Sad news reaches us this afternoon that Chris Rea has died after a short illness, aged 74.
Many news outlets will no doubt be making the link between the timing of his passing and one of Rea’s most enduring hits – Driving Home For Christmas, which is currently Number 30 in the UK charts – but Rea was about much more than just one song.
Originally a blues player, with a distinctive gravelly voice and slide guitar style, he became one of the more unlikely pop stars of the late 1980s/ early 1990s the old-fashioned way, by slowly building up a following, through word of mouth and by releasing consistently solid albums.
After playing in various local Middlesbrough bands, it was his group The Beautiful Losers winning Melody Maker’s Best Newcomers award in 1973 that convinced Magnet Records founder Michael Levy to sign Rea.
The guitarist wouldn’t release his debut until 1978, though. Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? was a moderate success in the UK but in the US the single Fool (If You Think It’s Over) reached Number 12 on the Billboard chart and later charted back in the UK.
It would take a while to achieve long-lasting success. Rea had to wait until 1985 before he reached the Top 20 album chart with that year’s Shamrock Diaries. The first single from that record, Stainsby Girls, returned him to the UK charts, and Rea’s understated AOR was suddenly in the right place at the right time.
None of the hits that followed – On the Beach, Let’s Dance, The Road To Hell, Auberge and yes Driving Home For Christmas – are anyone’s idea of hip. But they were undisputedly great pop songs and Rea’s status as a presence in the British charts was underlined when he appeared on the 1989 Band Aid II recording of Do They Know It’s Christmas, though the goatee-ed blues guitarist looked somewhat out of place in the video in the presence of Kylie, Jason and Bros.
The 1990s would see him divert into film work, writing and producing the 1996 film La Passione and writing the soundtrack for Soft Top Hard Shoulder (which starred a young Peter Capaldi). However, health problems started around this period – first peritonitis and then pancreatitis, which necessitated a life-saving operation in 2001. In 2016 he suffered a stroke that left him struggling to speak and move his hands and fingers.
Nevertheless, he recovered to release a new album in 2017 – Road Songs For Lovers. Cars and driving were, as you might have gathered, a regular reference point in his body of work.
Driving Home For Christmas will probably go up the chart next week. Ironically, Rea was ambivalent about his most famous song. It was originally a B-side in 1986 and was only promoted to an A-side in 1988. "I didn't need a Christmas song hanging around at that point,” he once commented.
“I did everything I could to get them not to release that record. Thankfully, they did!"
