Anomaly London and Riff Raff pair with Ed Morris to play on the story of a stranded Chris Rea on the Christmas of 1978 when Joan and her MINI came to the rescue.
Despite being revered by peers like Elton John, Eric Clapton and Van Morrison, somehow Rea’s extensive array of hits befuddlingly remains criminally underrated.
His smokey gravely voice, spellbinding guitar melodies and sometimes brilliant songwriting was celebrated throughout the 70’s and 80’s before he largely disappeared from the public eye because of life-threatening illnesses.
Though in the latter stages of his career 70-year-old Rea has devoted himself to his beloved blues, even performing at the Montreux Jazz festival on several occasions.
Unquestionably Rea’s most popular hit “Driving Home For Christmas” that has 310 million plays on Spotify finally has a music video befitting of the classic hit.
The ‘Driving Home For Christmas’ music video features real MINI drivers as they make their road trips to see family and friends, all set to the classic track from English songwriter.
The music video highlights a little-known fact about the song: On Christmas Eve 1978, Chris Rea was stuck in London and needed to get home to Middlesbrough.
His wife, Joan, drove 250 miles to collect him in their black Classic Mini. As they journeyed back in the snow, inspiration struck and so an instant Christmas classic was born.
According to MINI, “Chris Rea never intended to write a Christmas hit and so the song was never released as a single.”
As such there was no music video produced for it, which MINI added, “is a shame because we think the song this good deserves a music video.”
Subsequently MINI asked their community to help create a music video that was a fitting tribute to one of the all-time Christmas songs, with Chris’ blessing of course.
MINI shared that, “Chris Rea was still a young and relatively unknown singer-songwriter when in the winter of 1978 he was faced with the prospect of a rather sad Christmas: he was almost out of his record contract and his manager was leaving him.”
“Standing outside Abbey Road Studios, he was stranded in London, he couldn’t get back to his home in Middlesbrough, as the record company wouldn’t pay for his train ticket.”
After being rescued by his wife, on the snowy drive home Rea looked at the drivers passing by and noticed how miserable they looked which ignited his inspiration for the song.
After arriving home, with only a few hundred pounds in his family’s pocket, the Rea’s were prepared for a lean holiday season. However, waiting for them at home a letter from PRS that his song “Fool (If You Think It’s Over) has been a big hit in the USA and earned him a cheque of £15,000.
Although the Christmas song sat on the shelf for years, when it did eventually release (without any marketing campaign) the song quickly became an annual mainstay in the charts
