8

The Party’s Over
a.k.a. Pills, Thrills, and
Backstage Fistfights

Peter called one day early in 1993 and said that Hollywood producers putting together the new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, Last Action Hero, wanted us to record a song for it. So Tommy, Frank, and I got together and wrote a song at Tommy’s house. Then we went to Troy’s to record a demo, and Jeff finished the lyrics. The record company accepted the demo and gave us $100,000 dollars to record it, an incredible amount of money. We went to the Record Plant in Sausalito to record, and someone in the band was not at his best. When we listened back, we decided certain parts were unusable, so the entire session was scrapped. We moved over to Skywalker Ranch, which is George Lucas’s place where he does Star Wars. It’s a crazy expensive studio that costs about $5,000 dollars a day. We spent $100,000 dollars recording just one song, and it was horrible! We tried mixing it a few times with different people and didn’t like it. We thought we had the title track of the movie, and it ended up being played at the end when the credits were rolling—which I guess was appropriate because Last Action Hero was the least successful movie that Arnold made.

 

It was a difficult time; a black cloud was forming over the band. Right when we should have been focused on making the best record of our career, our Back in Black, we chose to get fucked up. It was also at this time that our contract was up with Geffen. We went to them and said we wanted to test the seven-year law. In California you can only be signed to a contract for a maximum of seven years. It goes back to the days when director Hal Roach had those kids in The Little Rascals signed up for the rest of their lives. So we said we wanted $12 million to sign a new contract, or we would test the law. David Geffen said to Peter and Cliff, “Why are they doing this, are they going to break up?”

They said, “Of course not! The band’s great, they’ve made four platinum records, why would they break up?” Even though I knew we were on our last legs, Geffen coughed up $5 million (it was a “hybrid” arrangement; part of it was from the old contract and part of it was toward the new).

We were rollin’, man. We were rich! Instead of getting back in the studio, we started spending money. I don’t think we saw each other for eight months. I had married Sandi, so I had one house in Sacramento and one in New Jersey. She was home when I was on tour, and I was home when she was on tour. The first time we were off the road together was during the writing of Bust a Nut. I came to find out that she didn’t care for Sacramento all that much, and I didn’t like New Jersey, so even when we were together, one or the other of us wasn’t that happy with where we were. On top of that, her career, unfortunately, wasn’t really going anywhere. I’d asked Peter and Cliff to help her out, but nothing came of that. That was frustrating for Sandi. She is a great talent, but she may have been better off being more of a pop singer than fronting a hard rock band. When we got along, we were good pals, but when we fought, we fought hard. I’m Italian and she’s Ecuadorian, so there is some fuel there. I never hit her or touched her in anger, but I did take out my frustrations on the furniture and walls with a baseball bat. We were both very stubborn, and it was hard for either of us to compromise. At the end of the day she wanted a big family, and I didn’t want to have kids. Since I never really had a father, I didn’t know how to be one, and I didn’t want to experiment on some kid.

When we started work on Bust a Nut, we decided to bring producer Terry Thomas over from England. We worked on one song with him, “Action Talks,” and agreed he was the man to use for the album. We got more songs written and went into preproduction. We first heard about Terry through Joe Elliott, who told us about his work with Bad Company. Then we found out that he played in a band called Charlie. It’s a tremendous asset when a producer is a musician. Terry put together some great sounding demos; we really liked him a lot.

Bust a Nut was recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco. It is the studio where Creedence Clearwater Revival recorded all their classic albums. I made a conscious decision to not repeat the mistakes of the last album, the first of which was going to the East Coast when we could easily do it on the West Coast. We wanted to be close to home, and that’s why we chose Fantasy. Looking back, it may have been a bad decision. Maybe it would have been better if we had been away where there wouldn’t have been so many distractions.

