Hip-Shaking, Singing Idol Tom Jones Has Weathered the Fickle World of Pop Stardom; His Fans Stalk Him Almost Constantly, Some Following Him to Concerts Across the U.S., so . . . : It’s Not Unusual

The lights dim and the fans gasp. He hurls himself down the aisle, wedged amid a phalanx of bodyguards. He leaps on stage, and again stakes his claim as pop icon, The Voice. The Survivor. Tom Jones.

This night in Anaheim there is much to recall his concerts of 20 years ago. The first pelvis rotation occurs two minutes into the first song. It is brief, but it stirs the audience. He discards the jacket of the double-breasted suit after seven songs and undoes the top two buttons of the shirt, displaying a cross nestled against a hairy chest.

More songs, more bumps, more grinds, and then the call to the fans: “Does anyone have a handkerchief?” He wipes his face, then his chest, and hands it back. The owner grabs his neck and plants her lips on his. A bodyguard bolts upright in his seat, but Jones breaks away, jokes and launches into another song.

In 1964, the Beatles won the Grammy as best new singing group. The next year, Tom Jones won it. He was part of music’s original “British Invasion” of America. Jerry Lee Lewis, a Jones idol, once said: “I respect Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and Tom Jones.”

The first time Elvis Presley heard him sing “Green Green Grass of Home” on the radio, he commanded that his car be stopped and an aide phone the radio station. At the King’s request, the song was played another four times. When Elvis decided to resume a concert career after years of shunning live performances in favor of records and movies, it was Jones’ act he copied.

So what if the critics took more potshots at Jones than a rancher at a coyote; so what if Christopher Cross once won the same Grammy as Jones; so what if he hasn’t had a No. 1 song since Richard Nixon was in the White House.

Those aren’t the sorts of things that bother Jones’ fans, who make his one scheduled concert at the Celebrity Theatre such a quick sellout that another performance is quickly added, and again nearly sells out.

Just like the Rolling Stones, the Who, and others from the good old days who sold out their concerts last year. OK, OK, the Stones sold out the Los Angeles Coliseum, which holds a tad more than the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim--maybe 90,000 or so more, but still. . . .

The majority of fans appear to be on the far side of 40, with women far outnumbering men. They’re carefully groomed--no heavy-metal types here.

Charles and Elsie Perencevic of Anaheim have been fans for “about 20 years,” he says as the couple wait for the doors to the theater to open. “I like the way he sings. He and (Englebert) Humperdink were singing in Las Vegas when we got attached. My wife likes Humperdink and I like Tom Jones.”

Elsie Perencevic bought the Jones tickets as a Valentine’s Day gift for her husband, who has worked at Rockwell in Downey for more than 30 years. “He’s thrilled to death,” she says, gesturing to her husband. “He was just unhappy that he had to wait a month” until the concert.

Cary and Pia Connors drove up from San Diego for the concert. Pia said she traveled from her home in Stockholm in 1971 to see Jones for the first time in Copenhagen. She says that over the years, he’s simply gotten better. Cary says he’s a fan, too, although “I wouldn’t drive from San Diego by myself” just to see the singer.

Darlene Russo would, though.

Russo first gave her heart to Jones when she was 9 and she saw him, live, in concert, at the Boston Garden. That was in 1969.

On this Anaheim night, as Jones belts out “It’s Not Unusual” and “Delilah” and “What’s New Pussycat” and the other hits--from the really old days--Russo hums and sings and yells from her third-row seat in Aisle 13.

It’s Wednesday night and Russo is enjoying herself immensely. That’s good, because on Thursday afternoon she is flying to Phoenix to catch Jones in concert there. She will hear him again at Anaheim Friday night. Saturday she flies up to the Bay Area to catch Jones’ two weekend shows. Five shows, five nights, all linked by the common presence of Jones and Russo. Jones, the singer. Russo, the Pac Bell sales rep.

“On the average, I see 20 (Jones) shows a year,” the 30-year-old Russo estimates. “I’ve been doing it faithfully since I was 18, old enough to move out.”

These days Russo joins forces with Dede Miller of Pasadena and Debbie O’Dell of Fountain Valley to form a flying squad of Jones fans. They jet off for his concerts. They stake out entrances to talk-show studios on nights when they know Jones will be chatting with Arsenio Hall or Johnny Carson. They wangle prized invitations to meet the singer backstage.

Russo first met Jones in 1979 at Los Angeles International Airport, when he was departing for Paris and some shows there. “Ten of us fans went and gave him champagne and stuff and told him to have a safe trip.”

When he sees Russo coming he smiles; it’s a fan he recognizes, not some nut.

“I have no addictions,” Russo explains. “I don’t smoke, I don’t drink. I go see Tom Jones.”

Russo’s no flake. She holds a good job. She has friends. And Jones isn’t her whole life.

