Chris Rea, rock and blues singer-songwriter, dies aged 74 | Pop and rock
British singer-songwriter Chris Rea, known for hit songs such as Driving Home For Christmas, has died at the age of 74, his family’s spokesman said.
The statement said he died “peacefully in hospital after a short illness.”
Rea blended blues, pop, soul and soft rock on her 25 studio albums; These include The Road to Hell, taken from the UK No.1 album of the same name; Homecoming for Christmas is a perennial seasonal favorite; and tracks such as On the Beach and Josephine, which gained popularity in the Balearic dance scene. He has sold more than 30 million albums.
He was born in Middlesbrough in 1951 to an Italian father and Irish mother and had six siblings. “I started my life as an outsider, being an Irish Italian, in a cafe in Middlesbrough,” he later said.
As a young man, while working demanding jobs, including in his father’s ice cream factory, he dabbled in music and considered becoming a journalist. Eventually, the 22-year-old joined the band Magdalene, which previously featured David Coverdale (later of Deep Purple). He later joined another group called Beautiful Losers, but when he was offered a record deal, he went solo and released his first single, So Much Love, in 1974.
Its first success came in the USA; His 1978 song Fool (If You Think It’s Over) peaked at No. 12 and earned him a Grammy nomination for best new artist. He struggled to achieve this success for several years – he likened the machinations of the industry during this period to “a big dung heap full of bubbles. I had no control over it, I didn’t know what to do” – but his 1985 album Water Sign became a hit across Europe and helped turn his fortunes around.
The late 1980s were his most commercially successful period: 1987’s Dancing With Strangers was finally embraced in the UK, despite falling outside the dominant trends in pop, and began a run of six albums, two of which reached the top 10 in the UK; two of which reached #1.
The 1988 compilation album New Light Through Old Windows included his biggest hit, Driving Home for Christmas, first recorded in 1986. It made little impact on its debut, but the gentle, soulful song, whose title speaks to social pleasure, has continued to grow in popularity since then, reaching #10 in 2021.
Rea’s chart success waned somewhat in the 2000s, starting with 2002’s Dancing Down the Stony Road, as Rea moved away from pop and returned to the Delta blues that had originally inspired him.
Given his frequent focus on cars and roads in his songs, Rea was a motor racing enthusiast, racing Ferrari and Lotus models and participating in the 1993 British Touring Car Championship. He joined the Jordan team as a pit mechanic for the 1995 Formula One season. “I didn’t really want to do the VIP thing, so I was responsible for Eddie Irvine’s right rear tire,” he said later.
He supported Labor and in 2017 wrote a book praising Jeremy Corbyn in What’s Wrong with a Man Who Tells the Truth? He wrote an unreleased song called.
Rea had some health problems throughout his life. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and eventually had his pancreas removed, as well as part of his stomach and small intestine, in 2001. The procedure caused him to become diabetic.
He suffered a stroke in 2016, calling it “a very scary moment… I got it into my head that with the stroke my pitch perception was gone. And it took a lot of convincing from people who said there was nothing wrong with what you were playing.” During a concert in Oxford in 2017, he collapsed on stage and was taken to hospital to recover.
Rea is survived by his wife, Joan, whom he began dating when he was 17, and daughters Josephine and Julia, for whom Rea named hit songs.
