{"id":383244,"date":"2025-12-31T19:57:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T19:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/383244\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T19:57:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T19:57:14","slug":"chris-rea-the-trials-and-triumphs-of-rocks-most-misunderstood-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/383244\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Rea: the trials and triumphs of rock\u2019s most misunderstood star"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Chris Rea<\/a> died on December 22, 2025, many of the obituaries focussed on his festive 1986 hit Driving Home For Christmas. But the Middlesbrough-born singer and guitarist had a much richer and deeper career, not to mention an abiding love of the blues<\/a>. In 2015, Classic Rock\u2019s sister magazine The Blues met Rea at his home in rural Berkshire to look back over the highs, lows, successes and failures of his illustrious career. <\/p>\n

\n

\"Classic\n<\/p>\n

Chris Rea laughs in the face of media training. As he slopes into the man-cave of his Berkshire home and clicks on the kettle, it becomes gloriously apparent that this man does not give one solitary shit.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Exhibit A: his clothes. In a paint-spattered Adidas vest and rumpled combat trousers, you really do have to remind yourself that this is a millionaire rock star, not his skiving gardener.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a certain discipline about being a rock star,\u201d says Rea, parking himself in a swivel chair and sparking a cigarette. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t have it. If I was a rock star, I wouldn\u2019t have let a photographer in here, dressed like this. I\u2019d have been down the hairdressers. You try and get Sting to do something without 15 advisors. These boys are like Russian princes\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

You say the word \u2018blues\u2019 to anybody in the business and they fucking run a mile.<\/p>\n

Chris Rea<\/p>\n

Exhibit B: his workspace. As a rock journalist, my travels have led me into hotel rooms, backstage areas and tour buses whose sheer squalor would make those women from How Clean Is Your House wince. But I\u2019ve never seen a room as crazily cluttered as Rea\u2019s bolthole.<\/p>\n

Like the bedroom of some eccentric adolescent lottery winner, every surface groans with bric-a-brac: CDs. Motor racing gloves. Gold discs. Hacksaws. Plectrums. Die-cast toys. Wine. Aftershave. A vacuum cleaner (unplugged).<\/p>\n

Even the floor \u2013 watch your step or you\u2019ll tread on the Fender Strat played on 1989\u2019s The Road To Hell (the album whose multi-platinum sales mean he can afford all this). Depending on your point of view, it\u2019s either an extension of the mind of a scattershot genius, or a complete shit-hole.<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always surprised when people want to see this room,\u201d chuckles Rea. \u201cWhy would they want to fucking see this? Look at it! There\u2019s shite everywhere! My wife comes in here and goes, \u2018When are you going to do something about this bloody room?\u2019 But I can\u2019t help it. I\u2019ve even slept in here before\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Chris\n<\/p>\n

Chris Rea at home in 2015 (Image credit: Joseph Branston\/Guitarist Magazine)<\/p>\n

Above all, Rea\u2019s refreshing point-blank refusal to give a shit is evident in his plain-spoken interview manner. Though there\u2019s a certain sleepiness about the 64-year-old\u2019s movements, what he actually says is often dazzlingly witty and unflinchingly honest, even when talk turns to his long-running dance with cancer. It makes him a gift for a journalist \u2013 if less so for a photographer. \u201cYou can have one more,\u201d he snaps when the posing gets too much. \u201cAnd that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although our allotted hour covers plenty of ground, we\u2019re officially here to discuss La Passione: a loving remake of the Formula 1-themed film score that Rea originally wrote back in the mid-90s, shortly before it was wrestled off him by the record label and (he says) thoroughly ruined.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

\u201cDay one, the damage was done,\u201d he sighs. \u201cAll it was meant to be was one hour of a little boy\u2019s dreams. And I had things I wanted to do with the guitar that hadn\u2019t been done before. Like, there\u2019s one number called Olive Oil, where I was actually playing slide guitar in the same scale as a saxophone.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then in came millions of executives from America. So in the end it fell flat on its arse. And it came out the same week that Britpop took off. Blair had just won the election. Oasis. Spice Girls. So something a bit Fellini-ish \u2013 about a little boy who loved red cars \u2013 went straight over the top. It was like, \u2018Well, don\u2019t you have a 335 guitar with a Union Jack on it?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

You could have protested, surely? You must have had some clout?<\/p>\n

\u201cI never did have enough clout. I never had the confidence. My career started on the back foot. I was 22 before I even picked up a guitar. So I missed what I now see, looking back, as vital years. I had a date with my now-wife in 1968, and it was the same night as Cream<\/a> were on at the Albert Hall. When you look back and see how Clapton is playing then, and you hadn\u2019t even picked up a guitar in your life \u2013 it didn\u2019t help. I was always behind. Always.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Chris\n<\/p>\n

