Chris Rea’s love of driving behind many of his songspublished at 15:20 GMT
Emma Petrie
BBC News
Image source, Getty Images
Chris Rea spent countless hours on the road, and his love of cars and driving was the inspiration behind many of his songs.
He recorded 25 solo albums, two of which topped the UK albums chart. His distinctive gravelly voice and slide guitar-playing are preserved in songs such as Road to Hell, Auberge, On the Beach and Driving Home for Christmas.
Christopher Anton Rea was born in Middlesbrough in 1951 to an Italian father and Irish mother and was one of seven children. The family was known locally for Camillo’s ice cream factory and cafes, owned by his father Camillo Rea.
Chris worked in the cafes as a teenager and took his driving test in one of his dad’s ice cream vans. When he was asked to do an emergency stop, the examiner fell off the box he was sitting on and cut his leg.
Rea said: “I had to take him to the hospital but he still passed me.”
He was still working for his father when he bought his first guitar, a 1961 Hofner V3 in his early 20s.
Rea said that at the 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”.
