A life on the road

The rock and blues singer, Chris Rea spent countless hours on the road, and his love of cars and driving was the inspiration behind many of his songs.

He recorded 25 solo albums, two of which topped the UK albums chart. His distinctive gravelly voice and slide guitar-playing are preserved in songs such as Road to Hell, Auberge, On the Beach and Driving Home for Christmas.

Christopher Anton Rea was born in Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire in 1951 to an Italian father and Irish mother and was one of seven children. The family was known locally for Camillo’s Ice cream factory and cafes, owned by his father Camillo Rea.

Chris worked in the cafes as a teenager and took his driving test in one of his dad’s ice cream vans. When he was asked to do an emergency stop, the examiner fell off the box he was sitting on and cut his leg.

Rea said: “I had to take him to the hospital but he still passed me.”

He was still working for his father when he bought his first guitar, a 1961 Hofner V3 in his early 20s.

Rea said that at the time he was “meant to be developing my father’s ice cream cafe into a global concern, but I spent all my time in the stockroom playing slide guitar”.

He played with local groups The Elastic Band, and Magdalene, but it was The Beautiful Losers which shone the spotlight on Rea, and he secured a solo recording deal with Magnet Records.

His first studio album was Whatever Happened to Benny Santini?, released in 1978.

The lead single, Fool (If You Think It’s Over), was a big hit in the US, reaching number one on the (adult) contemporary singles Billboard chart, earning him a best new artist nomination at the Grammy Awards.

Michael Levey, co-founder of Magnet records, remembers him as “more of a thoughtful, introspective poet than a natural pop performer”.

One of Rea’s childhood dreams had been to write and compose music for films.

He achieved both with his movie La Passione in 1996. Rea also wrote the score and title track for the Soft Top Hard Shoulder film and starred in the comedy Parting Shots in 1999.

Rea was building a reputation for his slide guitar playing when his record company insisted on releasing Driving Home for Christmas in 1986.

He said: “I didn’t need a Christmas song hanging around at that point. I did everything I could to get them not to release that record. Thankfully they did!”

The song’s inspiration dates back to a difficult year for him personally.

In 1978 Rea had come to the end of his record contract and had parted ways with his manager.

The record company wouldn’t pay for a train ticket for him to get from London to his home to Middlesbrough so his wife drove down to pick him up in her old Austin Mini.

On the way back up, it started snowing and they kept getting stuck in traffic and Rea said: “I’d look across at the other drivers, who all looked so miserable.

“Jokingly, I started singing – We’re driving home for Christmas… then, whenever the street lights shone inside the car, I started writing down the lyrics.”

“It’s one of those moments that songwriters get – sometimes you can spend years and years writing. That one was five to 10 minutes. When you have a successful song, you don’t remember thinking about it – it just comes out.”

He didn’t sing the song live until December 2014 after his crew badgered him to do it. He hired 12 snow cannons and let them off during the song.

“We put three feet of artificial snow in the stalls. The venue charged me £12,000 to clean it up!”

Bad traffic on the intersection between the M4 and the M25 was also the inspiration for Road to Hell.

Rea’s musical journey was brought to a temporary stop when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer aged 33.

He had a procedure which resulted in the removal of part of his pancreas, the duodenum, the gall bladder and part of his liver. He was also a type 1 diabetic and had problems with his kidney.

His health problems made him reassess his career – he never toured America despite his popularity.

“I was never a rock star or pop star and all the illness has been my chance to do what I’d always wanted to do with music,” he said.

In 1997, that included recording Let’s Dance with his good friend Bob Mortimer for Middlesbrough Football Cub’s FA Cup Final.

In one of Mortimer’s appearances on the BBC’s comedy series Would I Lie to You, Mortimer claimed that Rea cracked an egg into a bath for him after they’d finished recording it at his studio. The clip about whether that was a truth or lie went viral.

Rea was happy to admit that he was a vehicle addict with a huge love of cars, and travelling in them helped inspire some of his music.

He owned and raced various vintage cars including a 1957 Morris Minor 1000 police car.

He was friends with Eddie Jordan, owner of the Jordan Formula 1 team, and once helped out in the pit lane.

“I had the whole uniform. He put me in charge of the tyre-warmer for the rear right tyre of Eddie Irvine’s car”.

In 2016 he suffered a stroke, but still recovered enough to record and tour his 24th album: Road Songs for Lovers.

Rea said he spent an awful lot of time on the road travelling to London.

” I see couples in cars – are they married, workmates, having an affair?” he mused.

The musician liked to write about the simple things in life: “You get ideas for songs and you’re actually on a road – the road always becomes a metaphor for where we’re going in life,” he once said.