At the tender age of 9 on a winter family holiday to the Scottish Highlands, I recall stopping in Pitlochry en route to shop for some supplies and refreshments. Christmas had recently passed and I had been fortuitously enriched with gift vouchers from various kind members of my extended family, which I clutched enthusiastically in my hands upon entering the Woolworth’s store. I decided I would use this opportunity to choose a cassette to bolster my small but slowly expanding collection (I was 9, remember!). My father was trying to persuade me to choose an album called ‘The Road To Hell’ by an artist called Chris Rea who I’d never heard of, and despite being seduced by the cover art, I opted for a greatest hits collection by Tom Robinson & the TRB, a track of whom I’d loved on a McVities compilation tape my father had given me. In the end, my father decided to buy ‘The Road To Hell’ despite my refusal to, and upon departure from Pitlochry placed the cassette straight into the tape deck of his Ford Sierra.
On the very first listen I fell instantly for Rea’s smoky gravelly vocal, the eerie twang of what I’d later discover was slide guitar, the grandiose arrangements complete with lush female backing vocals and above all, the beautiful, captivating melodies and words of the songs. Before long, I was pestering my father for the inlay sleeve and I was perusing these very words, already beginning to learn them in order that I could sing along for myself in the not too distant future. Not long after that, when I’d saved up just enough money, Chris Rea’s ‘Water Sign’ became the first of his titles I purchased – an album I can still recite every word of to this day. And through the later years of my childhood and adolescence I continued to assemble Rea’s back catalogue, first on cassette and then on CD.
Meanwhile, as songwriting and live performance of these songs took over from the more serious business of classical guitar recital in my late teens, I started to learn many of Chris Rea’s songs, a few of them making their way into my set as my band and I took our first, tentative steps into live performance. Most memorably, the band I formed with my old Dundee school friend N D Martin used to play ‘Midnight Blue’ as part of our set in London, and it rapidly became a fan favourite alongside our original material and a cornerstone of the live set.
Returning to Scotland, we decided to have another crack at forming a band together, this time in Edinburgh, where we called our act ‘Twisted Wheel’ after Rea’s legendary song of the same name. Naturally, our rendition of the song became the opener to our set. At the same time, my nascent writing career was taking shape, and in the days of the unregulated internet, I began to review Rea’s back catalogue for various sites (alas, none of the sites still exist, I checked), and in my own series upon classic albums for the university newspaper I selected Rea’s album ‘Wired to the Moon’ for one of the features.
As the years passed, and the various incarnations of our band failed to bring us any tangible success, I turned to songwriting and solo performance, but was now working a day job too. Going to see my inspirations live was an important part of maintaining my connection to the ambition of becoming a professional musician, and I saw Chris Rea three times in the early to mid-2000s. On the third occasion in Spring 2006 I went to see Rea perform at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh with my then girlfriend. This time there was a support act, probably not too much older than myself, and I recall turning to her and saying something to the effect of ‘He’s not that great, I’m better than him’. It was a moot point said from a perspective of regret and perhaps more than a little bitterness as I really wasn’t doing too much with music at that time and was on a hiatus from live performance, haunted as I was by the London failure. My girlfriend turned to me and said ‘Yes, you are, but what are you telling me for? Get out there and prove it’.
Sometimes we all need a springboard, ladies and gentlemen, and that was definitely mine. Acting with alacrity, within a few weeks I was back out performing live regularly, and within a couple of months had started showcase sessions for other musicians around the city, broadening my artistic network in the process, meeting future collaborators. A couple of years of hard work and dedication married with a lot of patience not to mention perserverance led me to record first my debut EP ‘Our Land, Their Freedom’ in 2008 and then my debut album ‘Carefree Prisoner’ a year later, which was in turn the catalyst to becoming a professional musician.
