Top 76 Quotes & Sayings by Chris Rea - Page 2

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!

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

I have found out who are my real friends, thanks to the illness and hospitals.

'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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

You can waste a whole lifetime Trying to be What you think is expected of you But youll never be free

it's not until you become seriously ill and you nearly die and you're at home for 6 months, that you suddenly stop to realize that this isn't the way I intended it to be in the beginning. Everything that you've done falls away and start wondering why you went through all that rock business stuff.

Save your tears, you've got years.

This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway, oh no, this is the road to hell.