Tesla returns with new album, group therapist

By Newt Briggs

Tesla may have toured with Poison at the close of the `80s, but in the pantheon of Reagan-era pop metal, Tesla was the Bruce Springsteen to Poison's Alice Cooper. That is, while Poison ensconced itself in the campy theatrics of sex, drugs and rock `n' roll, the guys in Tesla grew long mullets and covered songs by roots-rock bands like Canada's Five Man Electrical Band.

As Tesla bassist Brian Wheat says, "We didn't write songs about fucking our old lady in the back of the car. We might have done it, we just didn't write songs about it."

In other words, Tesla was a band that believed in the honest-to-God power of the power ballad. Take "Love Song," the breakthrough single off 1989's The Great Radio Controversy, for example: "Love will find a way/ Darlin', love is gonna find a way/ Find its way back to you." Now compare that to "Love on the Rocks" from Poison's 1988 smash Open Up and Say...Ahh!: "Love on the rocks/ She's my shot/ Love on the Rocks/ Ooooo, lick it up." Not that there's anything wrong with Poison's transparent allusions to oral sex, but Tesla rarely indulged in such wanton excess.

"Without sounding arrogant or anything, I don't really think we were like those bands," Wheat says. "You know, we've kind of unfairly been lumped in that category, but we were far from a glam band. If anything, we were a blues-based rock band like Led Zeppelin or Bad Company."

But even a band as blue collar as Tesla was destined to crumble under the steel-toed jackboot of grunge, which more or less stomped out hair metal in the first few years of the `90s. Granted, the Sacramento, Calif.-based quintet did outlast Poison--which folded after 1993's feeble Native Tongue--but the bell would toll for Tesla a year later with the unfortunately titled Bust a Nut LP. The album sold poorly (with the exception of this month's Into the Now, it remains the only Tesla album not to go platinum), and it was followed by the revelation that guitarist Tommy Skeoch was addicted to tranquilizers.

Skeoch was subsequently dumped from the lineup, and after a disastrous go as a quartet, the rest of the band broke down and then broke up. With feelings hurt and egos bruised, it would take a stubborn radio DJ and a clinical psychologist to get the band back together.

Says Wheat: "We have a friend named Pat Martin who's a longtime DJ in Sacramento, and he was always hassling us to get back together. He'd say like, `You guys left on a shitty note. Just do one last show and be proud of what you've accomplished. Don't leave pissed off.' So finally he talked us into doing it, and we played a sold-out show at Arco Arena. The whole experience was pretty overwhelming. I mean, we hadn't all been together in the same room for almost five years."

Still, the band had a half a decade of bitterness and hostility to overcome--an emotional chasm that could not be bridged without the help of a licensed psychotherapist. According to Wheat, before the band could even consider a reunion, all the members had to sit in a circle and unload all their repressed fury on each other.

"With the doctor, we actually got to tell each other how angry we were without throwing punches or bottles or guitar cases," he says. "It helped us out immensely because we've always had problems communicating with one another. In the past, we'd let things build until we'd just say, `F it,' and storm off. Now, that's no longer an option."

From: http://www.lasvegasmercury.com/2004/MERC-Apr-01-Thu-2004/23529715.html