Chris Rea

Christopher Anton Rea ( REE-ə; 4 March 1951 – 22 December 2025) was an English rock and blues singer-songwriter, guitarist and record producer. He was known for his distinctive gravelly voice, slide guitar playing and music style blending soft rock with blues.

Rea recorded twenty-five studio albums beginning in the late 1970s. Although he had modest success with Water Sign (1983) and Wired to the Moon (1984), his commercial breakthrough came with Shamrock Diaries (1985), followed by platinum-sellers On the Beach (1986) and Dancing with Strangers (1987). Two of his million-selling albums topped the UK Albums Chart: The Road to Hell in 1989 and its successor, Auberge, in 1991. He had already become "a major European star by the time he finally cracked the UK Top 10" with the single "The Road to Hell (Part 2)". His commercial peak continued with God's Great Banana Skin (1992) and Espresso Logic (1993), and was marked by million-selling compilations New Light Through Old Windows (1988) and The Best of Chris Rea (1994), later also The Very Best of Chris Rea (2001, with three million copies sold by 2014).

His many hit songs included "I Can Hear Your Heartbeat", "Stainsby Girls", "Josephine", "On the Beach", "Let's Dance", "Driving Home for Christmas", "Working on It", "Tell Me There's a Heaven", "Auberge", "Looking for the Summer", "Nothing to Fear" and "Julia". He also recorded a duet with Elton John, "If You Were Me". He was nominated for the Brit Award for British Male Solo Artist in 1988, 1989 and 1990. Over the course of his long career, Rea's work had at times been informed by his struggles with serious health issues, which in the early 2000s influenced his change from adult-oriented rock to blues music style, releasing studio albums on his independent record label Jazzee Blue, such as Dancing Down the Stony Road (2002) and the 11-CD Blue Guitars (2005).

Rea never toured the United States, choosing family life over greater fame. In the U.S. he was best known for the 1978 single "Fool (If You Think It's Over)", which reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, earning him a Grammy nomination as Best New Artist in 1978. A decade later, "Working On It" topped the Mainstream Rock chart. He sold more than 30 million records worldwide.

Life and career

Early life

Christopher Anton Rea was born on 4 March 1951 in Middlesbrough in the North Riding of Yorkshire to an Italian father, Camillo Rea, born in January 1922 in Guisborough, England (whose father, also called Camillo, was born in Arpino, Lazio, Italy) and an Irish mother, Winifred K. Slee. He was one of seven children. His family were of the Roman Catholic faith. The name Rea was well known locally due to his family's ice cream factory and café chain.

When he was twelve, Rea worked clearing tables in the coffee bar and making ice cream in the factory. He wanted to improve the business, but his ideas got no support from his father. After leaving, he was replaced by one of his brothers. At that time he wanted to be a journalist and attended St Mary's College, Middlesbrough. Rea bought his first guitar in his early twenties, a 1961 Höfner V3 and 25-watt Laney amplifier. He played primarily bottleneck guitar, also known as slide guitar. Even though he was left-handed, he played guitar right-handed. Rea's playing style was inspired by Charlie Patton, whom he had heard on the radio. He had initially thought Patton's playing sounded like a violin. Rea was also influenced by Blind Willie Johnson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe as well as by the playing of Ry Cooder and Joe Walsh. He also listened to Delta blues musicians such as Sonny Boy Williamson II and Muddy Waters, gospel blues, and opera to light orchestral classics to develop his style.

Rea recalled that "for many people from working-class backgrounds, rock wasn't a chosen thing, it was the only thing, the only avenue of creativity available for them", and that "when I was young I wanted most of all to be a writer of films and film music. But Middlesbrough in 1968 wasn't the place to be if you wanted to do movie scores." Due to his late introduction to music and guitar playing, Rea commented that when compared with Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton "I definitely missed the boat, I think." He was self-taught and soon tried to join a friend's group, the Elastic Band, as the first choice for guitar or bass. Heeding his father's advice he did not join as his potential earnings would not have been enough to cover the costs of being in the group. As a result he found himself doing casual labouring jobs, including working in his father's ice cream business. Rea commented that, at that 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."

1973–1982: Early career and "Fool (If You Think It's Over)"

In 1973 he joined the local Middlesbrough band, Magdalene, which earlier had included David Coverdale who had left to join Deep Purple. He began writing songs for the band and took up singing only because the singer in the band failed to show up for a playing engagement. Rea then went on to form the band The Beautiful Losers which received Melody Maker's Best Newcomers award in 1973. He secured a solo recording deal with independent Magnet Records, and released his first single entitled "So Much Love" in 1974. The band itself split up in 1977. He guested on Catherine Howe's EP The Truth of the Matter. He recorded his first album that same year, but according to Michael Levy (co-founder of Magnet) the recordings were burned and started over again because it did not capture his whole talent.

Debut album

Rea's debut studio album, Whatever Happened to Benny Santini?, was produced by Gus Dudgeon and released in June 1978. The title referred to a stage name that Rea had suggested when the record label insisted that his given name did not sound "croony" enough. It peaked at No. 49 on the Billboard Hot 200 and charted for 12 weeks. The lead single, "Fool (If You Think It's Over)", was Rea's biggest hit in the US, reaching No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary Singles chart and No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. As Rea gave Magnet Records its first major breakthrough and its first US Top 10, he was their biggest artist, the more so when he was nominated at the 21st Annual Grammy Awards as Best New Artist.

Michael Levy remembered Rea as "more of a thoughtful, introspective poet than a natural pop performer" which in Levy's opinion prevented Rea from becoming a bigger star. Few of Rea's early singles charted in the UK. "Fool (If You Think It's Over)" performed modestly on its second release in late 1978, prompted by its strong performance in the US, and that stateside success also led to Rea being categorized as a piano-playing singer-songwriter, similar to Elton John and Billy Joel, rather than the guitar player he is. For several years, Magnet marketed him based on this misconception. Rea said that it "is still the only song I've ever not played guitar on, but it just so happened to be my first single". Rea had "always had a difficult relationship with fame, even before my first illness. None of my heroes were rock stars. I arrived in Hollywood for the Grammy Awards once and thought I was going to bump into people who mattered, like Ry Cooder or Randy Newman. But I was surrounded by pop stars". Throughout his career Rea emphatically rejected the label of "rock star".

Subsequent early albums

Dudgeon also produced Rea's second album Deltics (1979). Rea recorded his self-produced third album, Tennis (1980), with musicians from Middlesbrough, and it received positive reviews. As both albums had failed commercially, Magnet rejected the artwork Rea wanted for the cover of his fourth album, 1981's Chris Rea (produced by Jon Kelly, who later oversaw Rea's most successful albums). None of these albums reached the Top 50 in the UK, with his singles also delivering lacklustre performances, although in the US, Diamonds reached No. 44 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Loving You went to No. 88. Rea had a difficult working relationship with Dudgeon and the other "men in suits" who he felt "smoothed out" the blues-influenced elements of his music. Rea "always thought that [producers] knew best. I never thought for a minute that they might have another agenda", but "all of a sudden I was the goose that laid the golden egg, and it was hell for me". He ruefully acknowledges, "I can't blame anyone but myself. I gave them what they wanted rather than what I wanted".