With his husky voice, ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ singer Chris Rea was much more than his Christmas hit

There is a bitter coincidence in the timing of his death. British musician Chris Rea died three days before Christmas, exactly during the period when the Christmas classic ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ is constantly being heard. The big radio hit, recorded in the eighties, is one of the most beloved Christmas songs; For millions of people it represents a melancholic longing for security around Christmas. Rea’s perpetually long drive home is good for over 650 million Spotify streams.

‘Driving Home for Christmas’ was created in 1978 during a harsh car ride through the snow with his wife next to him, at a time when Chris Rea was having little success and was actually in financial ruin. He wrote that song purely to kill time, in the cold and in traffic jams. “I always saw myself as a serious musician; writing a Christmas hit was never on my agenda,” Chris Rea told in 2016 The Guardian. The song originally became the b-side of ‘Hello Friend’ in 1986. When re-recorded in 1988, ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ got its Christmas sauce of strings, bells plus the jazzy piano intro.

But Chris Rea, with his recognizable husky voice, impressive slide guitar playing and melancholic lyrics about being on the road, memories and everyday life, was much more than that eternal Christmas classic. The artist, who died in hospital on Monday at the age of 74, was a respected live performer with songs such as ‘Looking For the Summer’, the sultry ‘The Road to Hell’ and ‘On the Beach’. He made a series of successful albums in the 1980s and early 1990s, including The Road to Hell (1989) and Auberge (1991).

Working-class family

Christopher Anton Rea (1951, Middlesbrough), son of an Italian father and Irish mother, grew up in a working-class family with seven children. He only started playing guitar seriously when he was twenty. His ambition was to become a professional musician, but it took a long time before he managed to attract the interest of a record label. It worked a bit with the band Beautiful Losers in 1975. But solo, now strongly influenced by blues music, he really broke through in 1978 with the ballad rock of ‘Fool (If you Think It’s Over)’. He immediately had a world hit with it.

It took a while before Rea was able to successfully follow up that hit. In the eighties, his hoarse talking vocals and his agile slide guitar playing successfully came together in veiled soft rock that scored. The unemphatic soft atmosphere in the songs was very individual and bathed in nostalgia or romance. Rea had a patent on the classic road song, music for a nighttime car ride, with the lights of the city slowly fading in the background.

Apart from his Christmas classic, the subdued, atmospheric pop blues song ‘Josephine’, written for his daughter, was perhaps his biggest hit. Rea didn’t have big choruses that blew you off your seat, but the repetition and subdued structure made the song stick.

Quirky and operating outside the pop industry, Chris Rea built up a loyal and devoted audience, especially in Europe. His shows came without theatrical effects, he never became a showman. Musical craftsmanship was also central to his last Dutch show in Carré in 2017.

Rea was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the age of 33 and suffered a stroke later in life. Despite his serious health problems, he continued to make music.

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