It was what it was, but there were fun moments making that record. Unfortunately, the album was a little disjointed. You can kind of tell that we were falling apart, unraveling. But there are a handful of songs on that album that still hold water today. I think the proof of the pudding is in the live set, things I still want to showcase to audiences. For me, they are “Try So Hard,” “Wonderful World,” and “Mama’s Fool.” There was some stuff that wasn’t so good, like “The Gate/Invited.” I look at that today and think, God, what was I thinking? I thought I was writing this “Band on the Run” song, but it wasn’t. “Need Your Lovin’” was a single, but I didn’t care for that song; I thought it was trite. I liked “Earthmover.” It had a twisted, fucked-up bridge that was really cool. “Solution,” I didn’t like that. “She Want She Want” I like now. That song is like “Be a Man” for me. I didn’t like it then, but I like it now. “Action Talks” goes in the same category as “Rock Me.” “Cry” was cool; it was one of my songs, but it wasn’t an A song, it was a B song. “A Lot to Lose,” great song. That was me, Frank, and Jeff. That’s a classic. “Rubberband,” which I like, is another one I wrote, but it never really lived up to its potential.

The sessions were mostly good. Jeff was either into it or out of it, depending on what he was doing. I remember him coming in and sleeping all day. It was a really hard record to get done because we were coming from different directions. Terry Thomas should have gotten a medal for that album. He put it all together and got us all in one place to finish it. Terry would tell Jeff, “Let’s start at one o’clock,” and Jeff would show up at nine o’clock at night. It was the first record where I split after I had done my parts. Troy was sober, so he was like, “You guys are out of your minds.” I was doing my usual bottle of scotch a day. Frank was just being the usual Frank. He always dabbled in alcohol, blow, or weed.

Peter and Cliff’s attitude to me was, “You deal with it.” They’d had it. Cliff didn’t like a lot of the songs we’d submitted, and we were like, “Fuck it, we’re making this record, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Terry wanted to mix the album in England. I have always had a thing for England, so Frank and I went over and mixed at Mayflower Studios in London. We were going to be there for five weeks, so I asked Sandi to come with me. She didn’t want to, and it was at that time that our marriage started falling apart.

Sandi wanted to have five kids, which is exactly what she has now. The funny thing is that she did exactly what she wanted to do, and I’ve done exactly what I wanted, which is not have kids. Don’t ever marry someone who has the same job as you. It never works out. We were crazy in love, but we were young and trying to figure it out. But we didn’t connect in some areas. And that whole thing about living with someone before marrying them is absolutely true, because once we started living together, we started having problems.

It was a short marriage. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, I could have been cooler to her. She could have been cooler to me. Sandi also got way into religion and I didn’t, which caused a rift. So, fundamentally we had differences, but again, we were just young. We got into this marriage because we were in love. But just being in love sometimes isn’t enough.

Thankfully today, we have a great relationship. She married a great guy and has five beautiful kids. We’re all good friends now. Even our spouses are good friends, and I love her kids and husband. They are like my family. So sometimes, as the Rolling Stones said, you can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need.

At this time, I was getting frustrated by everything. We thought we had created the next Back in Black and were convinced that we were poised for even greater success. Unfortunately, it was a couple of years too late, because the grunge thing had kicked in. We didn’t realize that. In our world, we were still at the top of our game. We were used to being the champions of AOR radio for almost ten years, and all of a sudden with the album we think is our massive breakthrough record, the radio stations aren’t down with us because we’re not grunge, we’re a “hair band” or “butt rock.” Bust a Nut did OK. We got a gold record out of it.

One cool thing that happened in the middle of Bust a Nut was that Atlantic Records approached us to record a song for a Led Zeppelin tribute album, Encomium. They paid us some crazy amount of money, and we went in and cut a version of “The Ocean.” While we were doing that, Peter and Cliff came to us and said, “We’ve got this song we want you to record because we think it will be a big hit like ‘Signs.’” It was called, “Games People Play,” written by Joe South, and had been a hit in the ’70s. I fuckin’ hated the song, and I still hate it. Frank and I were like, “Fuck that! This is bullshit.” We could see right there that the record company didn’t think that we had a hit record. Neither did Peter or Cliff.

