Tom Jones had the most awkward encounter with his hero Elvis Presley when The King opted to relieve himself while pitching the Brit a new song.
Elvis and Tom became friends in the mid-1960s after a meeting in Los Angeles, and when Presley heard a song he thought was perfect for the Welshman, he insisted on visiting him in his hotel suite, while Jones was taking a shower.
The It’s Not Unusual singer could hear Elvis singing in the bathroom as he cleaned up and it was only when he stepped out did he realize The King had been crooning on the toilet.
“He was standing there cleaning up, looking in the mirror and so I’m naked and he’s half-naked; his pants are down by his ankles,” Jones tells U.S. chat show host Conan O’Brien. “He’s singing this song to me.
“I’m trying to towel down and Elvis is singing… and then of course I said, ‘Elvis, you know your pants…’ and he went, ‘Red!’, because he used to have a bodyguard called Red… so Red busts through the door, thinking there’s something wrong… and he says, ‘My pants, man…'”
The minder, Red West, then proceeded to help Elvis squeeze back into his skintight leather trousers.
Tom has previously opened up about his friendship with Elvis, noting they had all types of interesting conversations.
“He would say to me, ‘Tom, you’re a lucky man, because you married your childhood sweetheart’,” Tom recalled to USA Today. “Elvis said, ‘How do you sing like that?’ That’s what he said, to me. I said, ‘Well, you’re partly to blame.’ He said, ‘Yeah, but I grew up in the South, listening to black gospel. How did you learn it?’ I said, ‘By listening to you, and people like you. By listening to Mahalia Jackson.’ I was getting it on the radio, but we were both white boys listening to black singers.”
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