When she goes to Las Vegas to see him, she doesn’t just hole up in her room waiting for the evening performance. She takes in the sun during the day, goes shopping. She times her trips back to Boston to see her family to the times Jones is playing there, she says.

“My family’s not that happy with it. (They say:) ‘We have you for 10 days, can’t you come when he’s not here?’ ” But even if he appears twice in Boston, that leaves eight other days she spends, Jones-free, with the family.

And while she does have Jones memorabilia in her home, she hasn’t turned it into a shrine. “I’m not that type. My home is my home.” At work, she limits her desk display to two pictures of her with Jones.

Still, Russo does know that Jones’ granddaughter was born on Russo’s birthday (Sept. 15), that the singer changes his act every January and keeps it that way for a year, and that the guy in the tuxedo who makes Mike Tyson look puny is Jones’ bodyguard.

The bodyguard doesn’t have an awful lot to do at Anaheim. The crowd is restrained. Oh, they applaud and they shout encouragement occasionally. No one’s about to confuse them with visitors to the mortuary across the street.

But. . . . No room keys? Well, it isn’t Vegas tonight, where the folks who see him usually are staying in the hotel and have room keys to hurl at him. No panties? In the old days Jones on stage was deluged with more women’s underwear than a laundry. As the fans aged, have they gotten twinges of arthritis in their throwing arms?

Actually, Gloria Sperry of Los Angeles jokes that she and her friend, Dulcy Gerdes of Upland, came to the concert “to watch his (Jones’) pants. And we forgot our binoculars and we’re ready to cut our throats. We hope they have rentals in there. We’ll pay any price to rent them. We don’t care if he sings or not. . . .”

Gerdes: “We like his energy, enthusiasm.”

Sperry: “We saw him in Las Vegas and my husband pounded (on the table) through the whole thing, so now we’re coming alone.” And then, giggling: “Wouldn’t it be funny if pairs of underpants were thrown on stage and we forgot them?”

There is no airborne underwear this evening. During the show Jones accepts a $32 Tom Jones sweat shirt purchased in the lobby by a fan and expresses mock horror at the price. He gives the sweat shirt back, and banters with the crowd.

Some have paid $20 for the World Tour 1990 T-shirt. Others have economized, paying $13 for the World Tour 1989 shirt. Add it all up and it helps finance the white Rolls-Royce he uses to commute down the freeway from his Bel Air home for these concerts.

Russo shrugs off the underwear-flinging phenomenon, saying it’s certainly not her thing. Lally Baker isn’t much of a fan of that particular aspect of the shows, either.

Baker, a San Jose resident who is president of a Jones fan club, says the pantie-throwing seems to be on the wane. “I think Tom himself prefers to play it down and focus on his voice now. And maybe some of that (lessening) has come with women feeling more equality and feeling it’s just OK to go to shows to enjoy the show.”

Jones’ publicist, Donna Woodward, also veers around the sex-symbol image. “We’re really trying to put the emphasis on . . . how he started in music and what he’s trying to do now in terms of his career.”

Woodward’s husband, Mark, is Jones’ son and manager. She calls her father-in-law a “road rat” who tours for months each year, as well as playing Las Vegas frequently. This week takes him to Texas, then to Detroit, and later to Europe, where “they’re not so hung up on kind of the lounge singer image that people have of him here (in the United States).”

His concerts get updated periodically. Three years ago, his single “A Boy From Nowhere” reached No. 2 on the British charts. Last year he even recorded a version of the song “Kiss,” by, of all people, Prince. Last week, for the folks in Anaheim, Phoenix and San Carlos, he included “I Will Not Go Quietly,” from Don Henley’s latest album.

The show goes fast, an hour and a half of songs that seldom last longer than three or four minutes. They’re more like 1950s pop than lengthy ‘60s songs such as “Layla” or “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”

On stage Jones refers to his childhood in Wales--he’s the son and grandson of coal miners--and jokes about his nose jobs. The capped teeth gleam when he smiles, and he puts his eyeglasses away before climbing onto the stage.

“I love you,” a woman shouts from five rows back. “I love you, too,” Jones replies, “but stand up and let me see what I love.”

Fans at Anaheim who mentioned his aging said it fit in nicely with their own aging, thank you. It was the “20-years-ago-we-were- all- 20-years-younger” philosophy.

Janice Lewis was only 8 then and her sister, Patricia, was 7. The sisters said they were unable to get in for Jones’ sold-out shows in Las Vegas and decided to take advantage when he came to their hometown, Anaheim.

Both were Elvis fans. But Janice, a computer operator, noted that they “never got to see Elvis. So we didn’t want to miss out on seeing somebody, because you never know what can happen.”

“Our mom got us into (being fans),” Janice added. “She liked it, so we liked it.” And what about their father? “I think he liked (Jones), but mom really liked him.”