Tom Jones International

John Sandilands was a British journalist who wrote beautifully and, at times, behaved badly. When he died at 72 in 2004 he left behind an interesting and very readable body of work that his partner carefully catalogued on a website, John Sandilands: 50 Years of Popular Journalism. We really like this piece from the February 1969 edition of The Daily Sketch. It provides insight into the relationship of Tom and Gordon (and Enge) and is really interesting. AF sent it to us a couple of weeks ago when the memorial plaque was unveiled at Gordon’s home in Wales. We thank AF and hope you enjoy it as much as we did. (Talk about “back in the day:” a Rolls Royce for £11,000!)

---

The Star Maker

Daily Sketch: Feb 69/The star maker (Tom Jones, etc)

TOM JONES is up there on stage in his tempestuous trousers, hips moving thunderously, head thrown back, eyes closed, totally abandoned to that big Welsh voice that is now known around the world. There is tension about as Tom records his transatlantic TV series This is … Tom Jones but it is all in the wings and can be traced to another Welshman called Gordon Mills.

Mills is the shadowy Svengali who manages Jones and that almost equally eruptive phenomenon: Engelbert Humperdinck. In less than four years he has guided them to international renown and a joint annual income estimated, even by the cautious, at more than a million pounds.

In addition he has an interest in an agency that handles a growing stable of stars like Kathy Kirby Mary Hopkin. Solomon King and Leapy Lee. And from tomorrow he will be concerned in the recording career of Frankie Vaughan, one of the artists managed by the Grade Organisation. It is a feat that makes him a natural successor to Brian Epstein of Beatles fame. In the process. Mills, a former Tonypandy bus conductor, has collected a considerable fortune of his own. Tonight, at the ATV studios in Elstree, he is showing how it was earned.

Every bit as taut as the seat of Tom’s trousers, Mills moves distractedly among the snaking cables and the scenery flats watching Tom like an anxious parent at a school concert. Still in his hand, an expensive worry bead, is the ignition key of his £ 11,000 Rolls.

“Tell Tom that was okay vocally” he says in his Tonypandy lilt, implying grave doubts in most other areas. The message is conveyed to Tom by a studio manager wearing earphones and Jones looks up and nods obediently as if the Almighty had just sent his dictates down.

Mills is a youthful 33. tall, dark-haired and blue-eyed — extraordinarily good-looking if you still expect successful managers to be fat, bald and old. He straightens up now, however, and clutches his spine. “I’ve been on my feet since nine o’clock this morning.” he says, glancing at his priceless gold watch to confirm the passage of nearly 12 hours. “You’ve got to be working all the time, see, because anything can go wrong.”

Between songs. Jones drinks champagne and smokes cigars. He even has a sort of cigar-handler in a waiter’s jacket.

Mills spurns these indulgences and pours out advice until a crashing chord takes Tom back on stage. Now, in his blue mohair snit. Mills seems more like a fight manager sending his boy back for the fifteenth round.

It is possible to wonder why, with Tom and Engelbert in top form — next month a company of which they are the main assets goes public to the tune of two million pounds — Mills doesn’t just climb into his Rolls and powersteer himself back to the comfort of the Surrey mansion he recently bought for £45,000,

Mills bites his nails and tries to explain. “I’ve got a responsibility towards Tom and Engel.” he says. “When they are doing the job it’s my duty to be there, too, wherever they are. You see, they’re not just a couple of artists, they’re also my friends.”

It seems a reasonable assumption that with Tom and Engel earning so well, it would be an error to treat them as enemies but. in fact, there are much deeper bonds between the three than usually exist in that danse macabre of artist and manager.

“The very first time I saw Tom I was bowled over by his talent,” Mills explains, gazing genuinely starry-eyed towards the stage. “And I’m still his greatest fan.”

Mills himself, at the time, had a depressingly comprehensive knowledge of what could go amiss in the matter of show business. When he left school at 15 he went through a host of jobs in the factories and pits of the Rhondda and spent three years as a regular soldier.

On his return, he signed on as a bus conductor “up the valley to Cardiff and back again” and eked out his wages by playing the harmonica in clubs.

“In all that time,” he recalls, “I used to have pipe dreams about success. I wasn’t attracted by the glamour of show business, just the money. I used to see things I wanted, like big cars, and making it in showbiz seemed the only way I could ever afford them.”

The big cars were not immediately forthcoming. Mills took a day off from the buses and travelled to London for an audition with the Morton Fraser Harmonica Gang. He got the job, but he was earning only £10 a week.

Mills and another mouth organist left the Harmonica Gang and formed a singing group called The Viscounts. At this time he was living in a Bayswater establishment known as the Rock ‘n Roll House through its population of strugglers in the wake of the rising Beat Boom.

“There was Terry Dene, Billy Fury and Frank Ifield, all before they made it.”

Mills’s room-mate was a singer, struggling harder than most, called Gerry Dorsey, later infinitely better known through Mills’ efforts as Engelbert Humperdinck.

On a trip back to Tonypandy to see his parents, Mills went to a local working men’s club to see Mandy Rice-Davies.*

Mandy was ill and off that night and he saw instead a group named Tommy Scott and the Senators. Tommy Scott, as the world now knows, was Tom Jones.

“He had a great voice and he moved beautifully. I’d always thought that there was nobody to beat Elvis Presley but this boy even then was better.”

Mills introduced himself to Tommy Scott after the show and asked him to look him up if he ever came to London.

“I never thought he would,” says Mills. grinning happily for the first time in an exhausting evening. As though in homage he retrieves Tom’s cigar and champagne from the handler and delivers them personally as Tom bows his way off amid audience delirium. Tom offers him a sip, which he accepts. They have both beaten some very hard times to share that champagne.

*In case you were wondering, Mandy Rice-Davies was a young Welsh woman who became infamous in the sex scandal involving UK cabinet minister John Profumo. The scandal brought down the government of Prime Minister Harold MacMillan.