Chris Rea in 1978 (Image credit: Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

You\u2019d never guess from his virtuoso slide skills, but it\u2019s true: Rea was a chronic late-starter. Born in Middlesbrough in 1951, to Anglo-Italian parents (his father ran a booming ice cream business), he drove local bands to their gigs but says he had \u201cno ego\u201d to perform. Aged nine, his head was filled not with guitar heroes but F1 drivers, especially the doomed German ace Wolfgang Von Trips (a central figure in the film of La Passione).<\/p>\n

You try and get Sting to do something without 15 advisors. These boys are like Russian princes.<\/p>\n

Chris Rea<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m in Middlesbrough,\u201d he remembers. \u201cA steel town. There were no colours. Everything was black and white. Cold. Grey. Then all of a sudden, I\u2019m put in a car with the rest of the family, taken to Italy. It was my LSD. Because perceptively, you lived your world in five miles square. To be taken out of it, shown the factory where Ferrari made cars, was just mind-blowing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a little black-and-white TV,\u201d he continues. \u201cThere was a race on, live from Monte Carlo. And I heard these words: Von Trips. \u2018What\u2019s Von Trips?\u2019 \u2018Ah, he\u2019s a German count. He lives in a big castle.\u2019 He was like Darth Vader. Like, \u2018Wow, who is this man?\u2019 That was it. Sold down the river.\u201d Has modern motor racing lost its romance?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh yeah. And a lot of its technique and bravery. You see them now, knocking each other with their wheels. In those days, if you did that, you didn\u2019t just go into a run-off area. You died.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure enough, Von Trips met his end on September 10, 1961, smashing his Ferrari into the barrier of the Monza circuit in Italy (and killing 15 spectators in the process). It took another seminal figure to spark Rea\u2019s belated interest in the blues. He nods at the poster of Charley Patton on the wall: \u201cIt was him. My God. I heard him accidentally, on me mam\u2019s radio in her bedroom. She had double-mirrors, really kitsch 50s things. You\u2019d use it when you were going out on Saturday night. She had an alarm radio, always coming on at the wrong time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just one of those unbelievable sliding-door moments. I heard this fella, and his voice sounded like my voice. I\u2019d always thought, \u2018Well, I could never be a singer with this horrible voice\u2019. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. Still do. But he sounded like the same kind of thing. I didn\u2019t know black American terms: a boll weevil or turnpike blues. But there was an emotion that clicked with me. I became fascinated with gospel blues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still play more gospel than Chicago. I very rarely go anywhere near that speed, aggression, Clapton thing. Someone once reviewed me, saying the testosterone was missing from my blues solos, because I don\u2019t do Chicago. It\u2019s just alien to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack then, me dad had an old Italian guitar that was just on the wall. It\u2019d been there all my life. I got it down. Got a nail varnish bottle \u2013 me sister\u2019s \u2013 and I started on a single string. I\u2019d never done a blues scale. I\u2019ve never been taught anything. I even got kicked out of school. The next week, I was the proud owner of a Hofner and a Laney amp. And that was it. Off we went.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Chris\n<\/p>\n

Chris Rea onstage in 1985 (Image credit: Rob Verhorst\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

Most aspiring musicians would be turning backflips if their debut single was a transatlantic hit, yet in a hint of ructions to come, Rea despised 1978\u2019s Fool (If You Think It\u2019s Over). \u201cAbsolutely. Wrong key. It ended up being this huge California thing. It\u2019s the only track I never played guitar on, which tells you something about the spirit of it. On top of that, it was just a huge hit. So there was nothing I could do. It was like, \u2018This is not me!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Not doing MTV Unplugged is one of the biggest career mistakes I\u2019ve ever made.<\/p>\n

