We started working on writing Into the Now in 2003. The difference between Bust a Nut, which was rooted in the classic Tesla sound, and Into the Now was huge. We realized that times had changed, so how were we gonna approach this? Stay loyal to the original Tesla sound and not gather any new audience, or do we try to be more contemporary and risk alienating our core following?
We said, “Look, it’s 2003, we need to make a record that sounds like Tesla in 2003, not like Tesla in 1987 or even 1994. Let’s experiment, listen to what’s going on around us sonically—the arrangements.” Everybody was thinking that way, nobody was saying nah, nah. We went into this warehouse where Frank had recorded some demos on his sixteen-track tape machine. Roger Summers, who had just finished mixing Revolution Wheel, wanted to work with us, and I thought he was quite good. He had also mixed RePlugged Live. The problems I had with that album were all about the recording, not the mixing. We started with him, but it didn’t pan out. He didn’t get the dynamic of Tesla and how it worked. We found out he was a bit of a high-strung guy, and we needed someone mellow to counterbalance our hyperactiveness.
We called engineer/producer Michael Rosen. He was at Fantasy Studios producing Rancid while we were there working on Bust a Nut. The guys in Rancid raided our candy and snack stash one day when we weren’t recording. We went over to their room the next day and screamed at Michael. That’s how we met.
He came up to Sac with Pro Tools. We had never worked with Pro Tools. It had always been analog tape and we thought, OK, this is going to be trippy. We set up shop in Frank’s warehouse in Pollock Pines, a little town up in the foothills east of Sacramento, and did the record on our own with Michael engineering it. We never brought in a producer. We had a blast. Michael had a great collection of microphones. At the same time, I was building my own recording studio, so when I wasn’t working on tracks, I was home working on that. We recorded the album over the course of four months and then mixed it at my studio while the recording room was still being built.
We felt like we had something to prove, that we still had what it takes, that we were still viable. I think we always did better work when we felt that way. Even though we agreed we need to make a contemporary album, we didn’t all agree on what “contemporary” should sound like. But we approached it with a spirit of compromise, and I think the end result reflects the best of what we were at that time.
Frank contributed the lion’s share of musical ideas. He was really rolling, and we all saw it, so we just let him bring it. I was coming off five years of work with Soulmotor and was having a hard time redirecting myself into the Tesla song landscape. My ideas at the time were just too heavy, maybe too dark. I did bring “What a Shame” into the sessions, but other than that, I knew that Frank was nailing it, one foot in the classic Tesla sound and one foot in something contemporary, so it was all good. Jeff was really on his game with the lyrics as well.
Michael Rosen and I spent two weeks on the mixes, and no one liked them. Troy said, “You have to tune your room,” because someone had told him that was what you did. Well, show up to the sessions and put your two cents in then. So Frank and Troy came down, and we re-mixed, and they were happy. I think Into the Now is one of our best. We were recharged, inspired, and happy to be in each other’s company.
I have to mention here that we went to a psychiatrist before we recorded the album because we were having problems as a band. He was the psychiatrist I was seeing for my anxiety disorder. I went to the band and said, “Hey, Metallica is seeing a shrink, maybe we should, too, because we’re having problems trying to get ready to do this album together. There are things we want to say to each other that we can’t say. We don’t know how to say them without pissing each other off, offending one another. We need a mediator.”
There was an incident when we started writing songs for the album where Troy and I got into this huge fight. He said some really fucked up shit to me, and I didn’t want to work with him anymore. He said I sucked as a bass player. I don’t know why he said it. He’d done this to me before in the early days.
We went to the psychiatrist to smooth things out because I was like, “Fuck you, Troy.” This wasn’t the Troy that I made a record with in Soulmotor; that was a pleasurable experience. Now we’re back in Tesla, and he’s turning into this fucking dickhead and focusing it on me. I wasn’t having any of it. I said to the band, “Are you OK getting some therapy so we don’t end up breaking up again before we’ve even started?” We did that for about four months, and it got us focused.
The psychiatrist said, “Everything is going to be spinning round and round except your CD unless you get it together. You should not be taking alcohol or drugs if you want to get back together.” Our basic rule was no hard drugs, no cocaine. If you want to smoke some weed or have a few drinks, go ahead.
