Interviews

 

TESLA

 

WORDS: ROD YATES

 

They say that success, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. And so while US rockers Tesla may never have reached the massive commercial heights of peers such as Motley Crue, Def Leppard or Poison – not that they were far behind, with four consecutive platinum albums in the late-’80s and early ’90s – for bassist Brian Wheat, a chance encounter with a celebrity fan was all the recognition he ever needed.

 

“I have two all time heroes in music,” he starts. “Paul McCartney and Jimmy Page. Paul McCartney I’ve met, and it’s been more like the punter and the star. But me and Jimmy Page actually developed a friendship. The first time I met him, I was standing in [London’s] Hammersmith Odeon, and he walked in and came over and said, ‘Hi Brian!’ And I said, ‘Hello, Jimmy it’s nice to meet you. Would you like a drink?’ He said, ‘Yeah I’ll have a double Scotch’ and I said, ‘Good, so will I’. So I come back and we’re sitting there drinking the Scotch, and he just looks at me dead in the face and says, ‘I love your acoustic album. You’re the first band to ever do a live acoustic rock record, and no one talks about it.’ For me that was all the recognition I needed.”

 

That record was 1990’s Five Man Acoustical Jam, an album that not only kickstarted the MTV Unplugged trend, but provided the band with one of the most popular albums of their career. It came, however, at a time when the musical climate was changing, and as grunge’s fortunes rose, so Tesla’s steadily declined. By late-1995, following the release of the previous year’s Bust A Nut, the band was over.

 

“We were fucked up,” sighs Wheat. “Tommy [Skeoch, guitar] had developed his drug problem, Jeff [Keith, vocals] wasn’t too far behind him, Bust A Nut was the first record we put out that didn’t go platinum, we only sold 800,000 copies, and our record label thought Tesla was over. So that was deflating. The fact that we hadn’t had any rest since 1986, and the fact that we had money at that time… When you put drugs and money together with wives and people who want to give you drugs you suddenly think that maybe you don’t need your bros anymore and you’re just fucking fine. But we learned real quick after we broke up and the royalties stopped coming in what we had.”

 

In the years between their split and 2000 reformation, each member pursued his own solo project while slowly rebuilding the personal bridges that had been burnt upon Tesla’s initial split. A one-off reunion show in their hometown of Sacramento in 2000 was an 18,000-person sell-out, and provided the band with both a live album and all the encouragement they needed to give Tesla another shot.

 

The years since have, by Wheat’s own admission, been up and down, with Skeoch’s drug-related firing in 2005 a particular low-point. By contrast, their 2004 comeback album, Into The Now, received strong reviews and airplay, as has their most recent CD, Real To Reel, a double set comprised of ’70s rock covers that was released in America on their own label.

 

“Now we seem to be on a path where we’ve very focused,” says Wheat, who also manages the band. “We’re running our own label, we’re making music on our terms, and we’re going to places where we hadn’t been able to go before. So life is good in Tesla these days, there’s a really good positive vibe. People are excited about being in the band.”

 

Despite the fact that Tesla are often associated with the hair metal scene of the late ’80s, in truth they’ve always had more in common with the rawer, more classic stylings of early Aerosmith. It’s a distinction Wheat is keen to emphasise, and one the band will be eager to demonstrate when they land in Australia shortly for their first-ever tour.

 

“When we came out in 1986, we were a band that didn’t have an image,” he starts. “And it bugs me when people call us a hair band, because we didn’t tease our hair up, we didn’t wear make-up or spandex or all that bullshit, we were just about songs. We came out at the same time as those bands, and we’ve got nothing against them, but Tesla’s more like AC/DC. But what I can say,” he concludes, his voice swelling with pride, “is that we’re sitting here 21 years after the fact and we’re still doing fine.”

 

 

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