ROCK-on Worldwide

SEE CHRIS REA IN THE ROAD TO HELL AND BACK CONCERT
ROCK-ON TV – OCTOBER 2ND AT 20:00HRS.

Chris Rea’s seemingly unemotional virtuoso guitar playing, and smoothly rasping voice combined with his ability to write catchy, blues based songs have led him to a genuinely global success with over 20m in album sales worldwide.

Rea only started to learn guitar when he was 19. He was born in Middlesbrough into an Italian English family and his father, an Italian immigrant, owned a chain of ice cream shops. Rea was not happy at school and it was, apparently, after hearing a Joe Walsh song that he went out to buy a guitar and a bottle neck.

In 1973, he joined a local band called Magdalene whose singer Dave Coverdale had just left to join Deep Purple. Magdalene changed their name to Beautiful Losers, and even though they won a Melody Maker competition as “Best Newcomer of the Year”, they failed to catch on and Rea left the band and recorded the album Whatever Happened to Benny Santini?, which went gold on the strength of the U.S. Top 20 hit Fool (If You Think It’s Over).

A compilation of tracks from Rea’s ’80s albums, New Light Through Old Windows, was released in 1988 and sold well in the U.K. and Europe and charted in the U.S. Rea followed it up with the critically acclaimed The Road to Hell, which many regarded as his best album. It and its follow-up, Auberge, went to the top of the U.K. album charts, but did not prove as successful in the U.S. He has cut 19 albums and continuously performed live with his band in international concert halls.

Almost two years ago he fell ill with a pancreatitis and underwent several operations.

Rea released his most ambitious project in 2005, an eleven-album, 130-track box set of all new material inspired by the blues and his own paintings called Blue Guitars. The fun The Return of the Fabulous Hofner Blue Notes appeared in 2008.

GUITAR
Fender Stratocaster

BEST LYRICS – Twisted Wheel

I can see you now
Standing on a street corner
Pastel shades, and a candy stripe parallel
Good time love, oh that I’d been much older
Go messing with the boys from the in-crowd
But all I could do was wish them farewell

What’s that strange new music?
What’s that funny rhythm?
They call it Blue Beat
But you can call it
Young love
You can call it Tamla Dream
Down at your local Motown machine
I need to be loved down
At your Twisted Wheel

And I can see that little stage
All the hands up in the air
Bombers and blues gonna see us through
Got my new lime suit mohair
With a single vent sixteen inch
Got my two-stroke wheels outside
We only need the High Numbers low
And anything on Stateside
Down at your Twisted Wheel

OUR FAVOURITE SONG
Road to Hell

BEST GUITAR BREAK
Bottle neck on Texas:

LEAST KNOWN CHRIS REA FACT
Although left handed, he learnt to play guitar right handed.

DISCOGRAPHY
• Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? (1978)
• Deltics (1979)
• Tennis (1980)
• Chris Rea (1982)
• Water Sign (1983)
• Wired to the Moon (1984)
• Shamrock Diaries (1985)
• On the Beach (1986)
• Dancing with Strangers (1987)
• The Road to Hell (1989)
• Auberge (1991)
• God’s Great Banana Skin (1992)
• Espresso Logic (1993)
• La Passione (1996)
• The Blue Cafe (1998)
• The Road to Hell: Part 2 (1999)
• King of the Beach (2000)
• Dancing Down the Stony Road / Stony Road (2002)
• Blue Street (Five Guitars) (2003)
• Hofner Blue Notes (2003)
• The Blue Jukebox (2004)
• Blue Guitars (2005)
• The Return of the Fabulous Hofner Blue Notes (2008)
• Still so Far to Go… The Best of Chris Rea (2009)