Interviews
Chris Rea talks to Britsound
Interview with Chris Rea on Britsound, November 23rd 2005.
Chris Rea has just released his final project, the 11-CD book, 'Blue Guitars.' Rob Quicke and Len O'Kelly interview Chris about this final release...
RQ: Are you happy with the finished result? Did the final product actually match your original vision?
CR: As much as is possible. When you’re the type of person I am, you’re never happy. Everybody laughs at you and says “come on Chris, you’ve got to…”, I have to be dragged off it, you know, because I just love doing it and I can never get happy, but it’s definitely the best thing I’ve ever done without a doubt it was the most fun that I’ve ever done.
RQ: Originally the idea was to do a 50 CD version, is that correct?
CR: 15 CDs in a book it was, and it was going to be every single kind of blues that I’ve ever come across, not just American blues, and we got to the point where we just couldn’t close the book and in the end I had to give up three.
RQ: You had to give up on three. Now what will happen to this extra material? Will it ever come out?
CR: Well, with me just it normally goes in the river! I write all the time and what’s happened over the last 20 years is, I tend to keep what’s ever close to a release schedule other than that, unfortunately, it just goes off into space, because I write everyday. It’s what I live for, I love it.
RQ: Now you said in an interview, in the liner notes in ‘Blue Guitars’, that if you were to go under a bus tomorrow then this book would be “what Chris Rea did”, that this will be it. Now that you’ve done this project, how we should regard all your earlier work before you discovered the blues?
CR: Well you see I didn’t discover the blues, I discovered the blues 25 years ago. And that’s why I bought my first guitar, and a lot of crazy things happened along the way. And it’s not until you become seriously ill and you nearly die and you’re at home for 6 months, that you suddenly stop to realize that this isn’t the way I intended it to be in the beginning. Everything that you’ve done falls away and start wondering why you went through all that rock business stuff. As far as my fans are concerned, they don’t have a problem with Chris Rea. They don’t see as it ‘Blues’, they’d say you can call it what you want. Most fans just think it’s Chris Rea without the frills, without too much glossy production.
RQ: You said in an interview that the condition of creating is very much like or very similar to autism, what did you mean by that?
CR: You can’t switch it off, that’s what makes people creative. People on the outside call it talent and people on the inside laugh and say it’s not actually talent it’s a condition, because you have to also learn of the negative side of it as well. And you know, when I was seriously ill at home I found this out, I mean you can’t switch it off. And it can either work in a positive way or a negative way. And I think that’s why I was born to be a blues player and blues singer, because there’s a natural thing about blues guys that have certain feelings, that we call the blues and when you actually play them and sing them you feel better after you’ve sung out your troubles. I definitely do think it’s linked. You know, any guy who does 11 CD’s in 12 months has definitely got something wrong with him!
RQ: Chris let me ask you about the response because obviously you had to set up your own label. Is that because you weren’t allowed to do this by your former record company?
CR: I was never allowed to go anywhere near the blues. They could make it very difficult from me, if I tried to be dogmatic about it, and I’ve always had a problem, you know. I never wanted to be a rock star and therefore I’ve never been actually famous enough to threaten a corporate record company. You know if Madonna or somebody like that wants to pull the plug, everybody gets frightened, but if Chris Rea wants to pull the plug because he’s not a global famous rock star, then I have to box a little bit more clever because, I’m just a writer and a musician. They definitely didn’t see Stony Road - they all said that would never be a hit. So we did it ourselves, and they’re now very perplexed because it was a gold record and they don’t know why.
RQ: But isn’t it obvious that this is the music that you wanted to do all along, so therefore it would be even more Chris, even more authentic?
CR: It’s just my first love. You know if you take music as romance, then blues was my first love you know, it’s my wife. And it’s with me all the time, and I just adore it. I’ve been lucky because, although I haven’t been lucky in health, I’ve been very lucky in record sales and, when you recover from an illness and you’ve sold 22 million records, you are in a position, thank God, to say “well it doesn’t matter now, I can do what I like with or without the corporates.” Obviously it’s difficult because you don’t have the marketing budgets cooperates now have, but, I’m happy.
LOK: Chris I thought you did a fantastic job capturing the Chicago Blues feel on the album. Who were some of your influences?
CR: J.B. Hutto and Muddy Waters obviously. All of those Chess guys. One of the things that, that was such a pleasure for us, was actually building the studios each month to get the correct sound, and we did a lot of research, a lot of telephone calls, read a lot of books, talked to a lot of producers. We found out about the ambience of the room. And we only used the type of microphones that they would’ve used then. We only used the type of amplifiers and guitars they would’ve used then. And for us it was like being children in a sweet shop, you know, in a candy store, because to go all the way through your life with these musicians and then to suddenly make your own little Chicago album, it was just goose bumps.
LOK: So it would, it would seem to reason then that this was a fairly expensive album to make, with all of that research and time spent on the on the details?
CR: Well it wasn’t, because it’s my own time and the reason we could keep the book at a cheap price, because I didn’t want fans not to be able to buy it, because it was so expensive. So in a way what I did was I hired Chris Rea, but I didn’t pay him. (Laughter). I told Chris Rea, he’d have to wait for the money, you know.
