“The reason for the album is that we go in and out of town in England very slowly these days – lots and lots of traffic jams – and, because I’m always writing in my head, I started to notice as I looked to the left in the traffic jams all the different couples each day that I would see, and I started to think, Are they man and wife, are they lovers, should they not be together? Each car has a story. That’s what gave me the idea for all of the songs. They’re all like mini film stories of two people while they’re in a car together.”Chris Rea (1133)

“I stayed in a motel, to do with my passion, which is motor racing – we always use these cheap motels near the circuit. And I saw this guy, sat at the bar, and I just knew his story without even talking to him. He started talking to the waitress and it was very much a “bartender, this drink’s on me” kind of feel. He was obviously a traveling salesman and now he’s just keeping going instead of having fantastic dreams. And so, she becomes the “Angel Of Love”.”Chris Rea (1133)

“‘Happy On The Road’ is a truck driver. And a funny thing happened with the truck driver. I’m in a traffic jam and he’s singing away with the window open, and this guy couldn’t be happier high up there in the truck cab. Yeah, there are some people that are actually ‘happy on the road’.”Chris Rea (1133)

“As in the same traffic jam, that’s what all the guys and girls are doing: They’re on their way into the city. We have a joke, and it nearly got into the song: The only way you can explain something to people, sometimes, is 12 percent. They get out of bed in the morning and they see 12 percent. They get in the bathroom, they have a shower, they see 12 percent. You can explain the whole world just with the phrase 12 percent. We’ve become obsessed with it in England, and we actually don’t do anything. We don’t walk, we don’t sit in forests and think this is a beautiful day. From my point of view, England is in a bad way in that respect. Everybody is just material, material, material. [What does the 12 percent represent? – Ed] Profit. It’s pure and simple. Why is this man phoning you? Because he’s looking for his 12 percent. Why is this man smiling and shaking? Watch your pocket, he’s after 12 percent.”Chris Rea (1133)

“We’d reached the point where we’d bought a house, I had a child, we were happy. We’d kept the wolf from the door and things were okay. I was in this place called Chisel Hill, which is in the Yorkshire Dales near a place called Whitby, and I remember being happy that day and wrote that song all in one quick go, like you do sometimes. And now when I listen to the lyrics it can be very, very emotional because we all get caught up in life and yet, whoever wrote that song back then, he must have been a really happy guy. Yeah, that song gets me.”Chris Rea (1133)

“With ‘Josephine,’ the song, which was a huge hit over in Europe, I’m always on the third floor of the Intercontinental Hotel in Dusseldorf in Germany and it’s raining. That’s where I am when I sing that song, every time. [You’re in that hotel, and you’re on the road, and your daughter was probably very young – Ed]. Yeah, and I was missing her. It was the third floor and it was pouring with rain. That’s how all the songs are with me.”Chris Rea (1133)

“That was Formentera, a little island off Ibiza in Spain. That’s where me and my wife became me and my wife. That’s what it’s about. Yeah, I was “between the eyes of love.” It’s a lovely island if ever you’re in Europe.”Chris Rea (1133)

“If you read carefully between the lines in the song I didn’t want to be there, I was only there because she was there. That was the whole idea. I used to write these little film scripts, just for fun. One page kind of ideas, treatments and it’s like, you know, there’s a guy has gone to Giverny because of a woman that’s in Giverny. He hasn’t gone to see Monet at all and so there’s kind of a funny twist to it.”Chris Rea (1337)

“A little bit of self-experience with pressure. It’s about the way people carry a quiet burden. And nobody is aware of how unhappy that person is because they never show it and they’re very good at hiding it. And then, all of a sudden, you get a phone call saying something’s happened to somebody and everybody is shocked because they never knew he was feeling that way.”Chris Rea (1133)

“It’s a great story because my wife used to drive down in a Morris 1000, pick me up and drop me all the way back to Middlesbrough, and it was snow, snow, snow all the way back. One point, near Nottingham, we had to wait for a snowplough to come – got completely stuck – and I’m writing this thing about cheering up and never mind, you know.”Chris Rea (1136)

“I’ve been with Joan [wife – Ed] since 1968. To this day, still. We actually now can’t remember our lives without each other, you know. It’s gone into something completely quite amazing really if you look at it and she was just a Stainsby Girl [Stainsby is a village on the outskirts of Middlesborough – Ed]. Stainsby Girls were Marianne Faithfull types, you know, that kind of Jean Shrimpton. They all had long hair they were all a little bit scruffy, a bit Rolling Stones, and we looked up to Stainsby Girls all of us.”Chris Rea (1138)

“I came in and on Sky News they’d had this thing in South Africa. There was a riot and they were doing this horrible thing of throwing lighted tires over people. Somebody inside Sky News told me they were waiting for the footage. If the footage of this poor guy turned up, it was in the news. If the footage didn’t turn up, it wasn’t even in the news and that’s when I started to get very grumpy, you know, because you start to see news as pornography. If we have something horrible, it’s news. If we don’t, it’s not news and I hate it, still to this day, you know, seeing things that are only there because they think that everyone’s gonna wanna watch it. That’s what “You Must Be Evil” is about, the media turning pornography.”Chris Rea (1139)

“Joan’s Dad was staying with us, Joan’s Mam and Dad was staying with us, and he was saying he didn’t know what to say to Josie because she saw it. She’s eating her dinner and it was on the 6 o’clock news [see You Must Be Evil – Ed]. I said, “well what did you say to her?” He said, “I said well he’s gone to heaven,” and then I just went up to see her – this is how songs happen – you see her, she’s asleep and you look out the window and suddenly you go okay so Grandad said there’s a heaven, I’d like someone to tell me there’s a heaven in this world. That’s where these song ideas come from, it was all off that 6 o’clock news and I could see the whole world just becoming horrible very quickly.”Chris Rea (1139)

“When I got very, very ill it changed my life. I lost my pancreas and I nearly died. Things were never going to be the same. I went down to eight stone and my poor wife had to bring me back. She said, “Why don’t you make a record imagining it would have been your first record and what you would have done if you’d had the chance to just do what you like and love?” And so, I made the album, which was then called Stony Road.”Chris Rea (1133)