Mixed sounds from seven different lives through the years.
The original version of the song was released in the album: ''The Road to Hell''.
The Road to Hell is the tenth studio album, released in 1989. It is Rea's most successful studio album and topped the UK Albums Chart for three weeks.
The second part of the two-part title track, "The Road to Hell (Pt. 2)", is one of Rea's most famous songs, and his only single to reach the UK Top 10.
Lyrics:
Stood still on a highway I saw a woman by the side of the road
With a face that I knew like my own, reflected in my window
Well, she walked up to my quarterlight and she bent down real slow
A fearful pressure paralyzed me in my shadows
She said: Son, what are you doing here?
My fear for you has turned me in my grave
I said: Mama, I come to the valley of the rich, myself to sell
She said: Son, this is the road to hell
On your journey 'cross the wilderness from the desert to the well
You have strayed upon the motorway to hell
Well, I'm standing by a river but the water doesn't flow
It boils with every poison you can think of
Then I'm underneath the streetlights, but the light of joy I know
Scared beyond belief way down in the shadows
And the perverted fear of violence chokes a smile on every face
And common sense is ringing out the bells
This ain't no technological breakdown, oh no, this is the road to hell
And all the roads jam up with credit and there's nothing you can do
It's all just bits of paper flying away from you
Look out world, take a good look what comes down here
You must learn this lesson fast and learn it well
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway
Oh no, this is the road, this is the road, this is the road to hell
After flying into London’s Heathrow Airport after a trip to Milan, Chris Rea was being driven home on the motorway and gave his wife a quick call on a portable phone.
“Wait for me,” he told her. “I’ll only be about 20 minutes.” Unfortunately for the singer, traffic had slowed to a crawl, and he ended up stuck in a standstill for more than three hours.
“It started to get a little bit like a sinister movie,” Rea later said, remembering how he and the driver had to ration cigarettes and got told off by the police for trying to take a wee by the roadside.
With helicopters flying noisily overhead, the situation was so unbearable that Rea swore he saw the ghost of his recently deceased mother impart a message to him from the afterlife.
When he finally got home, he picked up his guitar and wrote the slow gospel-infused lament that became his new album’s opening track, The Road To Hell Pt.1 “Son, what are you doing here? My fear for you has turned me in my grave”.
When recording the album later, at Miraval Studios in France, he had this haunting prelude segue into The Road To Hell Pt.2, an ambulating rocker that would later peak at No.10 in the UK and which remains one of the best Chris Rea songs of all time.
Setting the mood for the album perfectly, The Road To Hell was a gloomy and brooding condemnation of a polluted world in which the river “boils with every poison you can think of” and the pursuit of wealth on the “upwardly mobile freeway” only leads to the fiery pits of the infernal abyss.
Singing in dour and gruff tones, Rea also unloads rolling blues riffs from his guitar as he rages against technological breakdown while combining commuter belt-woes with a memorable chorus fit for any drive-time playlist.
Luke Edwards 02 October 2021
Luke is a freelance music journalist and the founder of the British Music History CZcams channel and website. Formerly Head Of Music at De Montfort University’s student radio station, Demon FM, he has been sharing his passion for music for many years, writing for numerous online publications ever since contributing to the NME Student Guide in 2008. While much of his career has been spent working as a professional marketer and content-marketing strategist, his long-term goal is to use his writing as a springboard to establish himself as a music historian.
This video has been published with absolute respect and admiration for Chris Rea's music.
www.amazon.co.uk/Chris-Rea/e/B000APXKXO/works/ref=ntt_mus_teaser?