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Espresso Logic is the fourteenth studio album by Chris Rea, released in 1993. The US edition of the album has a significantly different track listing than other editions, as it also features songs from Rea's previous album, God's Great Banana Skin (not released in the US), along with "If You Were Me", a track recorded with Elton John for his 1993 Duets release. The cover art of the US edition is the same as the UK single "Espresso Logic". The song "Julia" was dedicated to his daughter Julia Christina, 4 years old at the time of the release of the album.

Released November 3, 1993 (UK)

March 8, 1994 (US)

Chris Rea and engineer Stuart Epps talk about the making of Espresso Logic:

The inspiration behind the album title originates from an afternoon spent in an Italian espresso bar, watching politicians on TV. "It was interesting to listen to their comments," says Rea. "Because they had nothing in common with the dialogue of the folk in the bar. It had never looked to me as far apart as it did that day. Somebody had mentioned people's logic and I just used poetic licence and said, well it's espresso logic."

Rea's cinematic imagination almost got him carried away with an aborted album introduction. "We originally had a beginning that had a telephone conversation between computer experts, trying to fathom why all their computers had jammed. The only thing they had in common was their insides all smelled of coffee and someone had noticed the coffee was coming from within the computers. No one had actually spilled anything. But it all got a bit long winded and was almost becoming a film script. Then somebody heard the track without dialogue and said the slide guitar, piano, pipes and the Italian bit sounded so nice on its own, why not just leave it? The intro became too much for people to get a hold of. I tested it out on a couple of people I knew and it was about 14 or 15 plays before they understood the intertwining ideas. Bloody typical!"

Surprisingly, Rea had no initial plans to release Espresso Logic until his label, East West, saw pound signs after hearing a few completed tracks, as he told me: "It was never going to be an album. We finished the European tour in April last year, and we were told by the record company, 'Banana Skin has been very successful, thank you very much, we don't need to see you again for two years.' But I didn't like the idea of that at all, you know. It's like being made redundant. So I started working on writing a film and during the course of that I was writing songs to go with it, because it's something I do. It was only decided in July or August by East West, on hearing some of the tracks, that they'd put it out in the autumn. We already had over 30 complete 4- or 5-minute pieces, but they didn't originally have a purpose. It wasn't like I was getting up in the morning worrying that I hadn't yet written a certain type of song for the album. So we had what we call the Eurovision Song Contest and awarded points for each number. That's how we whittled them down to 10 tracks."

Rea's occasionally sweet, frequently burning slide guitar dominates throughout, but Espresso Logic is also notable for the return to Rea's music of Davy Spillane's evocative Uillean pipes, which played a major part on Rea's 1987 album, Dancing With Strangers. Stuart Epps gave the engineer's perspective of working with these classic sounds: "I was wary because I hadn't recorded Uillean pipes before, but it was quite simple. I just rigged up a U87 about 6-8 inches above his head. It was recorded very quickly -- and what a sound! Chris suggested I have everything ready for Davy so that all he had to do was walk in, play and be recorded. He told me that Davy would give it his all within the first couple of takes, so I had to be on my toes to capture that performance. He moves around quite a bit when he's playing, so in a recording situation you hear some interesting, almost 3D, phasing.

"Chris would normally use his battered pink Strat (which he affectionately calls Pinky) for all the electric slide work. On some of the tracks, Chris simply DI'd into the desk via his effects pedal board, which mainly consists of Boss effects. For the slide sound he generally uses a little distortion and a small amount of delay. Alternatively, we have used two amplifier setups and miked them."

Personnel

Chris Rea - vocals, guitar, steel guitar, slide guitar, organ, composer, producer

Robert Ahwai - guitar

Sylvin Marc - bass

Max Middleton - piano, keyboards

Davy Spillane - uillean pipes

Pete Beachill - trombone

Dave Stewart - trombone

Martin Ditcham - drums, percussion

Elton John - vocals

Val Chalmers - backing vocals

Linda Taylor - backing vocals

Emma Whittle - backing vocals

Tommy Willis - guitar technician

Neil Amor - engineer

Stuart Epps - engineer

Paul Mortimer - engineer

Simon Wall - assistant engineer

Willie Grimston - coordination