Clara’s Verdict
An essential note before anything else: the edition listed here is the German-language audiobook, published by Random House Audio, Deutschland and narrated by David Nathan in German. The synopsis on this listing is in German. English-speaking listeners searching for Tom Jones’s autobiography will need a different edition — the English-language audiobook, released under the same title, is a separate ASIN entirely. The rating of 4.5 from 77 listeners reflects the German edition’s reception, and all the reviews attached to this listing are written in German from German customers.
With that disclosure made clearly and prominently: if you are a German-language listener, this is a warmly and uniformly reviewed biography of one of the most recognisable voices in popular music, narrated by David Nathan — himself one of Germany’s most respected audiobook performers.
About the Audiobook
Tom Jones’s autobiography, first published in English in 2015, traces the life of Thomas John Woodward from his early years in Pontypridd, Wales, through the improbable trajectory that took him from local working-men’s clubs to Las Vegas residencies, to collaborations with Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and, in his later career reinvention, artists like Robbie Williams and Portishead. The book is notable for the quality of its candour — Jones neither mythologises nor deflates the story, and the passages about his early relationship with his wife Linda, the commercial career managed by Gordon Mills, and the long arc of a voice that outlasted most of its contemporaries are all written with a tone reviewers consistently describe as honest and unpretentious.
German reviewers highlight the book’s treatment of success not as an uninterrupted ascent but as something repeatedly reshuffled by circumstance, commercial pressure and personal choice. One reviewer notes that even the most impressive moments in Jones’s life are accompanied by many unfulfilled efforts and hopes — a more complex and genuinely interesting portrait than the standard triumphalist celebrity memoir that fills this section of any bookshop.
The Narration
David Nathan is among the most experienced and respected German audiobook narrators, with a career spanning decades and a catalogue that encompasses biography, fiction and journalism. German reviewers describe his reading in superlative terms — one writes ‘so grossartig wie Tom Jones singt, so ueberragend liest David Nathan’, which translates roughly as ‘as magnificently as Tom Jones sings, so excellently does David Nathan read’, a significant compliment given the subject matter. For a biography so centred on voice and performance, the narrator’s vocal authority is not incidental but fundamental. Nathan brings the wit and warmth of the writing to life without imposing a performance that overrides the text or draws attention to itself. The twelve-hour runtime feels well served by his pacing and his management of the book’s tonal shifts.
What Readers Say
German reviewers are consistent and enthusiastic. The most detailed review calls it absolutely worth reading — honest, stylish, humorous and never boring or forced. Another describes it as appropriate for readers who are not only fans but anyone interested in the mechanics of a long career in the entertainment industry. One reviewer notes that Jones manages to describe the accidental pregnancy of his fifteen-year-old future wife with a lightness of touch that avoids vulgarity — a specific observation that tells you something about the quality of the prose beneath the German translation. The unanimously positive response from German listeners reflects a biography that delivers substantially on its promise.
Who Should Listen?
This edition is for German-language listeners with an interest in Tom Jones, in the history of British and American popular music from the 1960s through the 1990s and beyond, or in celebrity memoir of genuine quality rather than the ghostwritten promotional kind. English-speaking listeners should seek the English-language edition — search specifically for the Tom Jones Over the Top and Back audiobook to find the correct ASIN. The German edition is, by all accounts, a fine production in its own right and one that the German-speaking audience has received with consistent warmth.
