23/12/2025
Probably like a lot of a children of a certain age, Chris Rea’s Road To Hell album was inescapable due to dads playing the album in the car. I had no idea what the M25 was and only became aware of its existence as a result of it being mentioned around tbe title track. (Years later I would travel on it every Tuesday and understand the sentiment behind the sing!)
I haven’t heard the album since that period, but I always had a massive soft spot for album track Tell Me There’s A Heaven. I have a very strong memory of hearing Dave Les Travis talking about a track, intriguingly bigging it up, before revealing all and playing Tell Me…(I know we can scoff at the Hairy Cornflake now, but that endorsement of a track I loved felt like some validation to me at that young age )
Skip forwards a few years to working in a record shop and Rea is one of those dadrock jokes to us. He releases an album called La Passione which doesn’t sell very well, apparently with an accompanying film starring Paul Shane, the Ted from hi-de-hi…as a film maker myself I think this sounds dreadfully naff…
But then years later, beyond such judgemental behaviour of Rea and his music, myself and a handful of work colleagues get invited to an event in the hallowed halls of Abbey Road Studios tied into Rea’s reimagining/ rejigging of that La Passione album.
In one of the massive 3 legendary studios there are in typical painter fashion “variations on a theme” - lying flat on tables, leaning on the tables against walls, on the floor leaning against table legs are paintings Rea has done - obsessive variants inspired by Ferrari, the logo, the red, white and green of the Italian flag. Thick oil paints which have then been covered in layers of varnish, making them feel set in amber or tantalisingly behind glass.
Afterwards we go up to the studio control room where Rea joins us - about 7 of us with him and his manager, which feels crazy intimate audience - he shows us a clip of the newly rejigged film, which was been adjusted with footage shot by himself and his manager on flip phones, going around iirc a now disused race track with deteriorating audience stands.
I had no idea about Rea’s background, his Italian father and the family ice cream business, the obvious influence of Italian culture in his life and a boyhood obsession with racing cars - in particular Ferrari - which had resulted in this very personal project, including his restoration of a very rare Ferrari race car.
He was wonderfully warm, funny, humble, so self depreciating about himself, joking about the paintings driving his wife crackers and they’ll all probably just go back in his large shed at the bottom of the garden. I thought he might have told us to take a painting away each to ease the number going back.
I was really taken by his independent spirit, that post pancreatic cancer he’s decided to indulge and make the music he wanted to make, packaged how he wanted to make it. Thankfully he was in a privileged position, personally bankrolled by his 80s and 90s success and THAT Christmas song. But what a great position to be in and who could begrudge him revisiting a project which meant so much to him. Someone who was totally independent, recording in his own studio, making his own films, releasing the music independently- it’s all a very DIY/ self sufficient approach which is celebrated and recognised in punk artists, but less so in others. I wanted to offer my filmmaking services to him in the future as it seemed crazy he was making this project using just flip phones and being happy with the results.
Still, I came away that day with a very fun happy memory and massive respect and warmth for him. I’d always meant to get around to approaching him to come and do The Defining Ten - I knew he was far too big an artist, but I’ve always been interested in trying to get the equivalent of a whale into the fishbowl size of the Cellar Arts Club, and there was something in him at that period of his life that made me think he might have been up for it, just for the craic. That it’s not about the money anymore, it’s doing what he wants to do.
I’ve looked up the La Passione album several times over the years, intrigued by it, but still never listened to it. I don’t think it ever twigged that it’s predominantly a film score (something apparently Rea always wanted to get into, didn’t plan on being a “rock star”) with only a few vocal performances, one of which by Shirley Bassey. Strangely the original album, nor the rejigged version is on Apple Music, but I listened to the Shirley track today on YouTube and it’s fabulous - a real mix of classic sumptuous Italian cinema soundtrack, but also with an apt Italo Disco element. Feels like it’s ripe for rediscovery.
https://youtu.be/fm4uVzwPYks?si=Bvn2acxT6Ln_WRW9
I’ve also just listened to Tell Me There’s A Heaven for the first time in decades. Possibly a bit schmaltzy, quite why it took me so much when I was younger I have no idea, but there’s a cinematic grandeur and again an Italian influence in the instrumentation that I would have never tuned into in my dad’s Cortina (or maybe we were onto another car by then - I only remember the green Marina and silver Cortina, then the cars became all the same)
https://youtu.be/NfruvAT01EI?si=Jx6zTWkewwB8k9ru
I love this dance tune. I found a clean copy at a Russian video site. “Disco La Passione” was written for Shirley by Chris Rae for the 1996 movie “La Passio...
