It is a curious truth of the music industry that while some artists chase fame their entire careers, others are dogged by the megastardom they never wanted. Chris Rea – who died shortly before Christmas at the age of 74 – was the most reluctant of rock legends, comparing himself to a captive monkey in one interview with this writer and bemused by the gulf between the music he really wanted to play (deep slide-blues) and the clutch of chart hits that made him one of the bankable names of the late ’80s and early ’90s.
Born in Middlesbrough on 4 March 1951, Christopher Anton Rea was the son of an Italian ice cream mogul with whom he had a strained relationship (“Dad was a distant figure,” he said, “a cross between the Pope and Mussolini”).