Chris Rea<\/p>\n

The superstar years of the 80s weren\u2019t him, either. Today, Rea paints his commercial peak as an exhausting tug-of-war between his pursuit of the blues and the meddling executives trying to mould him into a slicker proposition.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it was everybody,\u201d he remembers. \u201cDire Straits. The Police. Everybody who was having it away at that time. You did what you were told, because you were part of a huge company. You were a business. It was like me dad\u2019s ice cream business, except it was Chris Rea\u2019s LP business.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou say that word \u2018blues\u2019 to anybody in the business and they fucking run a mile. It\u2019s unbelievable. I had a lot of trouble with Road To Hell. We\u2019d actually recorded the next album, Auberge, before, as an agreement with Warner Brothers. So if Road To Hell didn\u2019t work \u2013 and they said it won\u2019t \u2013 we would jump straight away to Auberge and forget about it. Of course, the beginning to Road To Hell is a gospel-blues thing. Warner Brothers went, \u2018This is going to be over in five minutes\u2019. But I did stand me ground, and it went number one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even then, Rea refused to capitalise, notably snubbing a shop-window set for MTV Unplugged.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one of the biggest career mistakes I\u2019ve ever made. I\u2019d be so much more wealthy, because of America. I was offered one of the first ones. But I saw Eric Clapton on it, and it reminded me of [cosy British TV show] Pebble Mill At One. I thought, \u2018Oh my God, I don\u2019t want anything to do with this\u2019. Because he\u2019s like God to me. And he\u2019s going [moans sluggish version of Layla]. So I turned it down. I should have had an older brother who said, \u2018Fucking do it\u2019. Every time I see a car that\u2019s too much money, I definitely regret it, just for five minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you remember the first time you were able to afford a Ferrari?<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah. It was instant disappointment. [Pink Floyd drummer] Nick Mason said to me once, \u2018Chris, do yourself a favour. Stop trying to make excuses about all this. You\u2019re a sad bastard. It could have been heroin. But it\u2019s red cars.\u2019 And he was right. There was nowhere to drive the fucking thing. Y\u2019know, you put it in your garage. You didn\u2019t want anyone to know you had it. Then you take it out, and you couldn\u2019t find anywhere you could do more than 40 miles an hour. I\u2019m a competent driver. I\u2019ve raced at Monza. But it\u2019s a terrible thing. Blues guitar and motor racing bring out real testosterone in some guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Chris\n<\/p>\n

Chris Rea on the set of his movie La Passione in 1995 (Image credit: Charles Caratini\/Sygma via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Royalties also paid for this house, back in 1993. Why not the standard rock star mansion in London? He shrugs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t have that much money. It took a long time for me to get clear. We amassed over \u00a3320,000 in debt to the record company. It wasn\u2019t until Dancing With Strangers [1987] that we actually turned the page. At that point we had children and we needed normality for them. Here, no one knew who the fuck I was, because I\u2019m not Cliff Richard or whatever. One of my younger daughters, they\u2019d get them to write an essay about \u2018What does your dad do?\u2019 so they could get a handle on the kids. And she thought I was in the motor business, because there was always cars in the yard, oil around, and whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dave Gilmour is the only rock star that hasn\u2019t disappointed me.<\/p>\n

Chris Rea<\/p>\n

You didn\u2019t mind when all of the hysteria fell away, then?<\/p>\n

\u201cNot at all. I took it rather better than some of them I could tell you about, who had nervous breakdowns because they\u2019re not the king any more. I found fame really annoying. Anything to do with \u2018celebrity\u2019, I just don\u2019t get.\u201d<\/p>\n

You must have had some A-list jams in this room, though?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. Rock stars don\u2019t talk to each other. They\u2019re too important to talk to another one. They\u2019ve all got their own little palace, their own universe, of which they are the head. So how can they possibly go to somebody else\u2019s universe? They can\u2019t handle it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will one day write the book that shows just how massive some of these egos are. Because I was a slow success, I was meeting people socially whose records I had at home, who were now talking to me on a what-strings-do-you-use level. And very few of them have not disappointed. [Pink Floyd\u2019s] Dave Gilmour is the only one that [hasn\u2019t disappointed]. That paints everyone else as a c**t. Which they are. But Gilmour is fabulous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Rea – Soft Top, Hard Shoulder 1992 Video Sound HQ – YouTube
\n\"Chris<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Not exactly a social hub, this house has been the headquarters for Rea\u2019s own Jazzee Blue record label, conceived in the post-millennium as a means to escape the creative handcuffs of the majors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a big fan of the guys in New York who had labels for a certain kind of music. That\u2019s what I hoped Jazzee Blue would be: somewhere where musicians came and made a record. I\u2019d had enough of all the other shit. Because Stony Road [2002] was not compromised in any way whatsoever, [the label] walked away from it. Yet it went gold. Which surprised me. I never expected that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rea seems proudest of his Jazzee Blue-era output, though he\u2019ll admit the modern industry is no picnic. \u201cI didn\u2019t know at that point, that the business was dead and gone. I made that record Guitar Unlimited [2003], which was the pinnacle of my life: to make a record with an eight-piece guitar orchestra. They were geniuses. And fucking nothing happened!\u201d<\/p>\n

Does the work you\u2019re proudest of tend to underperform commercially?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh yeah. I mean, Michael Parkinson, he told me to do Guitar Unlimited. Then he came to me and said, \u2018The executives [at BBC Radio 2] say I\u2019m not allowed to play anything more than three minutes any more.\u2019 So Guitar Unlimited was out of the window.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Chris\n<\/p>\n

Chris Rea onstage in 2004 (Image credit: Bertrand Guay\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

