“Slower in my walk, more careless in my dress, wiser and older”, this is how Tom Jones presented himself last night under the strains of I’m growing old, taciturn words that contrasted with the energy that the Welshman gave off on the setting for the Jardins de Terramar festival. The stands were full to the brim to attend a concert of greatest hits marked by the songs that the Welshman presented in 2021 under the title of Surrounded by time, his album number 41, showing that even the tail is all tiger.
With a 60-year career behind him, Jones has plenty of hits to satisfy the fans that he has accumulated over more than six decades of career. All of them were represented this Thursday night, with lots of gray hair in solidarity with the 83-year-old artist, who became known thanks to his powerful baritone voice with which he sang It’s not unusual, the beginning of a career in which He has reinvented himself several times with songs like Prince’s Kiss in 1988 or Sexbomb, which brought him back to the dance floor in 1999, when he was about to turn 60.
Without forgetting, of course, the cloak thrown at him by the fresh prince of Bel Air, discovering a new generation to a Tom Jones installed in Las Vegas or his presence in the film Mars attacks! Not so nice was his last appearance in the media, after the Welsh rugby federation banned the song Delilah from matches for “laundering” a crime of passion. Despite everything, it continues to play at concerts, as happened this Thursday, chanted by some fans who enjoyed the famous chorus.
All these songs were played in an evening of almost two hours that became intimate thanks to the work and grace of Jones’ latest production, a cover album where the voice is contained, leaving room for the tunes of Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens or Leonard Cohen. Introspective themes that he interpreted accompanied by a band of five musicians and, above all, with the voice that made him famous, neat, clean and powerful, although he is no longer able to raise it as he did years ago. To compensate for the passing of time, he proposed –apart from minimizing his movements and using a stool– a performance with a greater instrumental presence in which rhythm and syncopation push where before he did only with his vocal cords.
Dressed in an elegant red shirt with piping and with the support of a huge and well-used screen, Jones mixed the restrained themes of his new work with hits that he presented in detail and sympathy, explaining anecdotes from almost everyone. After interpreting Not dark yet, a Dylanian look at the end of the road, he put It’s not unusual in the first bars of the concert in a slower, Caribbean version, accompanied by congas and an accordion that also accompanied What’s new pussycat?, a song by Buet Bacharach that , as he recalled, recorded in 1965 for Woody Allen’s film of the same name. After getting the audience to sing, he lowered the pulsations with the dark melody of The windmills of your mind, which in 2021 made him the oldest artist to be number one in sales in England, and raised them again to applause with Sexbomb, reciting the first verses to give way to a growing blues rhythm accompanied by electric guitar and a flash of voice that took the audience by surprise.
The syncopated Popstar with upbeat keyboards gave way to the western music of One more cup of coffee before singing a melodic Green, Green Grass of home with a lot of soul that led to a new phase of the concert starring this reflective new version of Jones , in the style of the late Johnny Cash or Dylan himself, who draws in Surrounded by time. It was time for Talking reality television blues, I won’t crumble with you if you fall and Tower of song, by Leonard Cohen.
A revamped Delilah woke up the audience once again, preparing them for the final stretch of the concert, with a version of You can leave your hat on to the applause of a dedicated audience before closing with If I only knew and the sensual and funky Kiss. After the break they expected One hell of a life to then close the concert downloading pure rock with Strange things, Johnny B. Goode and Great balls of fire, immortal song by Jerry Lee Lewis, born just five years before a Tom Jones who, apparently last night, threatens to transcend the boundaries of time.
