Frank Hannon of Tesla
My guest today is Frank Hannon of multi-platinum rock band TESLA. Over the course of their thirty-five year + career, the iconic Sacramento melodic hard rock quintet— Frank Hannon (guitar), Brian Wheat (bass), Jeff Keith (lead vocals), Troy Luccketta (drums), and Dave Rude (guitar)—have sold more than 25 million albums domestically and played globally to sold-out crowds far and wide
I caught up with Frank to talk about going back on the road with they new tour, their new single Cold Blue Steel, Franks' work as producer with Red Voodoo, the new Gibson guitar signature model Love Dove, his brand of IPA and all things music and Tesla.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Tesla 2021 tour dates -https://teslatheband.com/tour
For Tesla Merch and Music - https://teslatheband.com/
Frank Hannon's website - https://frankhannon.com
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Hosted and produced by Vikram Chandrasekar and Moving Pictures Media
Edited by Baba Prasad at Digisound Studios.
Frank:The schedule got screwed up because i was supposed to be on the East Coast but my flight got changed and now i'm on the west coast so it's early here.
Vikram : We could have done this a little later if i had known!
Frank : Hey that's all right it's a good reason for me to get up and get cleaned up.
Vikram : How how have you been Frank?
Frank : I’ve been well i've i've stayed really creative during the pandemic shutdown I’ve been coaching some young up-and-coming bands and recording, I just wrote a new tesla song and that's always a milestone.
Vikram : You guys are going to get back on the road August 5th?
Frank : For 4 days before we leave for the August 5th show, the singer Jeff and myself, we’ve been practicing for the past two months as a duo and working on some different song ideas with the vocals and stuff and the group is going to get together and then Tesla will be getting on a bus the night of August 4th.
Vikram: These dates are just Tesla and then its Tesla and Lynyrd Skynyrd right?
Frank: There's some Lynyrd Skynyrd dates that we're opening, then there's a couple Kid Rock dates.
Vikram: Frank how does your set list change so when you guys play? When you're playing with Lynyrd Skynyrd and when you're just playing shows on your own how i'm guessing you play a longer set when you guys are the only ones playing right ?
Frank : Yeah when we're headlining a full show our set list is at least 15 or16 songs and you know we're going to go back into our catalog and obviously we have to pick songs that we can actually still perform. A lot of those songs that we wrote when we were 25 years old have a lot of screaming involved so you know we have to be selective to pick songs from the Tesla catalog that are not so high pitched you know, but we've managed to dig up some really cool gems .We have a song called freedom slaves that we're going to pull out this year, got no glory, some deeper cuts but on the Lynyrd Skynyrd tour we're going to play mostly our hits and it’ll probably be only eight or nine songs.
Vikram: Is it harder to play the longer shows?
Frank: Not really, it's not harder to play the longer shows but it is harder to choose the songs.You know we're dealing with a lot of different variables, with our age now and and stamina and keeping it going you know and so again you know we wrote those songs back in a time period of the 1980s where everything was on 10 you know and as you get older you got to simmer it down just a little bit.
Vikram: I was looking at you know some data and i think the song that you played the most live, do you know which one that is? Modern day cowboy, which Tesla has played 800 times
Frank: Really!Where did you find this information?
Vikram: I think it was setlist.fm
Frank: I'll have to check that out yeah Modern day cowboy is is what we call a staple you know there's some songs that are just staples. one of the songs that has been a staple is actually gonna take a rest on this tour and that's Little Susie, I might be making a lot of people upset right now listening to this but Little Susie’s going to sit on the bench this year and we're going to pull out more of a of a heavier Tesla song to replace her.
Vikram: Wow that'll be nice but tell me how do you think Covid has changed or might have changed being out on the road?
Frank: Well we've been informed that we have to be very careful during the day at sound checks we're not gonna have a guest list with a bunch of people partying backstage anymore, we're gonna keep our we have to keep our social distancing still in effect yeah definitely on our tour bus we're not gonna be having people just hanging out on the bus and doing stuff like that anymore so we have to play it safe and we wanna do that because we wanna keepkeep the venues open and we want the world to open for music shows again so we're going to play by the rules.
