When we made the first album, Tesla was just a band that played clubs around Sacramento. On The Great Radio Controversy, we were a band that had toured the world. We were essentially rock stars now. We weren’t Def Leppard, but people knew who Tesla was. We had more confidence going into the second record and even a growing attitude of ego and arrogance. We finished touring to support Mechanical Resonance and started writing songs. There wasn’t much of a break.
There wasn’t much writing before the end of the Leppard tour. Maybe Frank had some ideas. Frank always experimented with recorders at home and stuff. I hadn’t started anything yet. We moved into a rehearsal room in West Sacramento and spent six, seven months just writing and recording demos. That’s what became the second album. No holdovers from previous writing sessions; the second album was all new material.
We did the demos on an eight-track that Frank had gotten. We each brought in whatever stuff we had from the four-tracks that Leppard gave us and worked it out in the warehouse and then laid it down to eight-track. We gave that to Jeff, and he put the lyrics together over the next few months. He wrote all the lyrics on Controversy. Then we’d mix those down to cassettes and send them off to Peter, Cliff, and Tom.
They liked some of the stuff. The funny thing was that all three of them did not like “Love Song.” We had to fight to put that on the album. We always reminded them of that when they disagreed with us. So we kept writing songs and also fit in some dates with Def Leppard, who by then were massive. Then Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero joined us, and we went back up to Bearsville. We were there much longer this time, as there would be a lot more production on this record.
There was definitely a maturity in the second album. When we wrote and recorded the first album, we had never played in an arena. When we made the second album, we’d played the Texas Jam, we’d played all these sold-out shows with Def Leppard all over the world. We knew what it was like to be a live band, so there was a lot more conviction. We knew we wanted it to sound bigger. The first album was done on one twenty-four-track machine, and the second album was done on two twenty-four-tracks synced up. It was a lot more produced.
Bearsville had forty-eight tracks available when we did the first album, but Tom had a vision of us as a raw, almost live-to-tape kind of band, so Mechanical Resonance only used one 24-track machine. But, as I said, we were growing some healthy egos coming off our success, so this time we laid down demands; we wanted forty-eight tracks, we wanted to spend more time laying down tracks, double the guitar tracks, and we wanted to be present at the mixes. We were a lot better prepared coming into these sessions. Our arrangements were locked down, we were confident and experienced. Steve and Michael really just rolled tape when we were tracking.
The record was called The Great Radio Controversy because there was a controversy about who invented the radio; was it Marconi or Tesla? In the schoolbooks we were taught it was Marconi, but that patent has been since overturned by the Supreme Court, and it’s been handed back over to Tesla. “Heaven’s Trail” was the first single we released. Then it was “Hang Tough,” “Love Song,” and “The Way It Is.” All those songs were very different from each other, which for us was a good thing. A lot of bands would just repeat a successful formula over and over, but we wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t, do that. The Great Radio Controversy is bigger sounding than Mechanical Resonance, but there’s less reverb; the sound came more naturally.
What we figured out on the second record is that we didn’t work for Geffen Records or Q Prime, they worked for us. So we brought a lot of that attitude: “Now you’re dealing with a band that’s had a multiplatinum-selling album, people adore us.” We began to assert ourselves. One time, Tom came to the studio, and they had bunch of food, and I came in and ate his crackers. He said something to me about it and I said, “Well, fuck it! We paid for them anyway.”
Because I realized every time the record company took you out to dinner, they stuck it on your bill. They’re taking us out to all these extravagant meals, flying us to the Sunset Marquis. You’re thinking that David Geffen is the greatest guy in the world, and it ends up that we’re paying for all of it, and we didn’t know it! We started to realize this when we got our royalty statements. We sold a million and a half records, and we’re not making much money? What’s going on?
Well, we have to pay back the album budget, all the photo sessions, hotels, and travel. We had to pay for all the videos we made, even though we had no say in how much those videos cost, or how they would look, or anything. Because we were only touring as an opening act, we weren’t making shit on the road either. So there was money that Geffen chipped in as tour support, and that had to be paid back as well. Our tour bus cost five hundred dollars a day. Plus, when we got signed, we had an old lawyer we had to fire, along with Steve Clausman and Duane Hitchings, and they had to get paid off from the first album. We soon found out that we were the last guys to get paid. We weren’t paying attention to what was being spent; we thought there was tons of money everywhere. Like us, a lot of young bands nowadays don’t realize that. We weren’t making that kind of dough. They way Peter and Cliff put it was, “You want to see some money, write some hits.” Other than that, they didn’t really talk about money to us.
