The musician Chris Rea is dead

Chris Rea’s Christmas hit came about by chance: Shortly before Christmas 1978, the musician and his wife, who were driving their Austin Mini, got into a terrible traffic jam while driving from London to Middlesbrough. Rea started writing the text for fun.

It wasn’t until a decade later that he picked it up again because it fit perfectly with a melody that Rea had found by chance while testing new pianos with his keyboardist. They recorded the song, which initially only appeared as the B-side of a single. But when a DJ played the piece, the band decided to record a full version with strings – it has been back in the charts every Christmas season since. It has well over 650 million views on Spotify alone.

Chris Rea, who was born in Middlesbrough in 1951, often found that things take a little longer to develop. The son of an Irish-Italian family that ran an ice cream parlor, he only learned to play the guitar at the age of 19. When he and his band The Beautiful Losers won the Melody Maker magazine’s newcomer competition in 1975, they still didn’t get a record deal. It wasn’t until Rea left the band and released his first solo album “Whatever Happened To Benny Santini” two years later that he first hit the road to success – thanks to the song “Fool (If You Think It’s Over)”, which entered the top 20 not only in Great Britain but also in the USA.

Comparisons with Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton

After that, the singer with the pleasantly deep, slightly rough voice had to be patient again. Although he had some fans on the continent, especially in Germany, it took until well into the eighties before he became a sought-after star. “On The Beach” with its catchy guitar lick was already a minor hit in 1985 before the album “The Road to Hell” reached the top of the charts in Great Britain in 1989. Several singles from it rotated through the radio. The follow-up album “Auberge”, released two years later, was similarly popular. At the time, Chris Rea was compared to Dire Straits boss Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton.

However, in 1995, he found himself on his personal road to hell when he became seriously ill with his pancreas and barely survived. “Everything you’ve done loses meaning, and you wonder why you even got involved in this rock business,” he commented on the experience in an interview – and subsequently focused more on projects that really mattered to him. Rea founded his own label Jazzee Blue and threw himself into an ambitious project: Inspired by Bill Wyman’s book “Blues”, he recorded a cycle of eleven albums with a total of 130 songs under the title “Blue Guitar”. There were also 50 of his own paintings and a DVD.

From now on, his new music no longer made it into the charts, but recording ballad albums like “Road Songs for Lovers” (2017) fulfilled the musician. He has now died surrounded by his family at the age of 74 after a short illness. In his honor, “Driving Home For Christmas” will certainly be played even more often on streaming portals in the next few days than it already is. And if you’re stuck in a traffic jam, you should do what Rea did: It’s better to write a song than to be angry.