I was saddened to hear of the death Chris Rea just before Christmas. He was just 74 but once you read about the various ailments he had suffered over the years it seems he did well to live that long. In 1995 he got peritonitis and nearly died. Pancreatic cancer came along in 2001 which led to diabetes, and then he had a stroke in 2016. Some people are very unlucky when it comes to health issues whereas others, against all the odds, seem to live a very long and charmed life (I’m looking at some octogenarian band members here).
Most of us know that Chris was a Middlesbrough lad, and his accent confirmed that, but I have just found out that his father was an Italian who had come over to Britain and set up an ice-cream factory. The unusual surname, ending in a vowel, should have given a clue but in the world of music you don’t question such things. Chris apparently started dating his wife Joan when he was just 17 so they were together a very long time – she will be bereft.
Chris Rea blended blues, pop, soul and soft rock and made 25 studio albums, featuring chart hits which included The Road to Hell, Driving Home for Christmas, and tracks such as On the Beach and Josephine that earned popularity in the Balearic dance scene.
The one I’m going to share however is On The Beach from 1986. I had a particularly nice summer that year as I went with the flatmates of the time to Zakynthos in Greece for my first ever all-girls holiday. Two of those flatmates I am going to have a Zoom call with tonight as we have a weekend away to plan. Since the kids have grown up and people have started to retire there is much more time for such adventures, and other than my biological family and the family I created with Mr WIAA, it’s the only other family I’ve ever been part of, the urban family we had for nine years in the Aberdeen of the ’70s and ’80s. Not sure if we’ll be planning a weekend in Zakynthos however.
But my beach holiday is not necessarily why I chose to feature this lovely song. I’m going to bore regular readers with a story that I know I’ve mentioned before, but worth retelling I think. One of the flatmates I went on that holiday with ended up moving south in 1987, the same year I moved north to the Highlands (yes, our little urban family had broken up). After moving around a bit over the years she ended up in a lovely house in Berkshire, which had been a gardener’s cottage, but not like any gardener’s cottage I’ve seen. She was too late but it was next door to the house Chris Rea used to own and from which he had recorded the song about the “road to hell” (driving home to Berkshire from London). His recording studio in the garden had shared a party wall with the home office my friend set up there and I often wondered when we went to visit whether On The Beach had actually been made there.
One more story before I go, Chris Rea also had himself a nice summer in 1986 as On the Beach was inspired by a trip to the Spanish island of Formentera off the coast of Ibiza. Chris is quoted as saying, ‘That’s where me and my wife, became me and my wife. That’s what it’s about. Yeah, I was ‘between the eyes of love.’ It’s a lovely island’. In the summer of 1986 I had just come out of a very long relationship which obviously wasn’t going anywhere and is why I was having my first “girls holiday”. We all had a little holiday romance which was exciting indeed but upon my return, looking all tanned and dressed in summery clothes, I met a chap in a local nightspot and instantly fell in love! He worked for a local oil company which was the norm back in the Aberdeen of the 1980s but we spent the next six weeks practically joined at the hip and one of the first things he did was give me the On The Beach album, which I still have. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was, as we just seemed to click so perfectly.
But these chaps who worked for oil companies were slippery characters and as the weeks went by I started to question him about his past and like me he’d had a long-term relationship, but unlike me, he was still in it! I was devastated and felt such a fool. I was out of practice with the rules of dating and had only ever gone out with people whose past I was fully aware of. I had given my ex an ultimatum and accepted that the relationship had to end. My new chap had also been given an ultimatum but was weak, and had a new job lined up in our Scottish capital so they could finally get married (against his will so he said?!). I still believe we had something special that On The Beach summer, and we did speak on the phone a few times after he moved away, but who knows, maybe I was just a massive Fool who was tricked into thinking that. I’ll never know the answer, but I do know he didn’t stay married for long, which is not surprising.
One more song before I go. The version of On The Beach I shared above was the one released as a single, however the original version from the album was a much slower, more contemplative affair. It seems most people now prefer the original, but in case you want to compare and contrast for yourself, here is a clip.
Until next time, RIP Chris Rea, and remember to watch out for slippery characters who work for oil companies.
On The Beach Lyrics
(Song by Chris Rea)
Between the eyes of love I call your name
Behind the guarded walls I used to go
Upon a summer wind there’s a certain melody
Takes me back to the place that I know
Down on the beach
The secrets of the summer I will keep
The sands of time will blow a mystery
No-one but you and I
Underneath that moonlit sky
Take me back to the place that I know
On the beach
Forever in my dreams my heart will be
Hanging on to this sweet memory
A day of strange desire
And a night that burned like fire
Take me back to the place that I know
On the beach
What's It All About? 
