GERMANY: SINGER CHRIS REA RETURNS TO PERFORM IN CONCERTS AFTER A YEAR OF ILL HEALTH

Record ID: 391520

  • Title: GERMANY: SINGER CHRIS REA RETURNS TO PERFORM IN CONCERTS AFTER A YEAR OF ILL HEALTH
  • Date: 25th May 2001
  • Summary: (REUTERS -ACCESS ALL) SCU (SOUNDBITE) (English) CHRIS REA IS SAYING..."Well the next one will be very different, after what happened to me health-wise last year, one of the things that stands out in my head as I walked into the hospital to have a ten and a half hour operation, of which there is only a one in three chance of survival, the thing I always remember thinking w
  • Embargoed: 9th June 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: DIETZENBACH, GERMANY
  • Country: Germany
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA871NRGMV13GYPWW3G41EQM7J3
  • Story Text: With his smoky-soft voice and virtuosity on the guitar, Chris Rea has become one of Britain's most successful recording artists. In a career that spans over twenty years, Rea has sold over ten million copies of his nineteen albums.
    Last year however disaster struck when the fifty year old Rea was taken ill with Pancreatitis and had to endure a risky ten-hour operation. Now, although he still suffers pain and is a chronic diabetic, he is beginning to put his career back on the rails and is planning a new album and tour.
    Despite having had a near-brush with death, Chris Rea is very upbeat about the future and is using the concerts that he has had in Germany as a test to see whether he can face a major tour after the summer. And despite rumours that the illness had made him lose his characteristic style in cynical lyric writing, fans will be glad to hear that the next album titled 'Dancing Down The Stony Road' will be full of traditional gritty blues songs.
    "I still think the best (album) is the next one. Enzo Ferrari , when they asked him what his favourite Ferrari was, he always used to say the next one and I feel exactly the same. You still search for something that you can see clearly when you get out of bed on a morning and you're still trying to get that onto a CD; and once you give up, once you become happy with yourself, it's all over."
    Indeed Rea who has enjoyed over two decades of success and produced over nineteen albums is still very much a perfectionist and although his latest album 'King of The Beach' (completed shortly before his illness last June), was hailed as a return to the true Rea sound of albums like 'Auberge' and 'The Road To Hell' Rea is very certain that the best is yet to come....
    "Well the next one will be very different, after what happened to me health-wise last year, one of the things that stands out in my head as I walked into the hospital to have a ten and a half hour operation, of which there is only a one in three chance of survival, the thing I always remember thinking was there are certain kinds of blues songs that I never actually put on record, they are things that I do naturally, but they are very stark and I've never put them on record.
    They are like the songs like the beginning of "Road To Hell' and I thought if I survive this I must do this so that its there, so people can say, well that's what Chris was."
    But having said that Rea knows that for many of his fans the album 'Road To Hell' defines Rea at his best, a fact borne out by its rise to number in the UK album charts back in 1989; Rea's first number one. Indeed this was an album that won him a whole new legion of fans for its gritty and often cynical look at problems in Britain such as crime, tabloid journalism, and, in the case of the track that gave its name to the album, traffic congestion.
    "It actually happened on the motorway, it was the M4 M25 intersection, it was about eight thirty at night, dark November night and I'd just telephoned to say I was twenty minutes from home and two and a half hours later we were still there, we were running out of cigarettes, people were getting out of the car , cos they wanted to go, take a leak. Police were telling people to get back in the cars, there was a helicopter and you actually felt, this feeling that maybe this is it, you know, what happens if we don't get home tonight because the motorway is jammed and I wrote the song there in that car".
    Since his illness last summer Rea has been keen to get back into music and particularly performing, which he loves; if all goes well, a European tour will coincide with the release of the new album, together for the first time with a DVD offering fans an insight into how Rea puts his songs together.
    "There's a major documentary called "Dancing Down The Stony Road' which will be my first ever Chris Rea video DVD, and It'll be a documentary of the making of the record and it will also feature live versions of some of the old songs."
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