This house has seen hard personal times, too. I start telling Rea that I only want to broach his long-running battle with abdominal cancer if he\u2019s comfortable to do so, when he interjects.<\/p>\n

The blues is one of the biggest examples of evolution. It\u2019s in constant change.<\/p>\n

Chris Rea<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t give a fuck. Today, I haven\u2019t got a bad stomach. I haven\u2019t got diarrhoea. You become conditioned. You accept your illness is normality and when you\u2019re not ill, it\u2019s as if you\u2019ve won the lottery. Today is fabulous. If it was pissing down, it\u2019d still be great. And I worried about today. Because of not knowing what your body is gonna do, because I haven\u2019t got a pancreas. I\u2019m thinking last night, \u2018What pills should I take, in case I can\u2019t do this interview because I\u2019m sat on the loo?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet there are also fringe benefits, he says. \u201cI\u2019ll never forget it: Robert Ahwai [guitarist] came to see me in hospital. There had always been this big argument with him about what was blues and what wasn\u2019t. And he looked at me and he said, \u2018Well, you\u2019ve now got a licence to sing the blues.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore I was ill,\u201d continues Rea, \u201cI was extremely intolerant. I was very aggressive. I\u2019d survived this terrible pop thing, so I became mega-paranoid. Hard to work for? Very. Somebody new came into the band just after Road To Hell, and the other lads had T-shirts [with a photo of a smiling Rea] that said, \u2018This is what he looks like when he\u2019s happy.\u2019 Because I was just grumpy all day long. Nothing was good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the flipside, Rea admits, the resulting fatigue forces him to work in bursts. \u201cI get up at seven. I\u2019ll listen to what\u2019s on the digital tape machine, see what I did yesterday. I might do a bit of painting, writing and reading. By the time six o\u2019clock comes, I\u2019m knackered. I can\u2019t control my energy. But the next Chris Rea release will have a major gospel-blues [vibe] on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

How do you think it\u2019ll fit into the modern blues landscape?<\/p>\n

\u201cMe and the modern blues scene,\u201d sighs Rea, \u201cwe have difficulty getting on. I sometimes get the feeling that it\u2019s all sixth-form college: \u2018Oh, you shouldn\u2019t do that.\u2019 A lot of modern blues is academic. It\u2019s what someone else did. But the blues is one of the biggest examples of evolution. It\u2019s in constant change. You can\u2019t document it and say \u2018stop\u2019. It should be free.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I brought Blue Guitars out [in 2005], the singer from one of the top blues bands in Italy \u2013 apparently \u2013 said to me, \u2018It\u2019s not the blues.\u2019 So I went and watched him, to see what he was getting at. And it was just [sings 12-bar dirge], \u2018Well, I woke up this morning\u2026\u2019 in an Italian accent!<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd,\u201d he continues, \u201c[modern blues] has become some kind of technical thing. I\u2019m fed up now of seeing, \u2018Oh, this guitarist is faster than that guitarist\u2019 \u2013 that\u2019s got nothing to do with the fucking blues. Then you get guys who come along like Allman\u2019s nephew [Derek Trucks]. Now that\u2019s good. Fuck me. That\u2019s what blues should be \u2013 something you haven\u2019t heard before. The other stuff can get a bit like\u2026 you know when you fart in the bath? These scales get so fucking fast. Musically, emotionally, it ceases to do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you ever feel bad for today\u2019s generation of musicians, though, that they\u2019ll never be able to afford a place like this?<\/p>\n

\n

\"Chris\n<\/p>\n

Chris Rea in 2015 (Image credit: Joseph Branston\/Guitarist Magazine)<\/p>\n

\u201cI do feel sorry for them,\u201d he nods. \u201cI know there\u2019s one or two \u2013 I\u2019ve tried to get deals for them \u2013 and they\u2019re not going anywhere. There\u2019s one a year, maybe, that does. Last year it was the fat ginger lad [Ed Sheeran]. Then the country and western girl singer [Taylor Swift].\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Rea, though, is free to continue his deep exploration of the blues, financed by the quaint concept of enormous fuck-off royalties. As we pack up, there\u2019s time for one last question \u2013 and we can\u2019t resist asking about his 1986 Yuletide mega-hit Driving Home For Christmas. Will it make you wince, or give you a buzz when you hear that while turkey shopping this December?<\/p>\n

Rea smiles: \u201cI do regret that I never got it to Van Morrison, because that\u2019s who I wrote it for. I thought he would have done a marvellous job. But I can\u2019t knock it. I always think if I don\u2019t hear Driving Home For Christmas, it means I can no longer go on holiday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published in Classic Rock Presents The Blues (2013)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Chris Rea died on December 22, 2025, many of the obituaries focussed on his festive 1986 hit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-383244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}