In the interim, frustration with the time this was all taking led to me eloping with a resonator guitar to the Scottish Highlands, and fervently writing a clutch of songs inspired by acoustic blues. After performing them to a few trusted musical friends they convinced me I had something worth recording and releasing, but I didn’t want this completely different and separate project to come under my own name, given I was already working hard on my debut album in the studio. I had been listening a lot to Rea’s magnus opus ‘Blue Guitars’ that year (everyone should), an eleven CD box set exploring the various epochs and styles of blues music, absorbing every note hoping it would seep into my own musical vocabulary. My personal favourite of the CDs, ‘CD 2 – Country Blues’ had a beautifully evocative and haunting track called ‘Man Gone Missing’ – I felt this would be the perfect title for my own blues project and it was thus duly christened.
One can only imagine the pride I felt when a reviewer from ‘Maverick Magazine’ magazine wrote the following about the second ‘Man Gone Missing’ album – ‘Burn You’– ‘Super cool blues in a John Martyn meets Chris Rea at a dobro festival vein….listen to ‘Burn You’ as a complete piece and you will be in for a treat as the mood swings take you on a slow walk through mist strewn mountains and valleys followed by sunrises over waterfalls and romantic walks hand in hand along barren beaches’. The aspiring student compared to the master, life had come full circle.
Fast forward the best part of a decade, to when the Covid years began, I put my time to good use, exploring two instruments I had long since abandoned, the classical guitar and the piano. For the latter, where better to start than to pull out my old books of Chris Rea sheet music from my teenage schooldays, working my way though the likes of ‘Steel River’, ‘Josephine’and ‘Shamrock Diaries’, not to mention reacquainting myself with the gorgeous lilt of ‘Midnight Blue’, which was very much like reconnecting with an old friend. This particular in part Rea-inspired journey ultimately led to me performing piano on both of my current and upcoming albums, and to it becoming a feature, and to some a highlight, of my live performances too.
Last year, an artist friend who hosts concerts for me in Germany visited me during the Fringe – she knew I loved the music of Chris Rea and had all of his albums on CD, and so very kindly gifted me an original of his eponymous album on LP, I was deeply touched, it was a delightful gift. This Christmas, just a few days after his own sad passing, my sister gifted me Rea’s latest release, his ‘Christmas Album’, a poignant and treasured gift. And of course it goes without saying many years later after my first Christmas encounter with the music of Chris Rea, my remaining gift vouchers this year will be used to purchase the ‘Song by Song’ book to be released later this month.
I never had the good fortune to meet Chris Rea in person, nor even anyone who has, though I have always felt a deep, resonant connection to his music and as the above testifies, I have always been and remain deeply inspired by his incredible oeuvre of work. When news of his passing reached me, I was in the centre of Edinburgh, purchasing some last minute Christmas gifts and I must confess it was only the second time in my life I shed tears at the news of someone passing who I’d never met (the first time was January the 10th 2016 at the news of the passing of another of my greatest musical inspirations, David Bowie).
I cherish the memories and the inspiration his music has given and indeed still gives me, how it forms an integral part of the soundtrack to virtually my entire life. It is hard to overestimate the influence his music has had upon my initial and ongoing desire to create original music, not to mention my approach to songwriting, the creation of music and the music business itself. And so it continues, for his incredible music will always remain absolutely vital to me, a close companion, for as long as I am able to listen to it.
Whenever I hear Chris Rea’s music I am instantly transported to somewhere in my memories and to somewhere beautiful in my mind. Whatever worries and concerns I’m carrying that day fall away and I lose myself in his magical and forever mystifying blues-infused soundscapes. As a musician and songwriter myself, I write in hope that people who listen to my music might connect with it in the same way his music connected with me.
If you’re reading this, always know that whenever you see me on the road, I can guarantee you that amongst the extensive slip case of CDs I carry to keep me company on those long, lonely drives, there will always be a Chris Rea album.
If you also love his music, don’t forget to ask me which one.
Love to you all.
SK x
