Sir Tom Jones has had a magical career, being adored by fans across the globe for more than six decades. The 78-year-old Welsh singer started his career in the mid-1960s, when he first emerged as a vocalist. Since the music legend’s career started, Sir Tom has had a series of top hits, include It’s Not Unusual, Delilah and Sex Bomb. But although being loved by his fans, the people who worked close with him has said Sir Tom’s public persona is “an act”.
How Tom Jones was branded “heartless fake” and “cold”
Sir Tom’s ex-bandmate Vernon Hopkins has claimed the Welshman is a “heartless fake”.
In an interview with the Daily Star last month, Mr Hopkins, who discovered Sir Tom, talked about their years working together in the 1960s.
He said: “Tom is a quite a brutal man. On The Voice you see this grandfather. That’s a front. Behind all that there’s a very hard man.
“He’s left a trail behind him all his life. People don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. He’s self-centred and self-obsessed. He couldn’t care less about other people.
“He’ll brush you off like that. He thinks nobody can touch him. He has greed all the way through him.
“He’s a great singer and a great entertainer. But there’s a much darker side to him. He has this soulful voice, but there’s no depth to him.
“He must have a very empty soul. Behind his public image is an empty bloody vessel.”
The two first became friends when Mr Hopkins invited Sir Tom to join his band The Squires in the early years of the 1960s.
They both grew up in the Welsh valleys, only a stone throw from one another.
Mr Hopkins recalled their first performance together: “When he performed with us he found himself. It was a magic moment for him. He’d never performed in front of a band before.”
A few years later, things took off after Sir Tom’s song It’s Not Unusual became a No. 1 hit.
In 1969 the Welsh singer ditched the band, leaving Mr Hopkins, who was the bass guitarist, and the rest of the band stunned.
The guitarist said: “We were all in the pub one night and out of the blue Tom said he was heading off.
“And that was the last I saw of him. The next thing we knew it was in the newspaper that the band had decided to have an amicable split. He hadn’t had the guts to even give us a handshake.
“We were fobbed off. It was a case of ‘that’s the end of them, they’ve gone now’. We finished with nothing at all. We were left without even a week’s wages. We were discarded in the gutter.
“After that I was in a very dark place. After all that I was left without a penny in my pocket.
“Whenever he was asked about what happened he’d dodge the question.
“On TV he wouldn’t even say he’d been in a band. It all showed how callous the man is. How cold he is.
“Me and Tom had been like bloody brothers. But he had no empathy. He was cold. He never gave me an explanation. I just wanted to ask him ‘why… why… why did he do it?’. I couldn’t believe someone could be that cold to another person.
“But I knew what his response would have been. He would have had a vacant look and shrugged his shoulders.
“When the band’s guitarist was dying, the last words he said to me were ‘why did Tom do it?’ I’ll never gets the chance to ask him now. It’s too late. What Tom did to us was a total betrayal. It’s still emotional to think about it even now.”
Sir Tom and Mr Hopkins last spoke in 1987 but the feud was never resolved.
Mr Hopkins said: “He was in the doldrums at this point. Nothing was happening at all. So he wanted someone from the past to talk to.
“He didn’t ask about the band or my family. “He just wanted me there as a shoulder to cry on. The rest of the time he didn’t care. That was the last time I ever saw him.”