We recorded “The Ocean,” and we absolutely slammed that. We’re huge Zeppelin fans. Then we did “Games,” and I remember I had to do my bass part three times because I was so pissed off that I was playing too hard. Terry was like, “If you don’t play it right, I’m going to play it for you!”

“The Ocean” came out on the Japanese release of Bust a Nut, but it didn’t make the Zeppelin tribute. Robert Plant said he wanted the album to feature all the alternative bands of that time, so we got nixed. I was really disappointed, especially since Ross played the track to Jimmy Page, and he really liked it.

It was a mad time. Everyone was out of their fuckin’ minds. Management wasn’t into the record we were making, the record company wasn’t into the record we were making, and they had just given us $5 million. Our A&R guy, Tom Zutaut, was nowhere to be found. He didn’t show up until we were mixing in London. The band was unraveling, and I was just trying to keep it all together. After we finished the album I went home, filed for a divorce, and moved to midtown Sacramento.

We went on tour to promote Bust a Nut and, initially, it looked like it was going to be a big record. We had loads of airplay on the first single, “Mama’s Fool,” but grunge, again, had just kicked in, and we weren’t aware of it. We were kind of oblivious to what was going on around us because we were only really concerned with what we were doing. We weren’t interested in what other people were doing or what the scene was. Looking back, we had unrealistic expectations for that album. We knew what we needed to do, we just didn’t do it. We were too indulgent and not critical enough. Our standards should have been higher. We expected to be back headlining arenas, but it was mostly three- to five-thousand-seat theaters. Some fans say it is their favorite album, and it has some strong songs, but it’s inconsistent.

Grunge didn’t kill Tesla, but the perception was that we had four platinum records and then Bust a Nut “only” went gold. The word was Tesla was on the way out. That was not even close to the truth. We could have easily carried on making gold records. It was the internal shit that did it.

In Detroit, where we were starting the tour, Tommy suddenly had to leave due to some personal issues. The tour manager took him to the airport and sent him home. We played as a four-piece for the first leg of the tour, about three months. It was difficult at times because every song we had was written for two guitars. Other times, it was kind of fun to play with only the one guitar. Frank got to really stretch out, and I had more room to try some stuff that I normally wouldn’t have, a fill here and there, getting more treble with my tone.

Tommy went into rehab and everyone phoned him, but I refused. Cliff Burnstein said, “You need to phone him,” and I said, “I don’t want to, I’ve got nothing to say to him. In my opinion, he’s a fuckup.” In the end Cliff persuaded me to call, saying it would be good for the both of us. Tommy rejoined the tour when we were supporting Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the first couple of shows were great. Everyone was happy to see him. He was sober, or soberish. It was the Tommy we knew and loved. Two weeks later he was back to his old tricks. We were in Buffalo, New York, and we started “Song & Emotion,” which is just Tommy and Frank during the intro and first verse, very quiet arpeggios. There’s about fifteen thousand people in the audience. When it was time for him to join the song, Skeoch blows his part, and the whole crowd goes, Awwwwwwwww!, like a big sigh. We finish the set, go down to the dressing room, and Jeff confronts Tommy. Skeoch makes a lame excuse and, amazingly, says, “Yeah, fuck it, Jeff, let’s just quit the band.”

Then Troy has an argument with Jeff about being clean and sober and the Twelve-Step Program. Jeff tells Troy to fuck the Twelve-Step Program and wham! Jeff and Troy get into a big fistfight. Frank and I are sitting on a couch eating ice cream cones off the table in front of us, and these two fuckers are beating the fuck out of each other. In the old days we would have broken it up. But we thought, Fuck it! Let them just beat each other’s asses. We just sat there and watched it like it was a boxing match on TV.

