Linda tried to rally round her mother and younger sister, but she had to care for her baby. Tom did his best to be supportive and, for a short time at least, was very attentive to his young family. He went everywhere they went. Brian Blackler recalls that the first time he saw Mark Woodward was when Tom was walking on the Feathery with his little boy perched on his shoulders. He was clearly a proud new dad.
Tom’s routine began to follow a pattern remarkably similar to that of his father. During the week he worked hard, and on Friday nights enjoyed a beer with his mates at the Otley Arms in Treforest or the White Hart pub in the area between the village and Pontypridd known as The Tumble.
Brian also left the glove factory and started work at a local pit, the Maritime Colliery in Maesycoed, on the outskirts of Pontypridd, so Tom inevitably saw less of him as time passed. Tom still enjoyed the company of his old friends, but his best mate as the years went by remained Dai Perry. In Dai’s own words, they were like brothers, and they forged a lifelong bond, supping pints together and getting into scraps. It was a time when Tom’s nose was reshaped many times. He later complained to the renowned journalist Donald Zec, ‘I hate my horrible nose – it’s been worked over, bent sideways and patched up more than any other part of me. And always hit by a head – we liked to keep our hands nice and smooth like.’ His crooked teeth weren’t much better.
Generally speaking, Tom and Dai didn’t go looking for trouble. It had a habit of finding them, however, usually when one beer too many had been downed. On one memorable occasion, Tom was head-butted so hard, he ended up flying through the plate-glass door of a fish and chip shop.
The fight had been brewing for several days, after a row and a frank exchange of insults outside an Indian restaurant had resulted in Tom punching a man he described as a hooligan. The word went out in the days that followed that the man’s friends were looking for Tom to even the score. Dai warned him to be careful, but Tom was sure he could handle any trouble. He told Dai overconfidently, ‘He’s got no chance.’
Sure enough, the man – and his father – caught up with Tom as he ate some chips in the doorway of a Ponty takeaway. Tom has never been slow to tell the story of his comeuppance: ‘I told him, “Why don’t you run along?” Dai whispered to me, “Keep an eye on him,” but I didn’t care. I said, “Where do you want to go?” and while I was talking, he suddenly let me have it and I smashed right through the door into the fish and chip shop.’
He was still scrambling to his feet, ready to continue the fight, when the police arrived and moved everybody on. Tom, fuelled by the beer, followed the pair up to the Graig, where they lived, and jumped on them without even bothering to take his overcoat off. It was a big mistake, because there were two of them. That became three when the man’s mother charged out of their house, and four when his brother arrived as well. As Tom put it succinctly, ‘They beat the shit out of me.’ He still has the scar where one of them bit him on the finger.
Dai Perry looked on while his friend took a beating. Although he could have sorted things out for Tom, he did nothing because of an unwritten code of conduct: you couldn’t fight a woman or a much older man, especially if he was someone’s father. It was a question of respect, and Tom never held it against him.
On the streets of Pontypridd, the Teddy boy rules did not, for the most part, include the use of knives. Drugs weren’t a feature of the lifestyle either, and Tom never saw the point of narcotics. Instead, it was a macho culture of beer, Woodbines and the occasional brawl. Brian Blackler is adamant that Tom didn’t deserve his reputation as a ruffian: ‘He could look after himself, Tom, but he wasn’t a fighter. I think most of the boys were like that in them days. We wouldn’t get bullied, would we? I never liked a bully and I wouldn’t get bullied and Tom was the same.’
Despite not looking for trouble, there were many nights when Tom greeted his wife with a black eye or a fat lip after a night out. There must have been a lot of bullies in Pontypridd then. An evening rarely ended without some sort of punch-up between those Teds who were looking for trouble. If you went out to a dance hall in town, you needed eyes in the back of your head to keep watch for any menacing Ted sneaking up on you from behind. The British Legion in Rhydyfelin was so notoriously rough that it became widely known as the ‘Bucket of Blood’.
The history of that era reveals that there were some massive fights between rival gangs of Teds. But Keith Davies, who later played guitar alongside Tom, observes: ‘Sometimes I think the whole Ted thing is overcooked. It was just a way of life for everyone. Everybody was a Teddy boy. I wouldn’t say Tom was a tough Ted. He was aggressive on stage though.’
Tom, meanwhile, was promoted at work to a job as a machinist. As a result, he was earning more money, but alternate weeks he had to work a night shift from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Even that small advancement was threatened by an overzealous trade unionist, who complained that he was too young to receive a man’s wage. Tom had to hold his tongue – and his fists – when some of the other staff tried to sabotage his machine so he would be out of favour with management. He began to hate his job.
Letting off steam with his mates was poor compensation for his general unhappiness at the way things had turned out for him. He was linked to some petty crime in the area, which gave Freda some sleepless nights, worried that the next knock on the door might be someone ready to arrest Tom. Mostly, though, it involved sneaking into the cinema without paying or nicking the occasional 45 from the record store.
He laughed the troubles off: ‘When the officials came to see my mother with the brasses nicely polished in the front room and a picture of granddad with his medals on, they went away saying, “No ruffian could live here!”’
Perhaps most alarmingly, he temporarily lost his appetite for singing, weighed down by his responsibilities. Linda, whose contribution to Tom’s career should never be underestimated, had to prod and cajole him into singing again, starting off while shaving in the mirror before work. She was delighted when he came home one afternoon in early 1957 with a new single in his hand.
Tom had been walking through the centre of Pontypridd, when he heard ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On’ by Jerry Lee Lewis for the first time. It was blasting out from the speakers at Freddie Feys’ record shop. He was immediately stopped in his tracks: ‘Good God. To me that was it! I loved that record and it was a white man singing boogie-woogie that he had heard black men play.’
Tom would never forget the effect Jerry Lee’s music had on him. He admired Elvis and would spend afternoons listening to Brian’s elder brother John’s collection of The King’s records. But he loved the man from Louisiana, who was known as ‘The Killer’. Tom liked his aggression and the way Lewis would chew his audience up and spit them out. He was a white man who sounded like he was black, and that was the effect Tom had always wanted.
At least money wasn’t as tight and he could buy a new Hawk guitar. He was earning £18 a week and they weren’t paying any rent. Until now, Tom had sung at school and family get-togethers. It was time for him to start singing in public.
Urged on by Linda, he approached his uncle, Albert Jones, to ask if he could perform at the Wood Road. ‘Could you put us on, Uncle Albert – you know, do a gig down there?’
Albert, who was quite a stern chap, replied, ‘It will never go down well here – rock ’n’ roll.’
Tom persevered, however, and eventually he had a lucky break, when an act they had booked failed to show one Sunday evening. Tom stepped up and sang three numbers, including the classic Elvis hit ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘Sixteen Tons’, a number one for Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1956. The reaction was much more favourable than Albert had expected, so Tom came back after an interval and sang three more. Afterwards, the club’s entertainment secretary, Charlie Ashman, was so pleased, he put his hand in the till