Alyson, that is an impressively woven tapestry of diverse threads, all stitched into the pattern of On The Beach. Bravo!
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I suppose I did stitch together a few anecdotes that all connect to On The Beach. It started off as a tribute to Chris but I got carried away – just as I did in the summer of 1986!
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The man from the oil company sounds like a cad and a bounder.
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So the verdict is in – he was a cad and a bounder and I was a FOOL.
With your International Man of Mystery connections you could still probably track him down and bop him on the nose for me, 40 years too late.
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I disagree strongly with your description of yourself as a fool, but happy to bop noses if we can find him. Judging by his previous behaviour I suspect he’s probably on his way to Venezuela as we speak.
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Thanks Ernie for the support and all these years I’ve been thinking it was my fault for being a fool.
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I suspect his name was Rex and he wore red braces. And that his aftershave (probably Kouros) entered a room a good ten minutes before he did.
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I think you’re mistaking Aberdeen for the City of London in the mid 80s – not many chaps called Rex with red braces up here. But I get the point you’re agreeing with Ernie in that he was a cad and a bounder. My eyes are being opened at last.
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Very nice story Alyson and I don’t think bastards like that will ever die out.
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I didn’t think my little anecdote attached to On The Beach would engender such outrage from my male blogging chums. Thanks Walter.
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Lovely post and stories, Alyson, and beautifully woven together with the song as Graeme says. You came through it all very well, I suspect that the cad and the bounder did not…we’ll set Ernie on him anyway. My experiences of working for that oil company were thankfully very different – with lots of lovely sailors and engineers from the tankers, not so many of the type of men who rhymed with that!
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I’ve never shared this anecdote before in my 10 years of blogging and I’m shocked it’s caused such a reaction. To be honest I always thought it was partly my fault as I was a bit naïve and out of practice, so didn’t ask the questions I should have at the start – I was possibly scared of what the answer would be. I should have known though as my work colleague had been similarly tricked the previous year – I mentioned her in my Live Aid post as we all got together in the oil company’s underground carpark to watch the show and have a BBQ. She was too loved up with her new chap to remember much about it, but it turned out he too had a long-term girlfriend elsewhere. There were a lot of broken hearts in Aberdeen around that time as these guys usually had a permanent base elsewhere (often with wives and children) but came to work for the oil companies during the week. If however you were a wife who decided to stay in Aberdeen with the kids whilst your other half headed off to other oil capitals around the world, it was pretty much a given you would split up. Just too many temptations on offer! I’m not being very complimentary about the opposite sex am I, and their ability to resist temptation – probably applied mainly to sectors like the oil industry where there was just so much money about and secondments to glamorous locations. Glad to hear your office was full of much nicer chaps who didn’t exploit their female co-workers.
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By the way we had our Zoom call last night and after a lot of different ideas floating around we decided our March reunion will be in Edinburgh. We all know it well but a lovely city with lots to do. You must come back to Scotland again sometime as I know you loved Edinburgh on that first BlogCon meet-up.
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It’s great that you’ve had such gentlemanly responses to this post! Re. my colleagues at the time, I think there’s a different attitude in the merchant navy too – a lot of the men I worked with would have been in need of female company (she says politely!) when they at sea for months on end (a girl in every port?) but there was often something of an “understanding” with those who had wives at home….! What happens in Singapore/Rotterdam/Milford Haven(!?!) stays in…etc. But they were great to work with when they gave up the sea life and worked in the office and one of my very best friends now for life was one of the Captains (he was not like the above, either!) and very senior ashore. I can totally understand how different they were in your environment, though – and awful that they struck up long-term relationships there, as with you and your friend. You live and learn…
How lovely that you’re reuniting in Edinburgh. Yes, I’d love to revisit Scotland some time. I hope I can find a way to come back and see you there before too long.
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Oh my, I don’t know how I’d feel about having an “understanding” like that with my merchant navy husband. Don’t think I’d like someone being away for months at a time either.
I can’t emphasise enough though how much the oil industry impacted life in Aberdeen back then. Nearly everyone either worked for an oil company or a business servicing those companies. Even my own dad went into the city every day with his team of workers to build office block/warehouse buildings for the industry – they even got a civic award for one. All the friends I saw when back there in the summer were/still are married to people from the oil industry and they’ve had quite a life being posted to all sorts of weird and wonderful places, which can bring its own pressures.
I’m kind of glad I moved north when I did, to a town where everyone knew everyone, so no chance of being “tricked” again. A much more down to earth and normal life. (Although I must admit, it was fun at the time!)
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