There was a relatively small, but significant event that happened early in 1989 on tour. Up until then we had existed on advances from record sales and per diems when we were on the road. One day we all received checks for several thousand dollars. It took a minute to realize that this was money from actual sales, not advances. Anyway, Tom and I sorted out the thing with the crackers, we kissed and made up. He’s a really good guy.
Tesla had more confidence now. No was not in our vocabulary from the second album on. Unfortunately, there were times people told us no when we should have listened.
As we’re recording the album, there are no fights or anything, but we’re starting to wonder what role it is that Steve Thompson is fulfilling. On the first album Michael was the engineer, and he could talk to you in music terms, and Steve could talk to you in terms of dynamics. We didn’t really understand the difference between the two, which I do now. So there was a little bit of friction between Steve and us at times.
Aside from wanting to record more tracks, Jeff said, “I want to sing more like me—naturally,” because they had him singing a lot deeper on the first record. We were taking a bit of control. All the things that we had resented from the first record, we fixed on the second.
We mixed Controversy at Media Sound in New York. Frank and I stayed for the mixes this time. We were just being assertive. We didn’t get aggressive until the next studio record, Psychotic Supper.
The first Tesla song I had anything to do with writing was “Love Me” on the first album. Frank and I did that in his garage studio back in 1985. He played drums, and I played guitar. We just built it out of a jam. On Controversy I wrote part of “Makin’ Magic,” “Flight to Nowhere,” the bass intro on “Hang Tough,” and the B section on “Lady Luck.” The song “Paradise” was a bit of a struggle. It was my first song that I wrote from scratch, and there was some resistance from Frank and Tommy. It was also a new process for me because I wrote it on piano, and that might have had something to do with the resistance. It wasn’t going to be a typical Tesla guitar song.
I had gotten this old upright piano from Virgil McKenzie, the keyboardist from 58 Fury, a Sacramento band that Steve Clausman was managing. “Paradise” is a very McCartney-esque song. Think of “You Never Give Me Your Money,” the first song of the B-side medley on Abbey Road. And Queen, they were a big influence on me. Tom Zutaut loved that song. I wrote it at Buddy’s house. I actually prefer the version of “Paradise” on Five Man Acoustical Jam. It’s more spare and feels more appropriate to me. I think for the studio recording I was going for a “Bohemian Rhapsody” thing, to get a big dynamic buildup, lots of guitars in the B section. But it may have been overproduced, so I prefer the live version now.
It was during this time that I met my first wife. I left Bearsville to go to New York for about three weeks for the mix sessions. One weekend I drove back to Bearsville to play some mixes for Ian, the guy who ran the studio. There was a band there called Saraya mixing their album, who were named after their singer—Sandi Saraya. The people at the studio introduced me to Sandi; I thought she was beautiful. She’s a beautiful woman to this day. Sandi said, “I really like Mechanical Resonance.”
I said, “Uhhh, thanks,” because at that time I was really uncomfortable taking praise from people, but she took it as me being kind of stuck up. So I invited her to have a listen to some new mixes, and she played me a couple of songs from her record. I said, “Give me your address, and I’ll send you a copy of the record when it’s done.” I didn’t ask her for a phone number because I was too shy.
Six months later, in 1989, I was in Orlando, Florida, touring with Poison. One of the radio promotion guys picked me up, and I asked him what he’d been working on. He said, “Oh, I got this girl down in Daytona named Sandi Saraya.”
I said, “I know her.” It was, Flash! Boom!
When we got to New Jersey with Poison, I checked New Jersey information to see if I could find her number. But her real last name was Salvador. It turned out her middle name was Saraya. So I was never able to contact her, and I never sent her a CD because I lost the piece of paper with her address.
Now she’s in Florida, where I was the day before. And when she checked into her hotel room, it turned out to be the same room I was in the night before, and there’s a note there for me from radio IDs I had done. She’s trippin’ out on that, thinking, “Wow, that’s the dude from Tesla,” and I’m three hundred miles away in another city thinking about this girl I met in Bearsville. That night I called the hotel she was at because I found out from the record guys where she was. They put me through to her and I said, “Hello Sandi, this is Brian Wheat from Tesla.”
She said, “Get the fuck outta here!” and told me about the ID sheet.
I’m like, “Oh wow, what a strange coincidence.”
Then she said, “Why the fuck didn’t you send me any of your records?” And I told her I lost the address, and I didn’t have her phone number. I asked if I could have her number now. She said she had a boyfriend.