Vikram: I was reading i was reading an Eric Clapton interview last night not sure you saw it but he said that he wouldn't play a show where the promoter insisted that people need to be vaccinated he said that's discriminatory and he wouldn't play those shows.
Frank Hannon:Oh yeah i heard he had a very bad experience with the vaccine so yeah, I know a couple other people that have also had some pretty bad experiences with it but i think it's a personal choice you know, honestly I don't think they should force people to to take vaccines.
Vikram: How has tesla's tour schedule changed over the years ? Now that you have a loyal fan base you do you need to go out as much?
Frank : Well I'll be honest with you. Right before Covid hit, we had just done the Monsters of Rock cruise and we were on a cruise ship and we were being interviewed someone asked have you been to Asia, have you been to China?have you been around anybody who's sick? We didn't know what was happening or what was to come but a few weeks before that I personally had a meeting with Tesla the band and asked if we could take some time off because we have been hammering it hard since we regrouped in 2000. Tesla got started we broke up in 96 and then we got back together four years later in 2000 and that train started rolling man, we made Forever More, then the Simplicity album, Twisted Wires, we did the Coming at you Live dvd. We had to replace our guitarist and get Dave Rude in the band, We did the Reel to Reel albums we toured with Def Leppard. I mean we just hammered it non-stop for almost 20 years without a break so i was asking for a break and i got it but not in the way that i wanted it but yeah break was good for us we needed a break.
Vikram: In 2019 I saw you Tesla the first time at Hellfest in France, where I was shooting for Behemoth. You guys played a fantastic set.
Frank: Thank you, Hellfest, that was a big, that was one of the biggest festivals I’d ever seen I couldn't believe how big that was yeah
Vikram: I was telling Brian when I spoke to him a couple of months ago it was an incredible show you guys sounded amazing on that day.
Frank: Really? Thank you, that was early in the day that we played that that was a great memory, I remember i watched Lynyrd Skynyrd that day and it's amazing to me Hellfest and the other European festivals how many different styles of bands and different styles of music can play together at a festival.
Vikram: Yeah it's a it's a nice format, they have different stages and you know it's on over 3 days and runs 15-16 hours a day.
Frank: Yeah people just love the music man and if it's good they love it it doesn't matter what the style is you know.
Vikram: I think next year their 15th edition is a 7 day festival
Frank: Yeah well the Shepherd's Bush show was pretty good too i'm sorry you didn't get in but yeah now that you've got my number here you'll we'll have to be in touch yeah.
Vikram: Absolutely, Thank you Frank but tell me are you doing anything with the production itself are you adding more stuff this year ?
Frank: Well you know Tesla has always really been all about being keeping it real and not relying on gimmicks and just being a gritty Rock n Roll band. It was a leap forward for us to incorporate some video screens on the stage and when we go to Europe we don't take the video screens we just keep it stripped down. What's going to be new is a brand new single, that we just produced called Cold Blue Steel .Speaking of production we produced it ourselves and kept it really raw and real.
Vikram: What about playing newer markets and territories? Is that on the cards, like you said are you planning to come to Asia at some point
Frank: You know obviously depending on the pandemic, but is that is that on the cards for me definitely, for the rest of the guys and the management and the people that are in charge of the money i can't tell you. You know I would love to come to India i've never been, I’d love to you know go to places I've never been before and i'd like to go to Egypt and see the pyramids. I was just watching a documentary on the pyramids last night on tv and I was like man I would love to go there. I know the grateful dead did a concert there.
Vikram: Yeah i know yeah it'll be fabulous if you guys can make it out here man.
Frank: I would love to you know, let's just hope this pandemic ends and the world opens up for for everyone and and we can get back to reality i mean that's that’s our biggest hope.
Vikram: Did did Tesla get any government relief? There was money that they put out right? I think there was a 1 billion dollars or a 10 billion dollar aid package that they had put out.
Frank: There was you know, I got a an unemployment card and I used it at the grocery store maybe once or twice but it didn't work half the time. I stayed busy on my own working man I like to work and I did some some construction and some other things, working in the studio to stay afloat we did also get a what's it called a PPE loan or some kind of government loan to help our road crew.