We’ve had a few brawls over the years. The first time we went to England, Jeff and Troy got into a fight in front of Peter Mensch. It was the first time we had hung with Peter. We were playing in Sheffield, and Troy had started “Cumin’ Atcha Live” really slow. After the show Jeff commented on it, and Troy says, “Well I’m the fuckin’ drummer and I’ll set the tempo any fuckin’ place I want!”

And Jeff says, “No you won’t!” and they start fighting in the dressing room.

Peter tried breaking them up, screaming, “You fuckin’ guys are worse than the Young brothers!” I guess Malcolm and Angus used to duke it out a lot. Jeff and Troy were like Ali vs. Frazier, rematch after rematch, Thrilla in Manila.

I’ve had a fight with Jeff. We were both drunk on whisky, and I accused him of doing blow. He denied it. Actually, I don’t think he was stoned, I was just really fucked up at the time. I feel bad about that because Jeff is one of my favorite guys on the planet.

No one has ever gotten into a brawl with Frank. I think he would kick everyone’s ass. He’s studied karate and martial arts. I wouldn’t want to tangle with him. He’s a big guy, too, with strong hands. I don’t know if he’s got that crazy temper like me, Jeff, and Troy. We have short fuses; we can just go off. Frank is mellow. But arguing and fighting has always been the Tesla way. Today we just like to call them “discussions.”

Tommy was asked to leave again, and this time it was for good, or so we thought. I’ll be honest, I was not sorry to see him go. He just wasn’t a nice guy. I was tired of him being the loudest guy in the room when he got fucked up. Everyone was taking the brunt of his shit. We finished the Skynyrd tour without him and went home.

Jeff missed Tommy the most. When Tommy left, it was hard on him. Frank, Troy, and I were quite vocal about not missing him, and I think that caused a rift between us and Jeff. We gave Tommy more chances than he deserved. When we re-formed in 2000 we brought him back, but the same thing happened. He was just out of control.

Tommy always blamed me for him getting kicked out. I’d say, “God damn it, Tommy, I didn’t fire you. I’m just one guy. Three other guys voted unanimously, but you always took your shot at me!” I was the messenger. I was the guy who would say, “Hey look, you’re fucking up.” Everyone else would say it but then not back it up. It still happens to this day. I got in a huge argument with Jeff the other day in the dressing room.

Everyone came to me, the manager, the tour manager, the band, saying, “You have to talk to Jeff, we have to talk to Jeff.” We sit at this fuckin’ round table, and I’m the predominant one, no one else says anything, and I’m thinking, Well, this is fucked up. Me and Jeff never argue. Depending on the day of the week, he’s maybe my favorite guy.

I’ve said a lot of things about Skeoch. Some out of spite, some out of sadness. But when you get down to it, when he was on, he had an incredible work ethic. He always wanted to work; he always wanted to do well. At some point though, the drugs got hold of him. He lost his focus and his drive, and he wasn’t a nice guy when he was like that. He did some shit, and said some shit, that left permanent damage on people, especially me. But I hold no ill will against him.

I could see the band was coming apart. I’m not a big fan of southern rock, so the Skynyrd tour wasn’t all that enjoyable for me. I do like the Allman Brothers, but that’s about all. There was a lot of coke on that tour, but I wasn’t doing any of it. I discovered coke a year later on the Time’s Makin’ Changes Tour, just when my buddy Frank stopped doing it!

All of this crap that was coming down, my marriage ending, the band falling apart, the drugs and drinking, caused my autoimmune disease to flare up for the first time since I was thirteen. I had a severe bout of colitis, which caused my intestines to get inflamed. I was shitting blood and was in severe pain. I wasn’t taking very good care of myself, as I was going through a self-destructive phase. I was still running six miles every day, but after the sun went down, I’d get a couple of grams of coke and a bottle of scotch and party until the sun came back up. Then do it all over again. I was having a good time…I thought. In reality it was the beginning of a long downward spiral.

