Chris Rea, the Middlesbrough-born British singer known for the hits ‘Driving Home for Christmas’, ‘On the Beach’ and ‘The Road to Hell’, died on Monday, December 22, aged 74.
According to a press release sent by his family’s spokesperson, the artist died “quietly, in the hospital … after a short illness”, writes The Guardian.
Chris Rea has combined blues, pop, soul and soft rock across 25 studio albums, including hits such as ‘The Road to Hell’, taken from the album of the same name, which reached No.1 in the UK; “Driving Home for Christmas,” a recurring seasonal favorite; and songs such as “On the Beach” and “Josephine”, which gained popularity in the Balearic music scene.
He has sold over 30 million albums.
He was born in 1951 in Middlesbrough to an Italian father and an Irish mother, and had six siblings.
“Being Irish-Italian in a cafe in Middlesbrough – that’s how I started my life as an outsider”he said later.
Chris Rea has spent countless hours on the road and his love of cars and driving has been the source of inspiration for many of his songs.
Chris worked in coffee shops as a teenager and took his driving test in one of his father’s ice cream vans. When asked to make an emergency stop, the examiner fell from the box he was standing on, injured his leg and cut himself.
Rea said: “I had to take him to the hospital, but he still passed.”
He was still working for his father when he bought his first guitar, a 1961 Hofner V3, in his early 20s.
Rea recounted that at the time, “I should have developed my father’s ice cream parlor business into a global concern, but I spent all my time in the warehouse playing guitar.”
