Showing posts with label Jonathan Heawood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jonathan Heawood. Show all posts

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Tom Jones / This much I know / I might have become a miner like my father



Tom Jones

This much I know


I might have become a miner like my father

Tom Jones, singer, 66, London

Interview by Barbara Ellen
Sunday 22 October 2006 23.57 BST


I've always had the voice, I've always sung, ever since I was small - in school, in chapel, to the radio. I don't really know life without it.
I lived in Wales for the first 24 years of my life and it stood me in good stead, gave me values. But that's also a lot to do with your upbringing. It could be working-class, it could be middle-class, but you've got to have love and attention, and I did, I was lucky.
I might have become a miner like my father, but I had tuberculosis when I was 12. I couldn't go out between the ages of 12 and 14. It was a big lesson - not to take life for granted. I said to myself, when I get out of this bed, I'll never complain about anything ever again. But I do.
Jones duetting with Janis Joplin in the television program This Is Tom Jones in 1969

I'm never scared to try new things. When you do something and the kids dig it, it's great. It's not about trying to be young, or something you're not, because they always see through that.
You need to have a bit of an ego in this business.
When you first get successful you spend a bit - big house, cars, jewellery, all the trappings.
But after a while you think, how many watches can one man have?
I've been misquoted many times about women. I'd be asked about growing up and I'd say that my father went to work, and my mother was a home-maker. Then it was, 'Tom Jones thinks men should work and women should look after the house.' But I didn't say that.
Elvis was an icon. For him to tell me he liked my voice meant a lot. It was the same when Frank Sinatra told me he loved the way I sang.


I was never interested in drugs. I like to have a drink because I like the things that go with it - pubs, restaurants, having dinner. It's not just sitting in the corner with a bottle. That's how drug-taking seems to be: people going off on their own to the toilet to do it.
Getting a knighthood was fantastic. You look into yourself - am I worthy of this? I find I don't swear as much as I used to.

When you do shows you feel as if you're pouring yourself into the audience, and when they applaud it's as if they're saying, 'We know, we get it.' It's so reassuring.


I don't like bad behaviour just because you're rich or famous. I remember early on I had to get there really early for my TV show and I was moaning away. When I arrived there was this building site, and this kid was going up a ladder carrying a hod, which is what I used to do. And he said, 'Hey Tommy, want to give me a hand with this?' I thought, Jesus Christ, I'm moaning, but he's going to be up and down that ladder all day.'
Even when I was younger I didn't look in mirrors much. I've got a good bone structure and I try to keep myself in shape, but I'm not vain.

If you're singing love songs, sexy songs, and the feelings aren't coming across, then there's something wrong. But if you're always doing it with a wink, that can catch up with you.
I'm not looking forward to retiring. The biggest fear for any performer is that it will be taken away from you. It's so much part of you, a physical thing, it's scary to think one day it won't be there any more. If I'm not able to sing, I won't know what to do.
There is no alternative to ageing - just death. The only reason I would like to be young is that you've got longer to live. But it's a great feeling to have grandchildren.



THIS MUCH I KNOW
Carlos Santana  / ‘You can get high on what’s within you’
Georgia May Jagger / ‘With modelling, sometimes you’re punky, other times girly and sweet’
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’

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Sunday, May 12, 2002

Fay Weldon / This much I know / There's a time and a place for everything

Fay Weldon
Fay Weldon

This much I know

There's a time and a place for everything 

Fay Weldon, 70, writer, on the lessons she has learnt in life

Jonathan Heawood
Sunday 12 May 2002 01.57 BST

There's a time and a place for everything - even incest and morris dancing - in fiction.
Therapists say you should learn to live independently after a break-up: not rush into another relationship. Are they mad? Turn your back on God's gift and it may never come again.
Children will call their teacher a fascist because he makes them do things they don't want to, and Hitler called himself a socialist. I'd always prefer a funny fascist to a serious socialist.
When I arrived in London I saw the city as a challenge. I think I've won.
In autobiography you put a kind of shape on to the life. In the first half you set all the questions, and in the second half you answer them.

Which came first, chicken or egg? The egg. You can't go to work on a chicken. Of course I didn't write Go To Work On An Egg. But it's a long and boring story and no one has the patience for it - not even me.
Yesterday's boys are today's girls, guarding their sensibilities and their virtue against predatory attack, demanding commitment, affection and babies.
True creative freedom is these days reserved for children's authors, their editors silenced and their marketing departments struck dumb by the unexpected success of Harry Potter .
The media wears you out, there's so much of it. But it's our only protection against government.
People long for literature to be pure and writers to live in garrets, but someone has to do it, someone has to be morally responsible for society, and the bishops are a bit flaky these days.
Yesterday's truth is today's lie. Ibsen gave the process 20 years and he was right. Feminism started as a revolution, succeeded, and turned into an orthodoxy.
I once killed two friends of the family by putting them in a swimming pool with a diving board but no way out. I could get addicted to playing The Sims, although the game is limited by the imagination of its creators. They have a suburban idea of luxury.

I know that I'm a real writer because sometimes I write a short story just because I want to; not because someone's told me to.
Nothing stops me writing except flu.
A little recognition always goes a long way. Getting my CBE was like a school prizegiving. We stood in a queue with the other great and good, and we chatted a lot and were asked to be quiet by the footmen. (It is possible for the great and the good to become extremely noisy.) The Queen said: 'I believe you write television plays,' and I said: 'I write anything I'm asked, Ma'am.' I have been a royalist ever since.
Women always feel the need to apologise for the weather, as if it was their fault.
I write in short paragraphs because when I began there were always children around, and it was the most I could do to get three lines out between crises.
Learn to write with a computer. I've only recently begun to use a keyboard. It happened because I read one of my own stories in an anthology of mostly American writers, and my handwritten piece seemed gnarled and twisted compared to the easy flow of the other writers who I realised all used computers. So I decided gnarled and twisted was not the path of the future. I've yet to see if it makes much difference to my style.
I would write another sponsored novel [like The Bulgari Connection] if the opportunity came and I could do it with a degree of integrity. A young male Belgian writer has just finished a book sponsored by Harley-Davidson and is getting rave reviews, so it can be done, but not often. Companies have to choose their writer very carefully.
The only historical figure I identify with is Patient Grisel in The Canterbury Tales - a forlorn and self-pitying figure who came to a bad end.
I crave nothing but constant love and attention.



THIS MUCH I KNOW



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