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International Songwriters Association Hall Of Fame member Chris Rea was born Christopher Anton Rea, on 4th March 1951, in Middlesbrough, England, to an Italian father, Camillo Rea who ran a very successful cafι and ice-cream business, and an Irish mother, Winifred Slee.
Although he initially intended to become a journalist, Chris was fascinated by music, later recalling "I didn't start until I was 21, and most people I know were 13 when they had their first guitar. I bought a Hofner guitar and amplifier for 32 guineas, then spent ages trying to make a bottleneck. At that point, I 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".
Largely self-taught as a guitarist, he came late to music, developing a distinctive slide-guitar style and a husky, weathered vocal tone that reflected both his regional roots and a deep absorption in blues, soul, and American road music.
In the early years, he played with local groups Magdalene and The Beautiful Losers and signed a solo recording contract with Magnet Records in 1975. The label initially positioned him within the contemporary soft-rock and singer-songwriter tradition, although his songwriting already showed a strong sense of place, atmosphere, and emotional restraint.
Chris achieved his first major success with "Fool (If You Think Its Over)," a song penned with Al Green in mind, which combined melodic elegance with lyrical understatement and established his gift for crafting accessible yet quietly affecting narratives. It also earned him a Grammy nomination.
Although his early albums met uneven commercial responses in Britain, he developed a substantial following across continental Europe, particularly in Germany and Ireland, where his reflective songwriting and polished musicianship found a particularly receptive audience.
During the 1980s he consolidated his reputation through a sequence of albums that balanced radio-friendly production with increasingly personal material. Songs such as "On the Beach," "Josephine," and "Stainsby Girls" revealed a growing confidence in evoking memory, longing, and the emotional pull of home, while "Driving Home for Christmas" became an enduring seasonal standard, notable for its conversational lyric and evocative sense of journey.
Originally penned with Van Morrison in mind, Chris recalled that it had taken him just minutes to write, saying "It's one of those moments that songwriters get - sometimes you can spend years and years writing. That one was five to 10 minutes. When you have a successful song, you don't remember thinking about it - it just comes out." It would go on to become his most famous song, although he himself never performed it live on stage until 2014.
By the end of the 1980s, Chris had reached a commercial and artistic peak with albums such as "The Road to Hell" and "Auberge", whose title songs used extended metaphor and vivid imagery to explore themes of excess, freedom, and moral reckoning. His songwriting during this period demonstrated a refined economy, favouring mood and texture over overt drama, and his guitar work served the song rather than dominating it.
In the 1990s however, following serious illness, and in any event, always a reluctant "pop" star, Chris redirected his career toward a more explicitly blues-based approach, releasing a large body of work that paid tribute to the music that first inspired him. This later phase emphasised rawness, extended instrumental passages, and thematic consistency, even as it moved further from mainstream commercial expectations.
In a career lasting more than 50 years, Chris recorded 25 studio albums, along with 14 compilation albums, one live album ("The Road to Hell and Back", one soundtrack album ("La Passione"), and 72 singles which included 44 UK Top 100 entries.
As a talent, Chris stood out for his rare synthesis of songwriting, voice, and guitar style, each element reinforcing the others without excess. His lyrics avoided grandiosity, instead finding strength in restraint, observational detail, and emotional authenticity, while his guitar playing conveyed feeling through tone and phrasing rather than flashy virtuosity. He excelled at creating atmosphere and emotional continuity across entire albums, marking him as an artist whose work rewarded sustained listening.
His substantial legacy in the history of popular music rests on his role as a distinctly European interpreter of blues-inflected rock and adult-oriented songwriting, bridging British regional identity with transatlantic musical traditions. He left a catalogue of songs that endured through familiarity rather than spectacle, influencing later singer-songwriters who valued mood, craft, and sincerity over trend. In doing so, he secured a lasting place as a songwriter whose work quietly but decisively entered the fabric of popular music.
Chris died on the 22nd of December 2025, in London, UK, after a short illness, at the age of 74.
© Jim Liddane
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