Chris Rea Dies: “Driving Home For Christmas” & “Fool (If You Think It’s Over)” Singer Was 74

Chris Rea, the rock singer who was best known for hits including “Driving Home For Christmas” and “Fool (If You Think It’s Over),” has died following a short illness. He was 74.

“It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Chris,” a spokesperson for Rea’s wife and children told BBC News. “He passed away peacefully in hospital earlier today following a short illness, surrounded by his family.”

Over a 50-year career, Rea became best known for hits including “Driving Home For Christmas” and “Fool (If You Think It’s Over)”.

Born in Middlesbrough in the North of England in 1951, Rea joined local band Magdalene in 1973 and began writing songs. His debut album, Whatever Happened to Benny Santini?, released in 1978, included “Fool (If You Think It’s Over)”.

While “Fool” didn’t break out in the UK, it was Rea’s biggest hit in the U.S., reaching number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earning him a Grammy nomination. Other albums by Rea spent time in the Billboard charts over the years.

He released several more albums and hit new heights with “Driving Home For Christmas,” which was initially released as a B-side in 1986 before being re-released on a compilation album. That re-release garnered serious attention and it has been on the UK Singles Chart every year since 2007, appearing in TV shows like the BBC’s Gavin & Stacey. According to BBC News, he didn’t sing the song live until December 2014, hiring 12 snow cannons and letting them off during the song. It therefore feels apt that Rea died on December 22, as people all over the country are driving home to see relatives for the holiday.

After “Driving Home,” Rea released several more albums that charted well, including The Road to Hell, which was his first number one album in the UK, and Auberge, which followed this to the top spot.

Rea had had health problems in recent years but did release a Christmas album earlier this year, which included “Driving Home For Christmas” and others.

Heh, I suspect Repeal The 17th may not be as sentimental as some of us!

This song makes me extremely sentimental. It is a golden snapshot in time for me. 1978 in particular. I was in the Navy then, and for the first time in my life, found something I was good at, and found I wasn’t a total failure. I found out a lot about myself in that year.

A couple years back, I was at a corporate seminar kind of thing, and one of the exercises was to pull a coin out of your pocket and think of what the year on the coin brought to mind.

My quarter was from 1978. I had a flood of emotion, because that was the jewel in my life on which everything turned. Before and after kind of thing. I was learning how to be a man. Unfortunately, I was the first one called on, and I was choked up and unable to speak. (I had to explain why to some of the people I worked with-they didn’t understand.

But that was the year this song came out, and seeing that date some 35 years after the fact brought back a lot of memories.

For my part, I am sentimental to a fault. My wife of many years rolls her eyes in amusement at me regarding this.

But I won’t ever change. It is too late in life for me to do that now...:)

I agree. I think music reached a very high level in the Seventies. Melodious, meaningful, and musically sophisticated.

And for that era, this song..."Fool"...it is reminiscent of that era.

I just listened to it, and it very nearly made me misty-eyed with nostalgia...

Fool (If You Think It's Over)

A dying flame, you're free again
Who could love and do that to you
All dressed in black, he won't be coming back Save your tears, you've got years and years
The pains of seventeen's
Unreal they're only dreams
Save your crying for the day

Fool if you think it's over
'Cos you said goodbye
Fool if you think it's over
I'll tell you why
New born eyes always cry with pain
At the first look at the morning sun
You're a fool if you think it's over
It's just begun

Miss teenage dream, such a tragic scene
he knocked your crown and ran away
First wound of pride and how you cried and cried
But save your tears you've got years and years

Fool if you think it's over
'Cos you said goodbye
Fool if you think it's over

I'll buy your first good wine
We'll have a real good time
Save your crying for the day
That may not come but anyone
Who had to pay would laugh at you and say

Fool if you think it's over
'Cos you said goodbye
Fool if you think it's over
I'll tell you why

I always found this to be a very poignant song.

I recall with great vividness the first girl I ever really fell in love at the tender age of 16. I had just turned 16 and my father retired from the Navy and moved back to his hometown. I didn't know anyone, and I met her. She had captured my heart in only the way that a lonely, young, displaced 16 year old boy's heart can be captured for the first time-wholly and completely. For me, love like that was an entirely new thing, a lifeline to to a young, drowning, self-conscious teenage boy in a foreign place where everyone made fun of his Southern accent.

After a short, torrid (for me) romance (maybe a month) when she made it clear that "she liked me as a friend", I was honestly heartbroken. I remember laying face down in my bed, not wanting to eat or get up or go anywhere. I had a great, big, black, empty hole in my adolescent chest. It was very, very painful to me.

We were great friends going forward, and that hidden flame burned in me for years and years. I carried her picture with me and wrote letters to her all the time when I was in the Navy, even though it was clear she had moved on.

She died a few short years ago. I went to her funeral. I could, after fifty years, still feel that ache, it was dim, but not gone.

On an interesting note, on the day after I retired, I went to my 50th High School reunion. I did not have any great expectation of fun because I disliked high school intensely, and went with one of my best friends who had been in the same class as me. I note that he also had the same devastating crush on this same girl, had his heart broken by her, and carried the candle for her even longer than I did.

As the end of the evening drew closer, I found myself in a circle of four guys. ALL of us, every one of us, she had been our first love, and each of us in his turn, had his heart completely turned upside down and torn asunder by her! I knew about my friend, as we had many conversations over the years about her, and I vaguely knew of one of the other guys, but four of us?

That girl. Oh, that girl. Brings tears to my eyes to remember.

And that is what this song does for me. It brings back an era in this world, a time in my life, when boundless love and excruciating pain were all intermingled with great music and good times in the mid-to-late Seventies. Ah, nostalgia. It can indeed be sweet.

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