86-Year-Old Tom Jones Says He ‘Thought This Was It’ During a Week in the Hospital

Tom Jones walked onto the stage of the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on Wednesday night, November 4, and told the crowd how close he had come to never singing for them again. “I thought this was it. You had a wonderful life, Tommy, but it’s over right now,” the 86-year-old said, as reported by Fox News and the New York Post. The concert should have happened on October 26, but it was called off only hours before he was due to go on.

At the time, fans were told he had caught a bad case of the flu. The truth was far more serious, and Jones, who was born Thomas John Woodward on June 7, 1940, in Treforest, Wales, spent a week in the hospital before he could think about singing again. When it was over he had a clear answer for his doctors, and anyone who has followed him since “It’s Not Unusual” could probably guess it.

How Did a Case of the Flu Turn Into Two Days in Intensive Care?

On Monday, October 26, Jones posted a short apology to his fans. “I’ve had a great time these last few weeks, completing 20 shows and singing for wonderful audiences across the USA,” he wrote, before explaining that he had been “hit with a bad case of the flu.” Following his doctor’s advice, he moved the Greek Theatre date and the next night’s show at The Rady Shell in San Diego. “I’m truly sorry for any inconvenience caused. I look forward to seeing you all soon,” he added.

The illness got worse after that post. Jones told the Greek Theatre audience that what he took for flu turned out to be pneumonia, and that he was taken to UCLA Medical Center, where he stayed for a week, two days of it in intensive care, according to Fox News and The Independent. He described the moment it became an emergency in plain words. “And then they had to get the paramedics in, and I was like, ‘I can’t breathe,'” he said.

He gave the hospital full credit for the fact that he was standing there at all. “UCLA did a wonderful job, so I’m here,” he told the crowd, as The Independent reported. He kept his promise to San Diego first and played the rescheduled show at The Rady Shell on Tuesday, November 3, before heading back to Los Angeles the following night. Of all the stops on his North American tour, the Greek was the one with the longest memory for him.

Why Did the Greek Theatre Stage Mean So Much to Him?

Jones first played the Greek in 1969, the same year ABC began carrying his variety hour This Is Tom Jones in America. On Wednesday he took the audience back to the song that started it all. “This song really changed my life,” he said of “It’s Not Unusual,” according to Fox News. The record went to No. 1 in Britain in early 1965 and into the American top ten, and it turned a 24-year-old from the South Wales valleys into an international star.

If you tuned in to This Is Tom Jones on ABC, you’ll remember how much ground it covered. Made in Britain by ATV and shown on ITV at home, it ran from February 1969 to January 1971 and brought him guests like Ella Fitzgerald, Janis Joplin, Dusty Springfield, Peter Sellers and Cher. It also earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a television musical or comedy.

Las Vegas came along at nearly the same moment. Jones opened at the Flamingo in the late 1960s and went on to play the Strip for at least a week every year until 2011. Elvis Presley, whom he had met on a Paramount set in 1965, came to see him there, and the two stayed close friends until Presley’s death in 1977. Through all of it, one person had been with him since long before any of the fame began.

Who Was Missing From His Side This Time?

Jones fell for Melinda “Linda” Trenchard when they were children in Wales, and he married her on March 2, 1957, when he was 16. They had already been kept apart by illness once. At 12 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent two years recovering in bed, and in his 2015 autobiography Over the Top and Back he wrote about missing the girl he hardly knew. “Forcefully separated from her, my crush on this girl that I barely knew only deepened, became a constant ache,” he wrote.

Linda died of cancer on April 10, 2016, at 75, after 59 years of marriage. “Losing Linda five years ago was the lowest part of my life. I honestly didn’t think I was going to get through it,” he told The Observer in 2021. He admitted that he went to a grief therapist “because I kept thinking, ‘Did I do enough?'”

She had pushed him to keep living. The couple had planned to move home to Britain, and Jones told The Sun that she said to him, “We’ve left it too late for me, but not for you, Tom.” He sold their Los Angeles house and moved to London. He kept working too, and he coached on Britain’s The Voice until ITV dropped him this year, which he talked about in his blunt comments about being fired from The Voice. This autumn he faced a hospital bed in the city they once called home, and he faced it without her.

What Did He Tell the Doctors at UCLA?

This was not the first time illness has interrupted one of his tours. In 2018 a bacterial infection put him in the hospital and forced him to cancel shows in Britain, and in July 2025 an upper respiratory infection made him postpone a concert in Bremen, Germany, just hours before showtime. Talking about his boyhood tuberculosis in 2020, he said that long stretch in bed had taught him something. “I learned a lesson there, not to take health for granted,” he said.

So when doctors at UCLA asked him what he wanted to do now that he was well again, according to Fox News, the answer came straight away. “I have to get back on the stage,” Jones recalled. “This is where I belong. I can’t live without it, believe me. This is true.”

The Independent reports that his next date is Friday, November 6, at Yaamava’ Theater in Highland, California. Wherever he sings next, he has said he does not go out there alone. “Now every time I step on stage, Linda is with me,” he told The Observer.