Okay, I'm going to take you back to a very specific
moment in time. Just picture it. It's November
4th, 1996. Ah, 1996. The mid -90s are just in
full swing at this point. Exactly. You turn on
the radio, you're probably hearing the Spice
Girls, Raya, or maybe Oasis is fighting with
Blur and the Tabloids. It's that era. But then
you walk into a record store and you see a new
CD single on the shelf that... Honestly, it looks
like a hallucination. It really creates a bit
of cognitive dissonance when you see those two
names together. Totally, because on the cover,
you have two artists who, up until this exact
moment, existed in completely different universes.
Completely different. In one corner, you have
Chris Rea, the guy with that signature gravel
in his voice, the slide guitar, the man who gave
us the road to hell. Right, a musician who is...
Really defined by a very specific type of blues
rock authenticity. He's very organic, very grounded.
You don't associate him with glitter or dance
floors. No, not at all. And then in the other
corner you have the dame, Shirley Bassey. The
absolute icon. The voice of Goldfinger, the woman
who belts out Diamonds Are Forever while wearing
gowns that probably cost more than my house.
She is the absolute epitome of high camp, orchestral.
dramatic pop. I mean, she is show business with
a capital S. So November 4th, 1996, these two
titans collide. And what do they give us? It's
not a blues track. It's not a James Bond theme.
They release a track called Disco La Passione.
Which is, and this is where it gets incredibly
confusing, a dance pop track about disco. written
by a blues guitarist for a film about Ferraris.
It is, without a doubt, the single weirdest artifact
I have come across in a long time. And that right
there is our mission for this deep dive today.
It's a fantastic topic. We are going to unpack
this entire collaboration just to give you a
quick overview of what we're working with. We've
got the original documentation regarding the
singles release, the official credits, which
are shocking, by the way, and the background
on the movie that spawned this whole thing. Plus
the chart performance records, both in the UK
and across Europe. Right. We really want to understand
how a massive box office disappointment produced
this lasting musical oddity. We'll examine the
specific personnel who actually made it happen,
and we have to talk about that wild discrepancy
between its UK and European reception. Because
it really is a story of two completely different
markets reacting to the exact same piece of art.
Exactly. So let's start with the vehicle itself,
because this wasn't just, you know, a random
duet Chris Rea decided to record on a Tuesday
afternoon. This was part of a massive multimedia
project called La Passion. Yeah. And project
is definitely the right word here, because this
was clearly Chris Rea's baby. The source material
explicitly describes the film La Passion as a
semi -autobiography written by Rea. Semi -autobiography.
That is such a loaded term, isn't it? It implies
he's really putting his soul on the screen. He
absolutely was. This was not a standard work
-for -hire soundtrack gig where a studio just
hands a musician a script. Rea was driving the
entire narrative. No pun intended with the Ferraris.
Right. But it was about his childhood fascination
with motor racing. Specifically, the imagery
of Wolfgang von Tripps and the 1961 Sharknose
Ferrari. It's a very personal, very specific,
almost dreamy landscape that he was trying to
paint visually. And to paint that landscape,
he needed a star. And somehow, against all odds,
he convinced Shirley Bassey to be in the movie.
And I don't just mean she sang the theme song
over the closing credits. No. And this is a crucial
detail that so often gets overlooked when people
talk about her career. The records show that
La Paz no, actually mark Shirley Bassey's feature
film debut. That just blows my mind. It is wild.
I mean, she had been a global superstar since
the 1950s. You're telling me she never acted
in a feature film until 1996. That's right. She'd
done endless television, concert specials, variety
shows. She was on TV constantly. But a dramatic
role in a theatrical feature film? No. This was
it. Which really speaks to how persuasive Chris
Rea must have been in those meetings. He must
have been incredibly passionate. He clearly sold
her on this grand artistic vision where his music
and the film would just seamlessly blend together.
So you've got the blues legend, the diva making
her acting debut, the semi -autobiographical
script. I mean, it sounds ambitious. Ambitious
is certainly one word for it. How did that ambition
translate to ticket sales? Well, the documentation
is actually quite brutal on this front. It explicitly
describes the film as a disappointment at the
box office. Which is the polite industry way
of saying it completely bombed. Unfortunately,
yes. It just didn't connect. It was perhaps too
niche or maybe too dreamy and abstract. It didn't
find a mass audience. Right. And usually in the
entertainment industry, when a vanity project,
and I use that term loosely, but that's how it
was seen, fails, it takes everything down with
it. The movie disappears from theaters, the soundtrack
gets deleted from the catalog, and everyone involved
just quietly pretends it never happened. But
that is the magic of the music industry versus
the film industry. A movie can be pulled from
theaters in a week, but a song, a song is slippery.
