I thought Bob’s song was about having a cup of coffee that’s all, admits Tom Jones

Jeff Slate is a New York City musician and writer. He has kindly shared part of a recent interview with Tom Jones with us:

JEFF SLATE: In my mind, as a singer, it sounds as though you’re saying you hear music differently. It sounds to me as though, if you can do those on a first take, that they’re already in your DNA. You’re not interpreting them. They’re part of you already. It sounds as though it’s more heart and soul than it is thought.

TOM JONES: Yes. You’ve got to learn it. You’ve got to get it in you. You don’t even necessarily have to sing it, but you’ve got to know it. That’s it. And sometimes, I’ll say, “Let me just hear the chord changes,” and I know where the song is going. Like the Bob Dylan song. If you listen to his version, he’s doing it very Spanish, because he’s talking about when he went to a gypsy camp. He just wrote down what he saw, this beautiful girl with a sweet breath and the long hair. He’s painting a picture of this girl, and her father, who was the boss of the gypsy camp. He takes in all this stuff. Well, once I heard it, I got the picture. But I’m not going to copy what he’s done. I just need to know where the chords are going. Because, to me, the song is really having a cup of coffee.

Now, he might have given this girl one – he might have had sex with her before – and there could have been a valley below. And he might have been up on a mountaintop or something. But for me, it was having a big cognac, because I love cognac, with a cup of coffee and a Cuban cigar.

That’s the combination. Because, as you know, if you’re a drinker, when someone says, “We’ll have another one.” “Oh, I don’t know whether I should have another one, because I’m going to get a fucking hangover tomorrow,” that’s the valley below to me. So, the picture I got in my head, of course, is this beautiful girl, and I’m looking at all this shit taking place, but I’m also sort of thinking about it and having this big cognac with a cigar and the cup of coffee, so let me just have another one of those before I got to go to sleep and wake up with a fucking head.

You know what I mean? That’s the valley below. That’s what I see. So, I’m always seeing something when I’m singing the song.”