The Road to Excel

Chris Rea’s “The Road to Hell” is one of my favourite albums of all time. You probably remember the title track, but the rest of the album is fantastic - great tunes, great production, and some truly phenomenal guitar playing; Chris had a very distinctive hybrid slide playing style, something between Mark Knopfler and Ry Cooder, and it’s all over this record.

Now, back in 2021, when the news headlines was full of reports that COVID patient data was getting lost because of government departments using Excel as a data interchange format, I recorded a version of Chris Rea’s “The Road to Hell” about… well, about exactly that.

I never got the guitars quite right - did I mention that Chris was a phenomenally talented guitar player? After a week or two of of trying to figure out the guitar lines, recording and re-recording licks and solos and never quite getting it all to hang together quite right, I shelved it and it’s been sat in a Dropbox folder ever since.

With the sad news of Chris’ passing this week, I thought perhaps now would be a good time to share it. Not finished, no video, you can hear the rough edges - but here it is.

Rest in peace, Chris. Thank you for the music.