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BBC News - Singer Chris Rea dies age 74 - BBC News
Singer Chris Rea dies age 74 - BBC News
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Saw him in Brighton back in about 1988, really good live.
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I think he made an appearance on the Mortimer and Whitehouse fishing show one Christmas and talked about his health issues then.
I quite often play Auberge and drive workmates around the bend whistling the opening to it.
Will give the Album a play tonight.
RIP Chris
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I met him about 20 years ago. He had some suits made where I used to work. Nice bloke, quite chatty, and absolutely tiny! So many rockers seem to be small. RIP
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Very underrated guitarist .. I’m good friends with his first manager John McCoy who has told me lots of gossip …Chris went to the same Grammer school I went to and is on our school photo .RIP
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Not driving home for Xmas 
Very underrated guitarist. Overshadowed by cheesy Xmas hit, but some fab work on albums from various stages of his career.
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Drivng home for Christmas, apparently written when he was driving home for Christmas. Frustrated with the traffic and just wanting to get home to his family, he penned his thoughts, which reflected his and others feelings/thoughts.
Chris Rea, a musical storyteller. RIP .
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Great guitar player.
He had lots of health issues but still created great music.
Apparently was working on another album recently.
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We saw him a few times and loved his music. Always seemed a really nice guy.
RIP Chris.
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Always liked him and his music
Rip chris …will play his tunes tomorrow .
There was an earlier version of Driving Home for Christmas that I initially heard years before which was/is more bleak & raw & didn’t have the jaunty accompaniment that was on the version that became a hit. It was a much better record than the later version. On Youtube somewhere, I’ll have to try & find it again.
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Nice guy, great music.
Petrolhead.
Ferrari 250 Le Mans TRI61 and 156F1 Replicas.
When the 156 was finished, he had a Ferrari factory engineer who’d worked on the original cars inspect it. The only criticism? “The welding is too good.”
Oh - ‘New Light Through Old Windows’ was remastered earlier this year.
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In the Guardian interview, Rea stated that he never played the song live until 2014 at Hammersmith Odeon; he recalls: “the gig was on 20 December, so the road crew kept badgering me to do it. I went, ‘If I’m going to sing this fucking song, we’re gonna do it properly.’ So, we hired 12 snow cannons. When we started the song, you couldn’t hear it for the noise of the crowd, and we let go with the machines. We put three feet of artificial snow in the stalls. The venue charged me £12,000 to clean it up”
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Saw him a couple of times, back in the day. He was a top performer on the stage.
I remember his family’s cafe on Linthorpe Road in Middlesbrough when I was at college there.
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Brian Cloughs era of Boro footballers used to hang about in there after training ..(Rea’s coffee bar Linthorpe rd not to far from Ayresome Park) Saw them in there many times this was when footie players didn’t have the pompous about them selves ..Chris will have still been in junior school then
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That’s sad!