Tom Jones, the young 84-year-old Martian who tells and sings little stories | Culture

There will come a time, unfortunately not too far away, when the implacable designs of biology sweep away the giants of early rock, all those pioneers who six decades ago were paving the way and are still capable of shining a light on—and sometimes dazzling— his step, already more staggering. We will then be doomed to a world infinitely worse than the one now, already not very encouraging in itself. But big men like Tom Jones serve to teach a lesson even more relevant than any well-scribbled pentagram. Life, friends, Sir Thomas came to reveal to us in Madrid, deserves to be enjoyed to the last of its corners.

What happened this Monday at the Noches del Botánico festival was a lesson not only in vocal power and artistic coherence, but above all in deontological commitment. Thomas John Woodward makes no effort to conceal the 84 vintage who have been watching him since last week and bursts onto the stage with somewhat difficult steps, while a voice in off He repeats several times that year 1940 when he was born. The first challenge she faces is the profound and moving I’m Growing Old, a confession of senescence that he expresses leaning on his stool during solemn moments. He will use it very little, but we suspect that in his set design it serves as a Freudian couch. Like when just an hour later he boards a Tower Of Song (Leonard Cohen) with which he digs into the depths of the soul as his original author did not even imagine, that poet before whom almost any troubadour ended up looking dangerously like a morning cantaman.

Regarding the Welshman’s commitment to his blessed profession, someone should consider a doctoral thesis, even more ethical than musicological. The jovial octogenarian with the blue shirt untucked does not even consider putting on a discreet teleprompter in some corner of the stage, that television cheat against the tricks of memory to which even Springsteen himself has ended up giving in. He does not skimp on repertoire, sarcasm or people skills for an hour and three quarters, to the happiness of the 4,000 souls who had pulverized the role more than two months ago. He updates and gives new splendor to recent or very old songs, knowing that his only mortal sin would be to bore or become bored. In reality, it is only misunderstood that, in such a context of excellence, the Tiger compromise with the deception of pre-recorded sounds, like those female choirs that emerge here and there, without a trace of girls in the excellent quintet that backs our man.

Nothing sounds like it used to, not even the most sacrosanct classics. That It’s Not Unusual with acoustic guitar, accordion and congas, it resembles the version that The Style Council should have produced around 1985. But the fundamentals remain. Our singing feline maintains that “be mine” final in all the splendor of the treble, without faltering, so that we realize that this man’s voice is not a prodigy, but a miracle. Or a ufological argument that for six decades has been overlooked by all the Jiménez (Íker or Del Oso) in the world.

With Delilahwhich appears in the last third of the night, another sudden transmutation occurs: the testosterone is reabsorbed and gives way to a borderline mischief with ways of zydeco. Lazarus Manby the almost always ignored Terry Callier, would have found a place (featured) on the album LA Womanby The Doors. sexbomb shores up its dance-like and libidinous explosiveness to reinvent itself as a high-voltage blues. And, since we have entered the chapter of the two rhombuses, now it turns out that You Can Leave Your Hat On he takes the cobra to soul to lean towards southern rock.

There is no sufficiently documented biographer in the world to specify how many times this man has been on stage, but his ingratiating attitude is that of a worthy man fighting for a residence of a couple of weeks in the café-bar on the corner. . More entertaining and humorous than boastful in presentations, Jones only took advantage The Windmills Of Your Mind (a very difficult song that Dusty Springfield sublimated 55 years ago) to slide that his album Surrounded By Time (2021) has “officially made him the oldest No. 1 in British history.” By the way, it was the only moment in which he threatened with any hesitation in the tuning, although perhaps he did it on purpose to deactivate those X files that place his birth in God knows what remote corner of the galaxy.

Stage control and the art of seduction are quite similar to this. Tom boasts of friendship with Cat Stevens (Yusuf’s updated Islamic name spared him) since the effervescent days of swinging london before turning the sardonic pop star in an electronic prank. and incorporates Across The Borderline, country virguería by Ry Cooder, to toast the eternal Willie Nelson, with whom he shared the spotlight at the Hollywood Bowl for his 90th birthday party. “Now he is 91 years old and I am only 84″, he summarized her with that unassailable humor that has never really left him. Only when she made cameos (Mars Attacks) laughed at his own shadow and now he can laugh at all those who then believed him to be an old man and today they are old men eaten away by oblivion.

Wherever you see him, this twilight Tom Jones can even allow himself a foray into recitation thanks to the superb and corrosive Talking Reality Television Blues. And say goodbye “until next time” with Johnny B. Goode, by Chuck Berry, whom he crowns as “the true king of rock and roll.” This is what Elvis Presley admitted in his ear while they were both attending a performance in Las Vegas by the man who patented the duck step. The usual grandparents always contributed tasty little battles, but friend Jones treasures pieces of 20th century history. One day we will have to be the ones to murmur: that night of the 24th I was there.

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