Blessed’s memoir, Absolute Pandemonium (Macmillan), is exactly what you would expect only louder, taller, bigger and more so. By taller I mean both the tales and the general vibe. “Now, there was a live donkey in this particular pantomime, but because it wasn’t going to be present until the dress rehearsal, somebody had to shout ‘Eee-orr!’ every time it was mentioned in the script... When the first cue arrived, somebody duly shouted ‘Eee-orr!’, and, as they did, [Peter] O’Toole woke up with a jolt. He looked at me, crossed his eyes and said, ‘This is art, love!’” With walk-on parts for Katharine Hepburn, Patrick Stewart, Laurence Olivier, Oliver Reed and Harold Pinter, it’s the quintessential luvvie memoir, pleasingly bonkers and bloody entertaining.

THE GUARDIAN

Tom Jones / This much I know / ‘Fame allows you to release things that were already in you. It’s like drink in that respect’

Tom Jones

Tom Jones: ‘Fame allows you to release things that were already in you. It’s like drink in that respect’

‘I used to run six miles a day, but now when I’m in London I don dark glasses and an anorak with a hoodie, and walk’: Tom Jones

This much I know

The singer, 75, on a lasting marriage, receiving contradictory advice from Elvis and Sinatra, and dyeing his hair

Angela Wintle
Saturday 24 October 2015 14.00 BST

My earliest memory is watching my mother hurrying to prepare tea and distractedly talking to my sister and me while looking out for my father. If the cloth wasn’t on the table when he arrived home from the colliery, it was failure on an epic scale as far as she was concerned.

My real name is Thomas Jones Woodward. My former manager, Gordon Mills, gave me the name Tom Jones, inspired by the 1963 movie with Albert Finney. It’s based on an 18th-century novel by Henry Fielding, though I’ve never read it.

I sensed very quickly that I wouldn’t find fame a burden. As someone who has looked at it from both sides, being famous is preferable to the alternative.

I don’t buy this “fame changes people” argument. Fame allows you to release things that were already in you, that’s all. Character will out. It’s a bit like drink in that respect.

The BBC received complaints when I sang on Blue Peter and Crackerjack in the 1960s. One viewer wrote: “I don’t want that man moving like that in front of my young family. And at teatime, too.” Apologies to all concerned.

I’ve had my career in reverse. Most people travel from critical acclaim to cabaret; I seem to have travelled from cabaret to critical acclaim.

Contracting tuberculosis at age 12 was difficult. But in a weird way it also made me feel special. I was quarantined at home for two years, but I knew that people were thinking about me and asking: “How’s Tommy?”

Frank Sinatra thought I should sing standards. “That’s what I want to hear from you,” he said. Meanwhile I had Elvis saying: “Don’t go there. Not standards. Leave that to Sinatra.” I was in the middle. I tried not to be too dizzied by it all.

Tom Jones
Photograph by Harry Borden

I’ve never had the feeling that I have with my wife Linda with anyone else. When I met her I wanted to hold her for as long and often as possible. I don’t think you do find that more than once. Our marriage has lasted because we have the same childhood memories and Welsh sense of humour, which is slightly sarcastic – no bullshit.

I gave up dyeing my hair in 2009. I’d been getting it blacked up for years, but I wasn’t fooling anyone. Don’t get me wrong, though: if I didn’t think the grey looked better, I’d still be dyeing it.

I walk to relax. I used to run six miles a day, but my right knee started giving me trouble. So now when I’m in London I don dark glasses and an anorak with a hoodie, and walk. It doesn’t always work. I was crossing Lambeth Bridge recently when this van driver yelled: “Do you want a lift, Tom?”

I dread the time, if it ever comes, when I won’t be able to sing. Thankfully I’m 75 and still singing well. My voice is deeper, but I sing with more sensitivity, wisdom and experience.

Receiving a medal from my country [his knighthood in 2006] was above and beyond anything I could have imagined. Years later, the Queen stood right in front of me during the finale for the Diamond Jubilee Concert. There we were, on a stage rammed with international pop stars, with an audience of hundreds of thousands of flag wavers disappearing to the horizon, and she turned to me and said: “It’s cold, isn’t it?”

I’m rarely in bed before 4am. Sleep until midday, rise for lunch. I’m a nocturnal creature, really.

There’s just one way I’d like to be remembered: as a hell of a singer.

Over the Top and Back: the Autobiography by Toms Jones is published by Michael Joseph at £20. His new album, Long Lost Suitcase, is released on Virgin/EMI

THE GUARDIAN

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