LOK: I don’t recall you ever having played a concert date in Chicago. Have you ever done that, or it could be that I just missed it?
CR: No, I’ve only ever done three concerts in the whole of America, can you believe that? I’ve done a small club in Texas. I did LA and I did New York. I always had trouble with record companies in America. I think it was because the way, the way my deal was structured in England. I was a subsidiary of whomever they took on in America. And America never really, happened for me, and we were so busy in Europe, because I was fortunately selling in every single country in Europe, so that’s just like the states in terms of volume. I never really had the need to go. You know, although I loved the music better than any other kind. I didn’t feel like I had to go and leave my family. I’d love to fly in to Chicago to do a concert. I mean that would be like going to the home of Ferrari or something.
RQ: If you were to ever come to America, you’d have our full support.
CR: Well that’s nice to know. I know a lot of American musicians you know, who don’t seem to have a problem with Chris Rea. It’s just, well it’s been one of those funny little things with the record companies, it’s never quite happened. You know if, if you’re in England and you signed a Warner Brothers and, you get caught with a certain record company that’s a subsidiary of Warner’s in America, and they’re not actually doing the kind of music that Chris Rea wants to do, then you’re in trouble from the word go. This kind of thing often happened, you know, and I was never a California person. I used to get very impatient with the way things were in LA. And, I certainly didn’t know how to play that game.
RQ: This is your final release and this is your final tour, is that correct?
CR: I think it will be as Chris Rea, unless I can find a way around my problem. I don’t have a pancreas anymore. And on the good side people say ‘well, you know you should be dead and you survived’. But on the bad side I have to live with the side effects of this, and it makes touring very difficult. And I have to take a lot of heavy kind of drugs you know, so that we don’t have anything go wrong on a gig night. And the doctor’s don’t want me to do this, five days a week, for many, many months. They say, ‘one more tour Rea’ and then you’ve got to find a way of only gigging twice a week, for example. And so I’ve got to find a musical way that I can operate that way. It’ll give me something to think about that’s for sure.
RQ: Let me ask you though, that’s very sad to hear that this is the final release of Chris Rea, and you’ve got to admit there’s a certain sadness about this isn’t there?
CR: I don’t really know. I can’t afford to think too much about how I sad it is, otherwise I’d get depressed. I have to think, which is typical of Chris Rea and that’s how I survived what happened to me, “okay, this is another challenge, how do I get around it”? And you never know, it might be a case where, if the only way I can logistically tour is with the bass player and drummer, and then I have to cut my musical cloth according to that, you never know, the music might be even better! My guitar techs think that it would be a gift from God if that’s what had happened, if it had forced me into going out as a three piece. A lot of guys would be over the moon because they tend to think that big bands bury what I do. So you never know. The Memphis FireFlies will still have Chris Rea as its singer and slide guitar player. It’s just the material may have to be altered.
RQ: And let me ask you though, I see a sort of irony because you’ve said in an previous interview that, in many ways you had a fear of fame and a fear of standing out, but what you’re talking about here is going out with a really stripped down band, really sort of getting to the raw essence of the songs. In many ways that’s being more exposed than ever before, don’t you think?
CR: Yes, that’s why it would be a challenge to me, you know because, I’m the opposite of an egomaniac and I’ve learned a lot doing this blues book. The guys, you know my bass player and my drummer, they have to do an awful lot of pushing Chris, to be as primitive with the sound as what’s needed. At first, when I did the Country Blues album, I was saying to everybody, “no there’s too many mistakes” and “can we get away with this sound, it sounds like the 1930’s” and they’re all laughing and saying “but that’s how you want it Chris, leave it alone!” And they’re helping me an awful lot and maybe it makes for an even better Chris Rea record.
RQ: You’ve never released a live album have you, it’s only ever been studio albums, why is that?
CR: Because every time I look at myself, or listen to myself live, I just run away. And, a lot of guys object to it. They say, “just because of one mistake or something, you’re just throwing away one of the slide solos ever.” Because the band and my manager want me to, because this might be the last Chris Rea as Chris Rea, this convinced me that we should do a live DVD and a live CD. And we’ll be doing that, at Newcastle City Hall during the tour.
LOK: Out of all the different types of blues you’ve put into this compilation; can you pick one as a favorite? Of all the work that’s in this book, what are you perhaps most proud of?
CR: I think there’s one track on Country Blues! (Laughter). And everything else I’m saying, “Oh, my God, I can do it better.” It’s KKK Blues, because I play the slide solo and then Sylvan plays an African solo, a Senegal musical scale on a dobro. And something there happens, but it’s completely, absolutely spiritual, it makes us all get goose bumps in the studio when we hear it. As soon as Sylvan starts playing the Senegal link, suddenly the whole track starts sounding like a track from Porgy and Bess, and within that track you can see the whole history of where Senegal met Miles Davis, it’s amazing. And it was an accident, and it’s one of those wonderful accidents.
RQ: We wish you all the very best with the tour and hope the album and the book continues to sell really well.
CR: Thanks very much!