Vikram: I read that Pearl Jam and Guns n Roses the lakers all of them got federal funding I think in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to support their crew so i was quite surprised by that right
Frank: Yeah, what do you think about that?
Vikram: What shocked me was, I didn’t expect the names that i saw there to be the ones who received funding because I've spoken to lots of artists and nobody seems to have got anything but I was surprised that the Lakers got something and Shake Shack got I think a lot of money which they returned you know because they raised some equity funding before that and you know Pearl Jam, Guns N Roses, The Eagles I think Green Day, I was really surprised by the names i saw.
Frank: Right yeah yeah a lot of those are the same people that complain about the government and so yeah i don't know man it's a touchy subject but yeah.
Vikram: Tell me what were you guys in Tesla doing during the lockdown? I know you did the home series, Was it called home to home?
Frank: Yeah we did some live, home to home, that was great yeah. That was pretty fun but you know that's that's the the idea for our next tour, its called let's get real let's get back to real life. Nothin beats being in the same room with somebody yeah like right now you know this is cool we're on a Zoom meeting and this is cool but i can't reach in there and shake your hand man i give you a hug you know it's a big difference
Vikram: You also did an album called the six string salute?
Frank: I have an album called Six String Soldiers that is quote unquote a solo album it's got some special guests guitarists, Dickie Betts, Pat Travers, Rick Derringer, Dave Meniketti they play on the album as special guests and those guys, I consider them to be six string warriors you know because they've survived so many decades of of playing guitar
Vikram: You also raised money for Crew Nation
Frank: That was a charity that we did for the road crews yeah that was a different thing that wasn't my six string soldiers that was a different project.
Vikram: The Frank Hannon band, you put out a new single right?
Frank : I did put out a single, called ride strong and it's a song that i recorded with Kelly Nobles, he's a a legendary drummer up here on the west coast from Seattle from a band called rail and he plays double double bass drumming which is one of my favourite styles of of drumming.
Vikram: You know when you the Frank Hannon stuff do you ever think about experimenting with your sound like similar to what Jeff Keith did with Bar7 back in the day?
Frank: Most definitely, when an artist is in a band like Tesla or like when Joe Perry's with Aerosmith or or when you're from an established band, when you do your own thing on the side you do a lot of experimenting.My solo albums for lack of a better word, I don't like using the word solo i'm not a solo artist i'm just an artist i play with Tesla but i also do my own stuff but as soon as you put solo on it to me it just like discredits it in a way but as an artist i have experimented with folk music, some acid rock progressive my Guitars for Mars album which is really more on the progressive side, my gypsy highway album is more of a singer-songwriter acoustic stuff ,my from One Place to Another albums are tribute albums to cover tunes that I've done so you know i i'm all over the place experimenting with stuff.
Vikram: I want to ask about you know an album that you know never found its way to India for many years and then I finally found a copy in Singapore. The Tesla album Five-Man Acoustical Jam, how did how did that whole album come about ? And this was this was pre MTV Unplugged right or did MTV do something and then you guys did this ?
Frank: It was all happening at the same time, you know most every great band has always done an acoustic set you know Led Zeppelin used to do it so did The Rolling Stones. So you know for us we always put acoustics in our music and we were always kind of influenced by the 70s . So we would take acoustic guitars to radio stations or events and and perform. When we were on tour with Motley Crüe there just happened to be some time off that we didn't want to waste so we booked 5 shows one was in Boston one was in Philly one was in New York and we played some clubs. It was going over so well that at the last minute we decided to record it and thank god we did because we got a great video and a great album out of it and number one song signs is a great song and it hit people pretty good with the lyrics.
Vikram: That was a pretty bold move right ? Back in the day, when you know there's all this amped up, over the top rock that's doing that's on the charts for you guys to go out and do an acoustic thing seems pretty bold.