I said, “That’s all right, I don’t want to fuck you, I just want to call you and shoot the shit, man.” So she gave me her phone number, and we started talking on the phone. Then she broke up with her boyfriend and we started dating. Finally, I talked her into seeing me on the road, and she became my girlfriend.
While we were in the studio recording, they were already talking about the next tour, either Poison or Cinderella. Both of them wanted us to go out with them. Everyone thought that Poison would do better business, so it wound up being them. We were out with them for five months during the first half of 1989. Back then I thought Bret Michaels was a punk. But we’ve toured with them since, and now we are good friends. We’ve all grown up since then. He just sent me some cologne, as a matter of fact. I had a lot of fun on that first tour. Chicks every night, getting fucked up. I always liked C.C. Deville. He wore his heart on his sleeve and didn’t believe the hype. I think the other guys truly believed they were Led Zeppelin. C.C. was my favorite guy in that band.
Poison was a bit like David Lee Roth. But this time, when they tried to make us get out of the way when they were walking down the backstage hallway, we laughed at them. I remember Bobby Dall was walking down the hall with security, and they were yelling, “Get outta da way! Bobby Dall is comin’!”
I yelled back, “Fuck off! I ain’t moving until Bobby Dall kisses my ass! Half the people here came to see Tesla, I ain’t moving out of the way for nobody.” As you can see, we had a little attitude by then, but it was all in fun. Some of us would get on the Poison bus and do massive amounts of blow, but I wasn’t one of them. We went to the after-show parties and took their chicks, but it wasn’t like Def Leppard. Onstage we were kicking their ass every night. But they were rock stars, and we were just musicians. Today, we are all pals, and I really love those guys.
We started that tour in the dead of winter. The first day I got off the bus to run, I fell right on my ass on an icy sidewalk. Fuck that. I didn’t need a broken hip, so I had Dan buy me a Lifecycle that could be put in a road case. Back then, not a lot of hotels had exercise rooms. Now I’d just ride my ass off in the hotel room or our dressing room and watch TV while doing it. To this day it’s a habit for me to exercise before a meal. It’s like giving myself permission to eat.
For many years on tour I didn’t eat breakfast and rarely a decent lunch either. Then we’d play, and I’d just pig out on dinner after the show. This was around eleven at night! After that, I’d just be sitting around the dressing room and bus until I went to bed. All those calories just turned to fat. I had to exercise that much harder to burn that off. Now I’ll eat something like a normal breakfast when I get up around eleven, then some chicken and veggies in the afternoon around three. Then dinner became much less of a feast, just a time to replenish the calories burned during the show.
If I didn’t have that discipline about eating, I could go sideways in a hurry on the road. From about six in the morning until eleven at night or so, there is always something to eat at a show. The catering company supplies whatever the bands and crews have specified in their contracts, some of it in the dining room, more in the dressing room, and even more on the buses. The bus could be the worst because you’re trapped, rolling down the road to the next city with maybe four or five pizzas just calling your name. Taking a few tokes off a joint, a couple shots of scotch, or even just being bored can give you the munchies. Aside from all that, fans sometimes bring things for the band like cookies or a big box of chocolates. It’s a constant test of willpower to stay on the plan. These days we’re in more control of what we eat on the road. We’ll have grilled chicken, fruit, and veggies instead of pizza. But as I said, nothing helps like getting results.
Cliff Burnstein was behind “Heaven’s Trail” being the first single from The Great Radio Controversy. Jeff had the lyric, “I’m up on the stage, ready to kick ass,” and Cliff wanted those to be the first words audiences heard from the new album. It did well, but it’s not like it shot up the charts immediately. Controversy sold three hundred thousand copies and then started to stall, and people were saying, “Oh no, this could be the Sophomore Jinx.” The second single was “Hang Tough,” and it did nothing. Now we were worried. We noticed that the guys who came out from the record company while we were on tour with Poison would lie to us. We’d ask how the track was doing, and they’d say it was doing better than it was. Cliff told us what was happening. “Hang Tough” had stalled, and we were at the point where we’re thinking, “Do we just give up and do another album, or do we take one more shot?”
So we said to Cliff, Tom, and Peter, “We want one more shot. We want to release ‘Love Song’ because we think it’s a hit.” We fought and pleaded with them. Tom went to David Geffen and persuaded him to let us put out another single. We shot a live concert video in Sacramento where we did an hour set and then two hours of playing “Love Song” over and over for the cameras. We put it out, and it started to make a bit of noise. People started playing it, but it took four months to develop. It was such a slow build, so gradual, so organic. George Cappellini, who does independent radio promotion for me now, was one of the radio guys at Geffen, and he said it was the longest-climbing single he had to work during his thirty years in the business.
