Chris Rea

Being on the road isn't hell - it's pure pleasure now.

I feel I've had three careers in one, really. There was the 'Benny Santini' stuff; that came with a general sense of, 'Who the hell is he?' And then there was 'The Road To Hell' stuff, and now there's the blues stuff.

'Fool If You Think It's Over' is still the only song I've ever not played guitar on, but it just so happened to be my first single, and it just so happened to be a massive hit. It was in the U.S. Top 10 for seven weeks.

Rather than missing home when I'm on tour, I miss tour when I'm at home.

I will be happy if I am 60 because I was not supposed to be 60.

Five times a week, I do two hours running and gym work. That's to help with things like blood circulation. Also, it is good to be in shape in case I need to go into hospital again.

As soon as I paid the mortgage off in 1988, I started racing cars.

My father's family were Italian ice cream men, and the knowledge was passed on, so I ran an ice cream van while I was dating my wife.

Back in 1997, I got to race a Ferrari at the famous Monza circuit in Italy - a dream come true.

I read an article about 60 being the new 30 the other week, and I think it's very true. Our generation has not done what previous generations did and just got old and sat in a corner.

Touring is easy. My wife will be with me a lot of the time. We get spoilt rotten, and all I have to do is go on stage in wonderful places and play music.

None of my heroes were big rock stars, and I thought, 'This isn't how it's meant to be.' It wasn't about making music so much as selling it.

I'm lucky to be alive. I'm one of only 40 people who have survived the surgery I had, and when you've been that close to dying, you re-evaluate what's really important to you - and it's nothing to do with fame and money.

Dad was a distant figure, autonomous, a cross between the Pope and Mussolini. He was very Italian, as were all of my uncles, although they were second generation.

I remember my first day at grammar school, being the only person who was me. Everybody else was like everybody else, and there I was, tanned, in a freezing cold playground in the middle of Middlesbrough, wondering what on earth I was doing there.

My father used to control the wholesale of many ice-cream items in Middlesbrough. He was central distributor for most of the region.

Nothing was ever clean enough for my father. You could never clean as good as he could; you could never clean as fast and as thorough as he could.

I've given up my Ferrari - the idea of going through my village in a 488... You can't drive them on English roads.

I think all the business stuff - the promotion, the hype, the high-power lunches, and the permanently injected smiles - is boring.

Once I faced the fact I was going to deal with illness for the rest of my life, I got on with what I really wanted to do.

The first time I arrived in Hollywood for the Grammy Awards, I thought I'd bump into people who mattered, such as Ry Cooder or Randy Newman. I was disappointed to see the people I'd always thought of as pop stars. They would charge around the stage rather than enjoy the music.

The thing that frustrated me is that some people think success is all measured by money.

That is the music that I have always wanted to play: real, genuine guitar music.

I love being on tour. That's the best job in the world, if only I had a different body.

It's bleak behind the Iron Curtain, although they do have the strongest vodka I've ever had in my life.

I never got the chance to put drums on 'Watersigns,' because the company was in a rush to release it - and me.

I've always felt that if people just came to one of my gigs, all would be revealed.

You can't have F1 without Ferrari - you just can't have it. It's part of the theme that is the red car, and a lot of it is to do with the colour.

My family is the No. 1 priority. Next is the motor-racing season.

I had to put me foot down with the first record company. It was about 1975, when singers were being given names like Gary Glitter and Alvin Stardust, so they wanted to call me Benny Santini just because me dad's an Irish-Italian with an ice-cream business!

'Course, 'Santini' bombed in England, y'know. It came out at the height of the New Wave, which couldn't have been a worse time for a solo singer trying to sell rock melodies.

After I got back my career and my artistic freedom in 1982, my golden rule is the music must never suffer.

I actually, truly do love my family. It's not a public relations exercise.

I live halfway between London and the airport, which means I can operate my European career and get home every night. It costs a lot of money, but it's worth it.

I never had a desire to be famous.

The record companies didn't want 'Stony Road,' and it ended up being a gold album. They didn't want 'Blue Guitars,' and we did 165,000 books.

To say that losing your pancreas is a sad thing is not an overstatement. They had to take my pancreas away, my duodenum, and it's damaged for ever.

I'd never intended to write a Christmas hit - I was a serious musician!

You do some crazy things when you're young.

When I came down south and was put together with big producers, I always thought that they knew best. I never thought for a minute that they might have another agenda.

My heroes were gospel blues players like Blind Willie Johnson, Charley Patton, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, not whoever was number one.

I bought a Hofner guitar and amplifier for 32 guineas, then spent ages trying to make a bottleneck. At that point, I was meant to be developing my father's ice-cream cafe into a global concern, but I spent all my time in the stockroom playing slide guitar.

Charley Patton is the original inspiration. I didn't play anything when I was a kid. Then, when I was 20, I went into my mam's bedroom because she had a double mirror, and I wanted to see what the back of my hair was doing. She had an alarm-clock radio, and it came on with this old guy moaning and hollering, playing this strange guitar.

It's impossible for a couple to bring up two children without having lots and lots of arguments.

Music is a saviour for me.

If I'm ever stuck on the M25 - the 'Road to Hell' - I'll wind the window down and start singing, 'I'm driving home for Christmas' at people in cars alongside. They love it. It's like giving them a present.

I didn't have any aspirations to be famous at all.

I was born in the overdub years. I wish there wasn't such a thing as a multitrack tape player, because what you heard would be the record.

That's why I've never made a live album - I can't bear listening to myself!

If the heads of all the music companies had known about music and about Chris Rea fans, they wouldn't have worried about 'Stony Road.' My regular fans have always known that side of me.