Frank: It was a bold move and our manager Peter Mensch challenged us, because when he offered us the show and we were kind of not wanting to do it because it's not as fun to play acoustic as it is electric yeah he used some psychology on us and he said well maybe you guys just aren't good enough can't play acoustic and we said what, so we accepted his challenge and we did it you know. Bon Jovi i had to give credit to them cause at the music awards they played an acoustic version of Wanted Dead or Alive and i remember a lot of people really liked it it was just Richie and Jon and that was kind of the first rock band I think of that time to do that and then we came in and then after that Eric Clapton and everybody kind of made their unplugged albums
Vikram: How how was it recorded Frank? Was it just like a single take thing?Frank: Oh yeah, 100 people, live in Philadelphia at a club we mixed it we produced it ourselves and when we mixed it i made sure to leave the the room microphones in the mix really loud so you could really feel like you were there in the room and i think that's what sold the record i think people really enjoyed hearing the audience and the realness of the live album.
Vikram: I think what that also did it for me as a fan, was it actually brought out how good the the original song was that's a good test yeah? if you can strip it down and the lyrics and the melodies still hold up and it's shows that the quality of the song. Also the fact that o do that, you just have to be able to play your instrument and sing live right?which in in the modern era of technology somewhere that gets lost.
Frank: Thank you, I appreciate that, yeah well especially in modern music but even back then a lot of bands were more relying on their image and on the technology and that's why we always put no machines as a little disclaimer meaning that you know we played everything and it's raw yeah, whether they like it or not it's it's real.
Vikram:How did the the London Jam come about?
Frank: Well it was the 30th anniversary of the five-man acoustic jam and we were in London for an extra week so we had the time and it just so happened there was an opening at the studio and again it just came together naturally, the pieces fell together we decided it would be really cool to to step foot in that studio an I tell you man it just was an overwhelming experience to be sitting in in that studio(AbbeyRoad)performing.
Vikram: Was it intimidating to play Abbey Road?
Frank: Well kind of you know i mean it wasn't really intimidating it was just awe-inspiring you know John Lennon's piano sitting over there you know the walls, if the walls could talk I mean.
Vikram: Sounds incredible, but tell me I wanted to ask you there was a story i was reading about how you found Dave Rude after Tommy Skeoch quit was it true that you found him on Myspace?
Frank: It is true but it wasn't that easy, I had performed with a multitude of guitarists locally i had done a jam session in a club where i had three or four guys sitting in with me i had been keeping my ears open because you know Tesla had been stalled so many times and had already lost so much work and money based on the problems that we were having so i started keeping my ears open. I flew down to LA and auditioned a few guys and after 6 months to a year of not being able to find somebody i was desperately searching Myspace [Laughter] so it wasn't just a happy accident it
was a lot of work. I searched for a guy here in San Francisco named Craig who plays in a band called The Ruffians and they're a great San Francisco metal band and he wasn't available, so I was looking at his friends list and out pop's Dave Rude’s mug he was holding the guitar and I'm like hey that guy looks pretty cool he's got some attitude so I contacted him and went and played with him and man I just couldn't believe how how well he played. He nailed the guitar solo’s i mean he nailed it and that to me that was the tie breaker there with the the way Tommy plays with such feeling yeah it's not easy to find a guy like that yeah
Vikram: It's like how Neil Schon of Journey found Arnel Pinneda!
Frank:That's an amazing story right there too.
Vikram:I want to talk a little bit about your work on the production side of things with Red Voodoo, a great band I've been listening to them so do you kind of mentor them as well? Is that the role you play with Red Voodoo?Frank: It was for the period of time that we were working together on the record. They're very young guys, 17 18 years old and we live on a ranch up here and and we have a lot of horses and animals to take care of and they didn't have any money so to pay for studio time so what we did is, I traded them a little bit of work helping me landscape and clean up the the horse area and traded for studio time and I think it was a great learning experience for them because I don't think they've ever really worked before or had any blisters on their hands from having to use a rake i had to go out there and teach em how. Rakes you know, I mean put some muscle into it and you know that that work ethic is very important whether you're a musician or you're an Uber driver or you're a janitor whatever, you gotta have the gusto and you gotta have the the drive and the fight to not give up, you know cave in so that was kind of the mentor role I took with them was teaching them how to work. I also helped them arrange all the songs. I took their ideas and turned them into to to really good arrangements and it was really easy to record because they have such tremendous natural talent everything was done in one or two takes live once we got the arrangements and the the pre-production right. The other artist that I work with on that capacity his name is JT Loux and he's a little older and he's a very hard-working guy and more unique in his sound so those two artists. Austin Moe is another one, he is a guitarist and another young guy who's very talented, so i stayed real busy with those 3 young artists during the lockdown.