 

When I was still living out in the Sacramento suburbs, my friend Darin Wood, the singer from 58 Fury, was living downtown. I’d go see him occasionally and hang out, and I realized I really dug the downtown energy and all the things to do. Sandi didn’t want to live downtown because she thought it wasn’t safe there. So when we divorced, I moved into a little bungalow downtown with my nephew Butch. The owners didn’t want to rent to me, a long-haired freaky type. They said, “We don’t want you working on your Harley in the front yard.”

I said, “I don’t have a Harley, but I’ll pay you six months’ rent in advance…in cash.” That got their attention. I stayed there while the divorce was getting done. I was drugging pretty good by then and was listening to a lot of funk. Kool & the Gang was on my turntable constantly; sometimes I’d just play “Jungle Boogie” over and over. You do that kind of shit when you’re high.

I knew I wanted to live downtown and had always liked the old Victorian houses. There was one across the street from the Oasis Ballroom, and I used to tell myself I was going to have a pad like that. So I went shopping for a Victorian. I found one in this little hilltop area downtown called Poverty Ridge. It was called that because in the old days, downtown used to flood, and the poor folks would come up there and hang out until the water receded. This place was big, had a pool. I put in a bid, but someone outbid me.

I had a real estate agent who was showing me available places. He was cool, but he had a really bad toupee. I’d never really been close to a guy with one before. It just fascinated me that someone would wear a thing like that. I was smoking a lot of weed at that time, so I’d just stare at him; it tripped me out, that rug.

One early evening on a break from the Skynyrd tour we were driving down J Street to his office, and I see a Victorian with a For Sale By Owner sign out front. It wasn’t even listed. I said “Stop, stop!”

He said, “You don’t want that, it’s zoned commercial.”

I told him, “I don’t care,” and I walked up the steps and rang the doorbell. This old guy answered the door. I said, “You’re selling this? Can I see it?”

He said, “Sure, come on in.” I’m standing in the foyer, and the first thing I saw was a beautiful staircase going upstairs, and the wall was covered in stamped leather, original stuff. The parlor was right in the front, and the living room, dining room, and kitchen were off to the back.

The next day I made him an offer. He wanted $285,000, and I offered $280,000, and that was it, sold. The guy, whose name was James, lived there for another four months downstairs while I started remodeling the upstairs. When he moved out, I started redoing the downstairs. I resurfaced all the wood flooring, patched and painted the interior. The outside was a kind of battleship gray. I didn’t get to that for a couple of years, but when I did, I went all-out on the color scheme. I got an award from the city for the exterior paint job.

Butch and I moved into the Victorian. I had my grand piano, my bed, a dining room table, and that was it. Some lawn furniture was in the parlor! So later when I went out on the Time’s Makin’ Changes tour, and even part of the Lynyrd Skynyrd tour before that, I started going to antique shops and buying shit. I just left it all in the stores then sent one of our roadies out in a U-Haul truck across the country to pick up everything and bring it back. I bought antiques because I had a house built in 1895. The house drove it; you wouldn’t put that stuff in a contemporary house. That’s why I have a lot of antiques. I didn’t have any of that stuff before. Now I had a place to send them to.

The artwork will appreciate, hopefully. I collect Chiparus statues. They’re fashioned from bronze and ivory. I don’t really think of them in terms of, “Well, if I buy this, in ten years it’s going to be worth that.” They’re beautiful, and I would see one and I would dream that someday I’d be able to have one in my house. I first saw a Chiparus statue on the cover of the Wings’ greatest hits album. When I bought my house, I started collecting books and discovered that I like Art Deco. I started doing research, and there was all this Chiparus stuff that came up. I thought, “That was the thing that was on Wings’ greatest hits, that’s it.” Demétre Chiparus was the king of bronze and ivory and marble statues in the Deco period. Then there was Louis Icart. I collect Eckhardt stuff too. I like to collect jukeboxes. I have three jukeboxes: a Wurlitzer from the ’30s, a Seeburg from the ’50s, and a Rock-Ola from the ’40s. I collect old Victrolas and Coke machines. I like nostalgia; I like to have things when I think they were, like, pure. Most of my music collection is from the ’70s because I felt the ’70s were the purest era for music, even more so than the ’60s. The greatest music in all genres was from the ’70s.

