Chris Rea 1951-2025

I wanted to post a few words to acknowledge the death of guitarist, singer and songwriter Chris Rea, yesterday.

I’m not going to pretend I was a diehard fan, but I dipped in and out of his catalogue over the years and was always fascinated by the man and his music.

Rea was something of a late starter, not getting his first guitar until he was in his early 20s which makes his initial achievements – playing in bands Magdalene and The Beautiful Losers and getting a solo deal with indie Magnet Records – even more impressive since that all that happened within a few years.

His first album Whatever Happened To Benny Santini? (great title) was released in 1978 and its lead single ‘Fool (If You Think It’s Over)’ reached No 12 in the Billboard Hot 100 and earned Chris a ‘Best New Artist’ Grammy nomination. Weirdly, Rea had peaked too early. He would never replicate this success in the US again and chose not to tour in America.

It took Chris Rea eight years to match this singles success in the UK when ‘Let’s Dance’ reached No 12 in 1987. In the intervening period, Chris released seven further albums that slowly became more popular, despite singles that stubbornly only flirted with the outer fringes of the chart (the UK top 30 hit ‘Stainsby Girls’ being an exception). During this time Magnet Records stayed loyal to Chris and he remained loyal to them. Rea only ended up on WEA because Warners acquired Magnet in 1988.

1987 to 1994 was the peak of Rea’s success in the UK. Surprisingly, there were no further hits from Dancing With Strangers but that didn’t stop the album from getting to No 2 and a well timed greatest hits, New Light Through Old Windows – which as the title alludes to, was actually re-recordings of old songs – allowed the new version of 1986’s ‘On The Beach’ to become a hit. This compilation album also featured ‘Driving Home For Christmas’ and that festive song was released as a single (although wasn’t a hit, peaking at 53).

The original version of ‘Driving Home For Christmas’ had actually been the B-side to 1986 single ‘Hello Friend’. And this brings me to an aspect of Rea’s career that I find fascinating: He loved to re-record his songs or ‘try again’, with B-sides becoming A-sides. As an example, ‘Driving Home For Christmas’ was also the B-side to ‘Joys of Christmas’, the third single (and opening track) from 1987’s Dancing With Strangers. The single version of ‘Hello Friend’ itself was a re-recording of the On The Beach album cut and of course ‘Driving Home For Christmas’ was re-recorded for New Light Through Old Windows.

Another example is the aforementioned ‘Let’s Dance’. Before this became Rea’s first big UK hit in 1987 it had been the B-side of the lead single from 1986’s On The Beach, ‘It’s All Gone’. It was re-recorded for the hit version in ’87 and then re-recorded again for New Light Through Old Windows! However the very best example of Rea’s constant fiddling is the song ‘Josephine’. There are apparently eight different versions! It was originally the second single from 1985’s Shamrock Diaries. The single version was completely different to the album cut, then there was the ‘La Version Française’ variant – basically an extended remix created for a European single release. Then the song was re-recorded for New Light Through Old Windows and even that re-recording also exists as a faster alternate, issued only in America. Rea would also re-record it once more in 2008. All this is crazy, but great fun for collectors at the same time.

The Road to Hell and Auberge albums both went to No 1 in the UK in 1989 and 1991 respectively. I used to play the former a great deal and it benefits from a vague concept of the world going to shit (‘The Road to Hell’, ‘You Must Be Evil’ ‘That’s What They Always Say’, ‘Looking for a Rainbow’). For the first time Rea had two top 30 singles from the same album in the UK (‘The Road to Hell’ got to No 10 – his highest charting physical single – and the affecting ‘Tell Me There’s A Heaven’ reached 24). The Road to Hell was just one of those albums that everyone seemed to own (it eventually went 6 x Platinum).

Rea continued to release albums in the late 1990s (including a surprisingly unsuccessful The Road to Hell: Part 2) until his well documented health issues intervened and motivated him to return to his blues roots in later life, with a series of albums that had little mainstream appeal but were mostly great and offered some really cool physical packages for collectors (particularly 2008’s The Return of the Fabulous Hofner Bluenotes).

There’s a lot of good music to enjoy and, as I said at the beginning, while I’m far from a massive fan I always planned to explore early albums such as Tennis, Deltics or Water Sign and the like. Rhino started an excellent reissue campaign in 2019, maybe Rea’s death will encourage them to continue.

Thanks for the music and rest in peace, Chris Rea.