It can escape the wreckage. Exactly. The soundtrack
artifact often separates itself entirely from
the movie artifact, and that is exactly what
happened here. Despite the film's total failure,
the label, East West Records, decided to pivot.
They pushed the single anyway. So let's get into
the track itself. Disco La Passione. We've called
it dance pop based on the sources, and the title
literally has the word disco right there in quotes.
But when you actually look at the liner notes.
This is not your normal disco track. Not at all.
I mean, if you were looking at a standard dance
track from 1996, say something by Jamiroquai
or the Spice Girls, you would see a long list
of session musicians, synth programmers, maybe
a specific producer who is famous for making
dance beats. Right. A whole team of club specialists.
But look at the credits here. Look at who was
actually playing the instruments on this dance
track. This is where Chris Ray's involvement
goes from passionate songwriter to obsessive
creator because the credits list Chris Ray on
bass, Chris Ray on drums, Chris Ray on guitars,
and Chris Ray on keyboards. He is the rhythm
section. He's the entire band. He is. He's a
one -man band on a disco track. That just stops
me in my tracks every time I read it. You have
Chris Ray, the Road to Hell guy. Literally sitting
behind a drum kit in the studio laying down a
four -on -the -floor disco beat. It's incredible.
Yeah. And it creates a really fascinating sonic
texture. Because Chris Rea is not a trained disco
drummer. He's a rock and blues musician. Yeah,
totally a different feel. Exactly. When a session
drummer plays disco, they play with a certain
snap, a certain looseness in the hi -hats. Rea
plays it. Well, he plays it like a songwriter
building a track layer by layer in a studio.
So it has a different energy? Precisely. It gives
the track a slightly rigid, almost muscular feel
you just don't get in highly polished club records.
It sounds handmade. Handmade disco. I love that.
So you had this handmade, slightly stiff rhythm
section built from the ground up by a blues guitarist,
but he wasn't alone in the studio. No, he wasn't.
And this is where the clack of worlds really
happens on the record. You have Rhea down in
the engine room providing the groove, but the
single explicitly credits Shirley Bassey as...
A co -performer. And the source notes mention
that that's unusual for Bassey. Very unusual.
It implies a true partnership. Usually, she is
the undeniable star and the backing band is just,
you know, wallpaper. Right. They're just there
to support her. Exactly. But here, she's sharing
the billing directly with him. And to make it
even bigger, to really push it over the top,
they didn't just use a cheap synthesizer for
the strings. No, they brought in the heavy artillery.
They brought in the Gavin Wright Film Orchestra.
Conducted by Max Middleton. So try to visualize
this incredible stack of sound for a second.
Okay. At the very bottom, you've got Chris Wray
playing bass and drums by himself. The handmade
groove. Right. Then in the middle, filling out
the frequency spectrum, you have a massive, lush,
wildly expensive film orchestra. Sweeping strings.
Sweeping strings. And then on the very top, Shirley
Bassey giving it full, dramatic. diva vocals.
It's a Frankenstein's monster of a song. It really
is. It's combining three things that really shouldn't
work together at all. You've got blues rock musicianship,
film score orchestration and dance pop camp.
And yet somehow it has this weird undeniable
charm. It actually captures the passion of the
title because it just feels so earnest. Yeah
it's not cynical. Not at all. They were making
a joke. They really went for it. Okay, so the
label, East West Records, they have this track.
The movie has completely flopped, but they believe
in the song. How do they actually sell this to
the public in 1996? That's the challenge, isn't
it? Because we have to remember, you couldn't
just throw it on a Spotify playlist and see if
the algorithm liked it. You had to convince people
to walk into a shop, pull out their wallets,
and buy a physical disc. The release strategy
here is fascinating because you can see the label
trying to cover every possible demographic to
recoup their losses. They didn't just release
the song. They released a whole toolkit. I was
looking at the format lists in the documentation.
