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Bob Dylan in Cardiff part four: Dylan and Tom Jones

30 Jun 2025 5 minute read
Tom Jones (L). Photo Raph_PH is licensed under CC BY 2.0. Bob Dylan. Photo by Alberto Cabello from Vitoria Gasteiz is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Desmond Clifford

Bob Dylan and Tom Jones are almost exact contemporaries – Tom is older by just shy of a year.  As artists they stand far apart but are among that select group who have released music in each of seven decades and, notwithstanding career highs and lows, have maintained relevance and success.

There is no record of Bob catching knickers on stage, and the counter-culture passed Tom by. Unlike Bob, he was happy to acquire fame and made the most of it.

While Bob was playing Cardiff for the first time in 1966, Tom was picking up the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. He had scored a UK No.1 hit with “It’s Not Unusual” – which is more than Bob ever managed, for all his popularity and status – and recorded “What’s New Pussycat”.

The two were very different, but both manifested the spirit of the 60s. They have known each other for decades; 1960s/70s stardom was a pretty small world.

Elvis

Tom is on record admiring Bob’s work; Bob has been less free with his comment.  They both revere Elvis and have both sung about him.

Tom was a close friend of Elvis and met him regularly in Las Vegas; they had much in common as performers and occupied similar spaces on the musical dial. Tom expressed his devotion in “Elvis Presley Blues” on his 2015 album “Long Lost Suitcase”.

Elvis Presley and Tom Jones. Photo by Scio Central School Website Photo Gallery is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

It’s a haunting song and reflective of Tom’s late period where, like Bob, he is pre-occupied by mortality, memory and sometimes regret.

Bob’s song about Elvis, I Went to See the Gypsy, dates from 1970 and appears on the New Morning album.

According to one biographer (Clinton Heylin) it refers to a meeting backstage between Bob and Elvis after Bob went to see him in concert at the International Hotel in Vegas. Bob, being Bob, denies this and said he didn’t want to meet Elvis because he wanted to remember him as he was in his prime, fully-formed and uncorrupted.

Typically, Bob has muddied the waters by claiming at different times both that he did, and did not, meet Elvis.  The song itself has the ring of truth. It tells of a rather forced encounter with neither man having much to say beyond “How are you?”

It’s hard to see Bob and Elvis as big buddies with lots of common personal ground.  If they did meet, it was only this once and fleetingly.

The real relationship between Elvis and Bob was musical. Elvis erupted like a volcano into 1950s sleepy-ville America, even reaching dozy Duluth in the far north. As with so many others, hearing Elvis on the scratchy radio awakened something in Bob:

“…I watched that sun come rising

From that little Minnesota town.”

In recent times Tom Jones has recorded two of Bob’s songs. On his 2010 spiritual album “Praise & Blame”, he recorded “What Good Am I?”, a rarely covered song from Bob’s early 1980s gospel period.

On this album, a million miles away from Sex Bomb, an aging Tom is recalibrating and reconnecting with the religion of his Pontypridd youth. The second cover is “One More Cup of Coffee”. This well-known song is taken from Bob’s 1975 Desire album and appears on Tom’s 2021 album, “Surrounded By Time”.

The Alarm

One further Welsh connection. In 1988 Rhyl’s The Alarm toured with Bob in America. The late, magnificent Mike Peters got to duet with Bob on Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, a golden moment in Welsh musical history.  There is a sound recording online but, so far as I know, no film footage.

Unfortunately, they never played together in Wales but Mike Peters is the only Welsh artist Bob shared a stage with.

After 1966 Bob didn’t return to Cardiff for 29 years, until March 1995.  The Capitol Theatre was long gone and the Arena was the new venue.

Bob had begun the Never-Ending Tour, committing to a troubadour’s life. Once re-acquainted with Cardiff he kept on coming and has now notched up 12 appearances, most recently in 2022.

The 1995 concert was attended by my friend Gareth. He tells me Bob was in great form, cracking jokes about Dylan Thomas and generally making connections.

Gareth’s experience of Bob’s good humour contrasts with my own. I saw Bob at each of his last four concerts in Cardiff and have never heard him say a word outside his songs. In fairness, it’s the music I pay for, not chit-chat.

I last saw Bob in Cardiff in 2022; he’s now in his 85th year and the Never-Ending Tour will have to end one day.

Bob in Cardiff

11 May 1966.  Capitol Theatre

27 March 1995

3 October 1997

23 September 2000

6 May 2002

18 June 2004

27 June 2006

28 April 2009

13 October 2011

29 October 2015

3 May 2017

26 October 2022


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Nia James
Nia James
25 days ago

Another connection between Bob and Tom is Cerys Matthews. She famously sang a duet with Tom and she is friends with Bob.

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