Tom Jones has been holding the floor for two hours before the first fan-flung item hits the stage. However, tonight’s Jones audience place flowers rather than hurling knickers. If the spectacle of him being pelted with underwear by screaming women will probably follow him to the grave, the Welshman has repeatedly reinvented himself from a club-singing lothario. With hips thrusting to varying degrees, he’s sung every genre from rock’n’roll to easy listening and remade Prince’s Kiss with sampling pioneers the Art of Noise. The recent triptych of albums, culminating in Long Lost Suitcase recasts him yet again, with gravitas-laden confessionals.
Now 75 (“I can’t believe it”), this unusually intimate show sees another shift – to garrulous raconteur – as he first talks about his life (and new autobiography) with interviewer Matt Everitt. Some of Jones’ stories (his working-class roots, childhood TB, friendships with Elvis and Sinatra) are well-worn, but the detail isn’t. Some are rip-roaringly saucy, not least the one about his first experience of masturbation: gazing at the half-naked female in Waterhouse’s painting, Echo and Narcissus, upon which the famed Jones honourable member “suddenly had a mind of its own”.
He returns – possibly after a cold shower – to perform the songs he’s talked about, and standing feet in front of that famous voice is like facing a force 10 vocal gale. Songs range from a new bossa nova arrangement of 1965’s It’s Not Unusual to what he calls “hot gospel”. He turns pantomime hero/villain when the audience boo the BBC’s The Voice, which recently sacked him, to which he cheekily dedicates Why Don’t You Love Me Like You Used to Do? He’s at his consummate best, though, as a mature interpreter of songs. Informed by experiences of mortality and that friendship with the King, he remakes Gillian Welch’s Elvis Presley Blues into a tour de force of electronica, mourning and emotion. Similarly, Jones stunningly peels back the layers of guilt and self-doubt in Bob Dylan’s What Good Am I? Through it all, he rarely shuts up – whooping “Oh yeah!” off mic – and has clearly never lost the simple joy of singing. Perhaps, in his darker moments, he might miss the knickers, but there’s a lovely moment in Leonard Cohen’s Tower of Song. When Jones gets to the line “I was born with the gift of a golden voice”, the audience spontaneously cheer.
• Tom Jones and Van Morrison appear at BluesFest at the O2 Arena, London, 8 November. Box office: 020-8463 2000.