I like art and antiques. I’m not a collector of vehicles. I own two Minis, very simple. I have a nice Indian motorcycle, and I’ve got a Royal Enfield with a sidecar that Steve Emler, our soundman, built me. I used to have a Kawasaki that looked like an Indian, which is why I got the Indian. I wanted a real one, and it’s always handy to have a spare bike around. I’m not really a motorcycle guy, but I like my Indian. Riding a motorcycle clears my head.

I collect vinyl records. When I was a kid we had vinyl records. When CDs came along, Tesla was a signed act, and I was on the road a lot. You could pack a road case drawer full of CDs, and they wouldn’t get all fucked up like records would. You could skip tracks; you didn’t need a record player. There were lots of reasons I started buying CDs, but mostly it was convenience. I wasn’t too critical about the sound difference back then.

In 2012 I started hanging out with Jimmy Page and Ross Halfin quite a lot. We’d be walking around London, and they’d want to duck into a record shop, because by then vinyl was becoming popular again. I wasn’t interested, so I’d see a bookstore and go there instead. Later we’d be eating at a pub or something, and they’d break out these records they’d bought. Jimmy would say, “Brian, the records are so much better sounding than CDs.”

I’d say, “I don’t know, man.”

He said, “Trust me Brian, vinyl kicks CD’s ass.”

One night, Monique and Jimmy and I were going out to dinner in London for his seventieth birthday. I was giving him one of my Hofner basses as a present. We were meeting at his place. Before we left to eat at the Troubadour, he said, “Check out this record.” He puts on an old 1956 version of “Train Kept A-Rollin’” by the Johnny Burnette Trio. It just fuckin’ blew my mind. It sounded fantastic. There was a warmth to it that CDs just don’t capture. And Jimmy didn’t have some crazy big-ass stereo. It was fairly normal, maybe a McIntosh amp, no big deal. I thought to myself, He’s fuckin’ right. After that I went on a vinyl-buying frenzy. I think I have about five thousand albums on vinyl now. Being friends with Jimmy Page is one of my favorite things in life. And not just because I was such a Zeppelin freak growing up. Honestly, it has nothing to do with that. I mean of course, it’s cool to think that that is the guy I had up on my wall. But we never talk about Led Zeppelin. Jimmy is just a smart, thoughtful, artistic soul who is fun to hang out with. He’s very generous and is great company. Cultured and elegant, he definitely has a charisma that is different than anybody else I know. But at the end of the day, wherever we happen to be, from exotic places in Thailand or London or at my house in Sacramento, at the end of the day he’s my friend. And I respect that friendship immensely.

 

For years before I bought the J Street house, I didn’t think about where I was living, I didn’t think I was throwing away my money. I knew the best investment you could make was in real estate. Cliff Burnstein told me that when we got that contract money from Geffen. But I didn’t immediately. I just wanted an old Victorian house, and I thought, Well, buy a house versus renting it, you’re throwing your money away. So I bought the house. But that’s not the same house that I bought. I put a lot of sweat equity into it and improvements. I took a second mortgage when Tesla broke up, and I had five years of no touring income. I toured with my other band, Soulmotor (which you’ll read about later), but I didn’t make any money. No real income except for whatever my royalties were, which were unrecouped because Geffen had just given me an advance. Basically it was my publishing royalties.

I did take some home equity cash out of the house, which is why today I still have a mortgage. But I also built the back studio on it. At first I didn’t have the time or patience to build a proper studio, so I just converted a bedroom upstairs to a control room and had a small recording space in an adjacent room. I had that rig until 2003. It was primitive for sure. When I got remarried, my wife would be sleeping in our bedroom across the hall, and I’d be recording guitars at four in the morning. She had a job then and had to get up at 7:00 a.m. She was a real trooper about that.