We knew towards the end of the Poison tour that we were almost immediately going to do this so-called Double Header Tour with Great White. We switched off every night in terms of which band opened or closed the show. But we shared the lights and production. Each band had a few lighting specials that the other band didn’t have, but mostly we shared the production. It was a smart tour to put together, and it gave both bands the opportunity to play in front of larger crowds than they otherwise would have. The tour ran until almost the end of 1989.
We started the Double Header Tour in Salem, Oregon, and Axl Rose’s brother, Stuart Bailey, who wrote for RIP Magazine, was the valet for Great White. He had written a feature on Tesla, and we had gotten to be drinking buddies. When I arrived in Portland the night before the first show, we went out and got all fucked up. In one bar they refused to serve us. I offered to pay a hundred dollars for a shot, and they still refused. Stuart picked up a drink and threw it at the mirror in back of the bar (think Eddie Murphy in 48 Hrs.) and it smashed. Glass went everywhere. The club security threw us both out on the sidewalk.
Back at the hotel I bumped into Great White’s manager, Alan Niven, who also managed Guns N’ Roses. I knew of Alan because he was one of the guys Tom originally wanted to manage Tesla, but we said no because we didn’t like him. He said to me, “Don’t worry if the record is not happening, you can be the support act,” because “Hang Tough” had stalled. I remember calling up Joe Elliott drunk and crying and telling him what Alan said.
Joe said, “Tell the guy to fuck off and kick their ass every night!” Our audience was big enough to ensure the co-headline format because we had a big fan base, especially in places like Chicago and Detroit.
At a Shreveport, Louisiana, nightclub a few weeks later, things went much further. After downing some ungodly number of shots, Stuart and I decided to sit in with the band. Stuart was going to sing, I was gonna play guitar, Steve Whiteman, the singer from Kix, the opening act on that leg of the Double Header Tour, was gonna play drums, and Donnie Purnell, the bass player from Kix, was gonna play bass. Steve starts the drum intro to Led Zep’s “Rock and Roll,” and then I come in on Jimmy Page’s monster guitar riff. Meanwhile Stuart is on one side of the stage all hunched over like a drunken Quasimodo waiting to ring his bell. He’s screeching and screaming gibberish, and all of a sudden, he launches himself across the stage and crashes full speed into the keyboard rig, which fortunately nobody was playing at the moment. He went down in a heap, and the three keyboards and rack went tumbling off the stage onto the dance floor. The band grinds to a halt, and Steve and I are just looking at each other like, What the fuck was that? Things got kind of blurry after that. It was like a hallucination. Next thing I know, Dan McClendon grabs me and starts hustling me out of the club. The cops are called, and Stuart gets thrown in the back of a police car. He’s not taking that very well, and he’s screaming about kicking redneck cop ass and so forth. Dan managed to talk the cops out of arresting me along with him. Then one of the cops takes me aside and tells me that if I can’t get Stuart to calm down, they’re gonna take him down to the station, book him, and beat the crap out of him. I tried to get Stuart to back off, but he’s out of his gourd, screaming about his constitutional rights, and I got nowhere. So off he goes in the squad car.
The next day he shows up at the gig looking like a human punching bag, all bruised and stitched up. He couldn’t remember what they did, but based on his appearance, they were good at it. The cops said he fell in the shower. The happy ending is that Great White paid the poor keyboard player in the club band for damages and gave him a great story to tell his grandchildren.
At this point “Love Song” was moving along slowly. It started to do well on AOR (Album Oriented Rock) radio, but it wasn’t a hit yet. Then it started selling. At this time, Peter and Cliff were with The Rolling Stones on their Steel Wheels Tour, and they have to be credited with the success of the song because—and this is the power of management and having a stable of artists—they went out and made deals with radio stations, saying, “If you put this Tesla song on your station and let the people vote on it, we’ll give you a pair of Rolling Stones tickets to give away to the listeners.” And this was with the CHR (Commercial Hit Radio) stations where Tesla wouldn’t normally get played.
Ten weeks later the track went through the roof. We finished up the tour with Great White, and “Love Song” was in the top five on the Billboard Charts, and now we’re really full of ourselves. At this point we’ve got a lot of money, some of the guys have bought houses, cars, boats, toys, all the shit. We weren’t millionaires, but still it was more money than we’d ever seen. Lots of things happened to me during the next album, the band’s third, but we’ll get into that later.