Chris Rea – luck and adversity

Chris Rea, English rock and blues singer-songwriter known for his distinctive gravelly voice and slide guitar playing and for Driving Home for Christmas has died. He preferred to see himself as “an ordinary bloke from the grass roots, with a craggy, lived-in face, singing about life”.

  He was born 4 March 1951 in Middlesborough and what leaps out of his chart is a mix of hardship with rolling crises alongside soaring confidence and good luck.  Throughout his life he had serious health problems with pancreatic cancer in his thirties leaving him with diabetes, with further bouts of cancer and a debilitating stroke ten years ago. He died within three months of two of his six siblings.

   He had a musical Pisces Sun conjunct Jupiter; and a Capricorn/Aquarius Moon. His enthusiastic, upbeat Jupiter was on the focal point of a yod inconjunct an ambitious Pluto sextile Neptune, giving him the ability to make his mark on the culture as well as attracting good fortune. But he also had Mars and Venus in Aries opposition Saturn square Uranus in Cancer. The Uranus would give him an uncompromising temperament and the ability to innovate but Mars Saturn would bring considerable setbacks along the way. Two starkly opposing energies.