There was a European CD, a UK Maxi CD, a 12 -inch
vinyl. What is the difference between all these
versions? So the European two -track CD contained
what they called the film version. That one is
just under five minutes long. Okay, so 4 .54
to be exact. Right. And that's the orchestral
cinematic experience. It's the song as it was
largely intended for the movie. But that European
CD also included the Adams and Gehlen 12 -inch
mix, which runs over five minutes. Adams and
Gehlen. Now that sounds like a production team
aimed squarely at the nightclubs. Exactly. That
mix is extended. It'd have longer intros and
outros. It's explicitly designed for a club DJ
to mix in and out of their set. And the UK version
had even more stuff on it, right? It did. The
UK Maxi CD and the 12 -inch vinyl included the
film version, the 12 -inch mix. But they also
added the Adams and Gehlen 7 -inch mix, which
is a shorter three -minute radio edit and an
instrumental track called Horses. Horses. I just
love 90s B -side titles. They're great. But if
you look at the intent behind that track list,
it tells a story. The film version is for the
dedicated Chris Rea fans and the few people who
might have actually seen the movie. Right. For
those Adams and Geelan remixes, those are a targeted
weapon aimed directly at the dance floor. The
label was explicitly trying to manufacture a
club hit out of a failed film soundtrack. They
were trying to strip the whole box office flop
stigma away from the song and just make it a
standalone banger. Precisely. They wanted it
to exist independently, where people dancing
wouldn't even know or care about the movie. So
that brings us to the million dollar question.
Did it work? Did the dance floors of the world
actually embrace this Rhea Bassey disco experiment?
This is where we get a tale of two distinct markets.
It's actually quite a stark contrast in the data.
Let's start with the good news. Where did it
actually land? The good news is that the European
strategy largely worked. The single is described
in the sources as having sold well on the continent.
Specifically, it cracked the top 40 in both the
Dutch charts and the Belgian charts. OK, so the
Dutch and the Belgians picked up on it. They
understood the assignment. There is often a greater
appreciation for that specific mix of orchestral
melodrama and heavy dance beats in mainland Europe.
It found its audience there. That makes sense.
Eurodance was massive. But then we have to look
closer to home. The UK. I mean, Chris Wray is
British. Shirley Bassey is a British institution.
This really should have been a homecoming victory
lap for both of them. It should have been. And
instead, it resulted in a statistic that is genuinely
heartbreaking if you follow the mechanics of
music charts. Lay it on us. What happened? In
the UK singles chart, Disco La Passione peaked
at number 41. Number 41. Number 41. Oh, that
stings so much. It really does. For anyone listening
who maybe didn't grow up obsessed with the Sunday
chart show on the radio, you have to explain
why 41 is infinitely worse than, say, landing
at number 50. It is the psychological cliff edge
of the music industry. Yeah. The top 40 is the
golden circle. If you are in the top 40, you
get played on the BBC Radio 1 chart show, which
is the most important radio show in the country
for a pop artist. You get the exposure. Exactly.
You get printed in the main section of the music
magazines. You are officially, undeniably a hit.
And if you are number 41? You are totally invisible.
You literally just missed the cutoff. It means
you sold records, people did buy it, but you
fell short by perhaps just a few hundred copies.
It's the difference between being part of the
national conversation. and being written off
as a flop. It's like running a full marathon
and tripping over your shoelaces one single inch
before the finish line. That's a perfect analogy.
And considering the movie had already flopped,
that number 41 position must have felt like a
final insult from the universe. Yeah, a double
failure. Right. The visual project failed, and
the audio project missed the benchmark by a single
digit. That is brutal. But, and this is the twist
that I really love about this deep dive today,
we are still talking about it. The story didn't
end at number 41. And more importantly, Shirley
Bassey didn't bury the song. She certainly didn't.
And I think this speaks volumes about her instincts
as a live performer. Chart positions are temporary,
but repertoire is forever, right? Exactly. The
sources note that she performed the song frequently
live during 1996 and 1997. She actually kept
it in the set list. Even after the chart disappointment.
She did. And she didn't just play it at obscure
small gigs either. A live recording of the song
was immortalized on her 1997 CD, The Birthday
Concert. Now that is a seal of approval right
there. Definitely. You do not put a song on a
major milestone live album if you're ashamed
of it. Exactly. She must have recognized that
regardless of the chart number, the song worked
with a live audience. It got a reaction in the
room. And they had the music video too. Which
I think is an interesting piece of the puzzle
because of how it repurposed the film. Yes. The
music video was composed entirely of performance
footage taken directly from the film. So in a
weird way, the best looking parts of the movie.
