The ice cream heir who drove home with a slide guitar

Chris Rea was born in Middlesbrough in 1951 to an Italian father and an Irish mother, one of seven children. The Rea name was well known locally because the family ran an ice cream factory and a chain of cafes. At twelve he cleared tables in the coffee bar and made ice cream in the factory. He wanted to be a journalist, not a musician, and he bought his first guitar only in his early twenties.

That guitar was a 1961 Hofner, and he played it with a bottleneck. Though left-handed, he played right-handed, shaped by the slide playing of Charlie Patton, whom he had heard on the radio. The gravelly voice and slide guitar became his signature, in a style that blended soft rock with blues.

His first big moment came in 1978 with “Fool (If You Think It's Over)”, which reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and brought a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. After modest success in the early eighties, the breakthrough came with Shamrock Diaries in 1985, followed by On the Beach and Dancing with Strangers. The Road to Hell in 1989 and Auberge in 1991 both topped the UK album chart. Songs such as “On the Beach” and “Looking for the Summer”, along with "Driving Home for Christmas", became fixtures.

He sold more than thirty million records worldwide and recorded twenty-five studio albums. Serious health problems in the early 2000s pushed him from adult-oriented rock toward the blues, and he released records on his own label, Jazzee Blue, including the eleven-CD Blue Guitars in 2005. He never toured the United States, choosing family life over greater fame. He died on 22 December 2025, leaving a catalogue that still sounds like a long drive in the rain.