Vikram: Is it is it a challenge Frank to help them kind to mold their sound to differentiate themselves in an era where there's so much music, and how does a new band or an upcoming band stand out musically?
Frank:Well it's with any band, it's it's a combination of being inspired and what you're influenced by versus creating your own sound so with a band like Red Voodoo they're definitely inspired by 80s rock Van Halen and Sammy hHagar and in today's world there's such a void for that anyway that you know they went ahead and stayed true to that style you know and basically as an artist you just gotta do what you love you know. I just try to nurture who they are and let them be themselves really this is what was done for us when we were kids by Ronnie Montrose and Duane Hitchings and people that were mentoring us, that's what they did they encouraged us to be ourselves.
Vikram :That's so true right because when you guys were breaking out it was you know glam and what they called hair metal and all of that right and you didn't follow that trend you kind of bucked that trend right?
Frank:Well yeah because we're from Sacramento which is you know a Cow town that's 8 hours away from Hollywood so you know we would drive to Hollywood but we would want to get out of there as quickly as we got there because we were more down to earth kind of just kind of hard-working farm boys.
Vikram: Do you think the music business is harder now Frank you've seen it you know over the last 40 years?
Frank: I think it's easier and harder. It's harder to make a living at it because there's no physical products that you're selling and everything is available on the iPhone instantly and it's over as fast as you put it out so that makes it harder to make a living but it is easier to be creative with the technology it's easier to become independent and create music and put it out there you don't have to bang on doors to a label to to get yourself heard you can get yourself heard yeah on the iPhone. So yeah it's a double-edged sword it's both hard and easier at the same time and I think a lot of the conventional models might die out right? I mean i was just saying you know the conventional ways of doing things might change.
Vikram: How relevant is the concept of a record label for example?
Frank: Well it's it's relevant if it's independent, you know artists can create their own independent label whereas before it required a big corporation and a lot of money to create an album you know, in the old days the conventional way was the record company would invest a ton of money in promoting you and spending money on studio time where now you don't need that.
Vikram: You have a custom Gibson guitar series now called the Love Dove?Frank: That was a aa tribute to Love Song that had come out for the 30th anniversary. We're experiencing all kinds of 30-year anniversaries right now so they made a limited run of 50 of them. It's a beautifully made guitar that's a recreation of a 1976 cherry dove acoustic that i used back in the early days, that during hard times I had to sell because I was broke and I needed to feed my family and i sold it to the Hard Rock cafe and now it's missing.So Gibson made 50 reissues of it What I’m more excited about is the Gibson SG that I'm playing now that is a really rare SG with a Floyd Rose tremolo and hopefully I'll be working with Gibson on recreating that one.
Vikram: You have the the double IPA as well?
Frank: Heavy Metal Hippie yeah which is an autobiographical title for myself that people are aware of here locally because I love Judas Priest but I also love The Grateful Dead I love country music and Iron Maiden you know all that music is in my head so it's a combination of being a hippie but also loving heavy metal and so that song inspired the brewery to to create a very good tasting double IPA but it's very strong at the same time, you drink 2 of those and you're down for the count yeah speaking of which we sold 2 000 cans of the heavy metal hippie beer on the Monsters of Rock cruise before the ship even left and everybody on that ship was pretty buzzing.
Vikram: Do you have a lot of it backstage?
Frank: No no it's more on a local level at home, we try to keep control of the beer drinking on the Tesla tour.
Vikram:Has it changed a lot backstage now, from what it was i'm guessing its changed from what it was back then right?
Frank: Oh yeah it's definitely different man. You know we're older now man we can't bounce back as quick so we try to appreciate what we got and keep it under control
Vikram: I did some work in 2019 with Billy Gibbons and it was very different backstage to what I had read about and what it was like in the 70s and the 80s.
Frank: Well first of all all the lights usually are on now we're back in those days we shut the lights off and who knows what happened in the dark, hahaha.
Frank thank you so much man, thank you for your time.