Tom Jones has been linked with countless women over the years, but nobody meant more to him than his beloved late wife, Melinda. Sir Tom and Melinda Rose Woodward, known affectionately as Linda, first met when they were just eight years old.
In his 2015 memoir, Over the Top and Back, Sir Tom recalls with warmth how she would play marbles on the pavement. Whilst confined to bed during a subsequent two-year battle with tuberculosis, Tom became utterly smitten with his future spouse, who would smile at him as she passed by on her way to school in their home town of Treforest, south Glamorgan.
When Tom reached 15, he plucked up the courage to ask Linda on a date. Two years on, they married, and shortly afterwards had their first child, Mark.
Tom frequently spoke with profound admiration about his wife, whom he consistently described as the “love of his life”. Yet he also admitted to having hundreds of affairs – including one with Miss World contestant Marjorie Wallace, reports Wales Online.
When Linda died following her “short but fierce battle” with cancer in 2016, the It’s Not Unusual singer was deeply devastated by the loss, and vowed to honour her final heart-breaking wish.
In a 2020 interview with BBC Radio 2, Sir Tom spoke with host Jo Whiley about his new album which opens with the track, I Won’t Crumble When You Fall, influenced by one of his final conversations with his lifelong love. Tom recalled how Linda stayed “the calmest person in the room” during her final days, while he and his son behaved like “gibbering idiots”.
She had one last piece of advice to share before she died. Explaining the touching significance behind his opening song, Tom said: “Myself and my son [Mark], we spent the last 10 days with her in the hospital in Los Angeles. I said, ‘Look Lin,’ and she said, ‘What do you think you’ll do with yourself now?'”.
“I said, ‘I don’t know whether I’ll be able to bloody sing, the words are going to get stuck in my throat’.
“She said, ‘You’ve got to. You can’t fall with me. I’ve got to leave but you don’t have to. Don’t crumble’.
“So when I heard the song I thought, ‘My God that’s it. I’ll do anything for you.'”.
He added: “I’ll do anything for you. In the morning, when you call, in the morning I’ll wake when you call. I’ll do anything for you. But I won’t crumble with you when you fall’. She said, ‘You can’t crumble’, so that’s really for her.”
The couple had been married for 59 years and at first Tom doubted whether he could carry on performing while grappling with his profound grief. He pushed through regardless, later admitting in a Facebook post that singing “really is my best therapy”.
The iconic singer sought bereavement counselling and returned to performing just months later, precisely as Linda had wanted.