Tom Jones - The Life

After another night at the Green Fly, they were approached by two ambitious young songwriters, Raymond Godfrey and John Glastonbury, who told them they had enjoyed their performance. They were seeking an up-and-coming band to showcase their songs. None of the band, according to Vernon, was particularly impressed by the duo, who looked like students and, for some reason, called themselves Myron and Byron: ‘They didn’t fit in at all. They were a square peg in a round hole. Byron was all right, quite affable, but Myron – I hated him. He was really slimy. Tom didn’t like him at all.’

Raymond Godfrey later said that he and John Glastonbury were really only interested in Tom, as he was the one with the obvious talent. This was the first indication that outsiders listening to the band would concentrate on the singer.

The Senators could go on playing local gigs for years to come, but here were two people talking seriously and enthusiastically about London for the first time. Myron and Byron told the boys they wanted them to make a demo of their songs, which they would take to record publishers and producers in the capital. It was a start.

Alva Turner decided he didn’t like the way things were going, so he left. Fortunately, they managed to recruit a new drummer right away – a seventeen-year-old Pontypridd shoe salesman called Chris Rees. He changed his name to Chris Slade and would go on to become one of the best-known rock drummers of the past forty years. After he left Tom in 1970, he played with, among others, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in the seventies, AC/DC in the nineties and Asia in the noughties. Keith Davies was also having doubts about continuing as a guitarist with the group and left abruptly after a gig one night. He remained as part of the set-up, however, travelling to venues with them and helping with the equipment. He was happier without the pressure of playing every night. He was also in love and, now aged eighteen, planning to marry soon.

He spent the night before his wedding in the front room of the house in Glyndwr Avenue, talking with Tom and Vernon and getting very drunk. Tom turned to him after more than a few beers and said, ‘Don’t be a bloody idiot now, Keith. Do yourself a favour. Get up to Treforest Station now. There is a milk train that goes out at six. Get on it and don’t bloody get off.’ Keith ignored that advice and celebrated his golden wedding in 2013. He was in such a state on his wedding day, however, that he can’t remember anything about it.

He and Tom didn’t always get on so well. One Christmas Eve, after a couple of shows, the band were having a few beers in the Labour Club in Treharris. Vernon started playing ‘Moonlight Sonata’, while Tom messed around on the keys. Keith, a little drunk, unintentionally closed the lid on Tom’s hands. The next thing he knew, he was up against the wall and Tom had to be calmed down by the others. Later, while Keith was putting the gear back in the van, Tom came to apologise.

Keith recalls, ‘He said, “I’m sorry,” and me, like a big kid, said, “Fuck off.” And I turned back to carry on with what I was doing. The next thing I knew, I had this hand on the back of my collar and I went flying out the back of the van. I always remember it was a lovely night and I was looking up at the stars, and he gave me a little dig with his foot. Cut my mouth and all that nonsense.’

The atmosphere was terrible for a short while, until one night before leaving Cliff Terrace, Tom asked simply, ‘You all right?’ He also went out and bought Keith a new white shirt to replace the one that had been damaged in the spat. That brief altercation stands out as the only time there was any trouble between Tom and the band.

Before Myron and Byron could take the sound of The Senators – and Tom – to London, however, they needed to make the demo. After much investigation, the duo decided that the perfect place would be the toilets in the YMCA. Tom already liked to sing there while he was having a pee because the acoustics were so good. They recorded four tracks, written by Myron and Byron, reel to reel on an eight-track portable stereo.

Meanwhile, Myron and Byron started taking on more responsibility for the band, eventually signing them to a management contract. They found them gigs that were out of their comfort zone. They were booked as a support act to Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas at the Grand Pavilion in Porthcawl. Kramer was one of the ‘Mersey sound’ acts that sprang up in the wake of The Beatles’ success and was, for a while, hugely successful. He was managed by Brian Epstein and took a succession of Lennon and McCartney songs into the charts. Billy J. was a heart-throb in the old mould – more Cliff Richard than Mick Jagger, and definitely not Tom Jones.

The Senators raised their game that night and were rapturously received by the Welsh crowd before the headline act closed the show to less than enthusiastic applause. The crowd started chanting for Tom and the boys to come back on, which, after being approached by the management, they were happy to do. They played for another half-hour. Vernon recalls, ‘We converted a lot of Dakotas fans to Senator fans that night.’

At the end of a memorable night, Billy J. Kramer was still a star, however, and Tommy Woodward, aka Tommy Scott, wasn’t. He kept telling the people at the dole office in Pontypridd that things were definitely moving for him at last. The officials at the Labour Exchange, as Jobcentres were called then, were sceptical about the whole thing. They thought Tom was too smartly dressed for the average unemployed person and guessed the band was more successful than he was letting on.

A dry assessment from a supervisor at the employment office in 1963 reveals: ‘He does not want shift work but I believe the reason for his not liking shifts is because he is a member of a vocal group, which is supposedly an amateur affair. From the adverts one sees in the local press, however, it seems that this group had a good thing going.

‘From the way he is able to dress, it would seem that Mr Woodward’s little hobby is highly lucrative and this would account for his non-enthusiasm in securing employment. Consider and submit as soon as possible to anything which wouldn’t dirty his fingernails! Nothing on offer at present.’

Godfrey and Glastonbury tried their luck in London, hawking their demo without success, until they managed to attract the attention of one of the best-known men in pop. His name was Joe Meek and he was a nightmare. His legendary status now owes much to the dreadful circumstances of his death rather than his achievements during his lifetime, although he was by far the most successful figure that Tom had come across. He was a maverick tortured by his sexuality at a time when sex between men was illegal in the UK; it remained so until 1967.

Meek was an innovative producer with an unmistakable style – not as instantly recognisable as Phil Spector perhaps, but one who put his stamp on popular music in the early sixties. Sadly for him, he went out of fashion almost as quickly as he came in. Many of the studio techniques that are taken for granted today, however, were first introduced by the tone-deaf Meek in his home studio in a flat above a handbag shop in the Holloway Road, North London.

His first major hit was the summer of 1961 smash ‘Johnny Remember Me’ by the actor John Leyton, a lament for a dead lover that featured Meek’s trademark eerie electronic sound. When the song was played on the panel show Juke Box Jury, Spike Milligan dismissed it as ‘son of “Ghost Riders in the Sky”’. The track did have the galloping beat that Tom had liked so much in the latter – he could have drummed ‘Johnny Remember Me’ on the desk at school.

Meek’s reputation as the UK’s foremost independent producer was firmly established by the success of ‘Telstar’ by The Tornados in December 1962. The instrumental was one of the first British records to top the Billboard charts in the US and sold an estimated five million copies worldwide. The New Musical Express (NME), which named Meek the most influential producer ever, commented, ‘It was unlike anything anyone had heard before, packed full of claviolines, bizarre distortions and weird sonic effects, all achieved in Meek’s home recording studio above a shop.’

Meek clearly thought he heard something in Tom’s voice, because he lost no time in signing a one-year production agreement with Myron and Byron. The Senators made the first of several seven-hour journeys to London to record in Joe’s flat. When they got there, they didn’t know where to look when they were greeted by Meek’s sometime lover Heinz, the singer and bassist with The Tornados, sprawled naked on the bed. The boys were happy to indulge in some blokish humour about keeping their backs to the walls, but they hadn’t come into contact with anyone as blatant as Meek.