The lighting, the costumes, the drama. Right.
All of that was preserved and repackaged in the
music video. It's almost like a lifeboat for
the visuals. The movie itself sinks at the box
office, but the video rafts away to safety on
MTV. That's a great way to put it. It allowed
the visual aesthetic of La Passion to survive.
even if the cinematic narrative didn't. I want
to zoom out a bit here because we've been deep
in the weeds of 1996, but I want to look at where
this song actually sits in the massive decades
-long careers of these two people. It's important
context. Because when I look at Chris Rea's discography,
this song sticks out like a sore thumb. It is
a profound outlier. If you think about his absolute
pillars, The Road to Hell, A Burge, On the Beach,
these are songs defined by atmosphere, by the
blues, by that slide guitar. They're driving
songs. Driving Home for Christmas is the ultimate
example. It's warm, fuzzy, comforting rock. Exactly.
And then you have La Passione, a disco -themed
film soundtrack where he locks himself in a studio
and plays everything himself. It shows a side
of Rhea that the casual listener might never
expect. A willingness to just experiment. Right.
To step completely outside his established brand
to chase a very specific, weird idea. Do you
think that's why it remains so interesting to
music historians? Because it's Chris Rea just
refusing to be boxed in as the blues guy. I think
so. It creates this fascinating tension in the
music. You can hear his musical DNA in the production
like we talked about with that rigid bass playing.
But the outer rapper of the song is completely
alien to him. And then for Shirley Bassey. Well,
looking back from where we are now, this track
feels like a bit of a foreshadowing, doesn't
it? It really does. In 1996, Bassey was at a
point in her career where she could have easily
just become a heritage act. You know, just singing
Goldfinger on cruise ships or at Royal Variety
performances forever. Resting on her laurels.
Exactly. But Disco La Passione. proved she could
handle a modern electronic beat it showed she
wasn't afraid of the dance floor precisely and
if you look at what she did right after this
specifically her collaboration on the track history
repeating with the propeller heads oh history
repeating is an absolute banger that is peak
late 90s big beat it's iconic and even later
her cover of pink's get the party started. But
Disco La Passione was really the testing ground
for all of that. It bridged the gap between the
classic orchestral diva from the 60s and the
modern dance floor Shirley we saw in the late
90s and 2000s. So even though it was technically
a flop by UK chart standards at number 41, it
might have been strategically vital for her longevity.
It kept her contemporary. It put her voice in
modern clubs. Even it was via the Adams and Gehlen
remix. And most importantly, it introduced her
to a new generation that maybe didn't grow up
watching the classic Bond films. So let's recap
this wild ride. We start with a semi -autobiographical
film by Chris Wray about his childhood dreams
and Ferraris that sadly just bombs at the box
office. A passion project that just didn't find
its visual audience. But from that absolute wreckage,
we get a single where Chris Wray acts like a
one -man studio wizard playing drums, bass, guitar,
and keys while simultaneously backing a legendary
diva and a massive film orchestra. A song that
the Europeans danced to all the way into their
top 40, but the UK heartbreakingly left stranded
at number 41. A commercial near miss that nonetheless
survived in live performances and on concert
albums for years to come. It's such a weird,
wonderful little story. It really makes me respect
La Pessione as a creative project, even if the
movie itself didn't work. It stands as a testament
to just taking a massive artistic risk. Absolutely.
It brought together cinema, orchestra, dance
pop, and two very, very different musical legends.
That is not something you see every day. No,
it's not. And you know, that leads me to something
I've been thinking about while we've been talking
through all these sources today. What's that?
We label things as failures or flops so easily
in this industry. The movie flopped. The single
missed the top 40. Right. By the hard metrics
of the business, yes, they failed. But the music
survived. It found a life in Dutch clubs and
on live stages with Shirley Bassey. So here is
the question I want to love you with today. If
a film bombs, but the music from it takes on
a life of its own, was the project actually a
failure? That is the question. Or did the art
just find the wrong medium initially? Maybe the
story of La Passion wasn't meant for the screen
at all. Maybe it was always meant for the speakers.
It's a great reminder that art often finds its
audience. Even if it's not the one or the format
the creator originally intended, sometimes the
souvenir is worth way more than the trip itself.
Something to chew on the next time you hear a
track that makes you go, wait, who is playing
the drums on this? Thanks for taking this deep
dive with us today. A pleasure as always. See
you on the next one.