We wrapped the album and went out to headline some shows. We were then set to go out with the Scorpions on tour. But at the end of those headline shows, Tommy had to go back into rehab. Frank, Jeff, and Troy came to me when we started the Scorpions tour in 2004 and said, “To help Tommy, we think we should all be sober.”
I said, “I’m not doing it, I don’t have a problem.”
They said, “OK, if you don’t want to, we understand.”
I’m like, “I’m not fuckin’ up. I’m not missing anything. I’m not missing gigs. I’m not playing bad. I have a couple of scotches a night. He’s got the problem; why should I get sober for him?”
Then two days later I thought, “I’m the guy that’s always preaching ‘be a team,’ ‘one for all, all for one.’” That’s when I stopped drinking, on that tour. We took all the alcohol off the rider, even the crew couldn’t have any, because they rode on the bus with us. It was the best tour we ever had with Tommy.
We put out Into the Now, and the first single was a ballad, “Caught in a Dream.” We sold forty-five thousand records in the first week and entered the charts at thirty-one. There was a lot of good buzz around the band. We went out and started touring these two- to three-thousand-seat halls. We were out there doing it again. The perception of us being a hair band from the ’80s was gone. We were credible again.
We weren’t financially better off, but we were making a lot more money from touring than we ever had. We got this guy, Steve Emler, who still works for us, in as a soundman/tour manager, and he brought to our attention how much money we were wasting on the road on our earlier tours where there were four buses, and everybody had a hotel room every day. Now we were doing it more compact, and we were keeping more money.
We started playing more shows, and Tommy Skeoch got up to his old tricks again. He started acting weird, doing things even he wouldn’t normally do, like putting a dog collar on, getting on his hands and knees, and asking me to walk him around Manhattan on a leash, which I thought was hilarious. Troy didn’t think it was funny, and neither did Jeff. But I was like, “Sure, I’ll walk you around,” because at this time Tommy and I were buddies again.
We were playing a show at Irving Plaza in New York, the same day he had me walk him with a leash, and we had all the Sanctuary Records people there. Tommy’s not playing well, and Troy’s going mental, saying, “Skeoch’s on the pills!” while we’re onstage.
I’m like, “No he’s not, man, just be cool.”
Troy replies, “Fuck you! He’s on pills!” Then Tommy and Troy get into this big brawl backstage. Tommy said he wasn’t high, Troy said he was, and no one really knew. The people from Sanctuary saw the fight, and that was the end of the support on that record.
We continued on the tour, and next thing we’re in Reno. Now Tommy’s really doing weird shit, wearing pink cowboy hats and drinking heavily. After the show we’re on the bus, and he comes up to me and says, “Brian, I’ve been really bad.” I asked him what he meant by “being bad.” He said, “I’ve been taking pills, man.”
I said, “Tommy, this is no good. You know you’re not supposed to do that. Just go to bed, and we’ll talk tomorrow.” From that point on he kept taking pills and started to become as obnoxious as he had been when we got rid of him in 1995.
We played a big festival for this radio station in Chicago, and Tommy’s just out of it; he can’t play. So we finished the show, got him on the bus, and said, “Tommy, you’re out of the band, and someone’s going to replace you. You have one of two choices. You either go to rehab, sort yourself out, and come back, or we’re going to look for somebody else.” He chose rehab.
In the meantime, we got a friend of Frank’s—Scott Johnson, a local Sacramento guy—to come in and play the remainder of the tour. He was a nice guy, but he wasn’t the guy.
When the Scorpions tour finished, we decided to do an acoustic tour of the States, and Tommy starts fucking up again—taking pills. He consumed our manager’s time, and instead of focusing on Tesla, our manager felt his job was to keep the five of us together and Tommy sober. So after that tour we started seeing a lot of Tom Zutaut, and he said we should go into the studio and record some acoustic songs. We were supposed to have a meeting with Tom in Chicago while we were touring with Def Leppard. We turned up at this restaurant, and Tommy is loaded on smack, nodding out. The guys are looking at me, Zutaut’s looking at me, and I’m looking at Sterling, our manager, shaking my head and thinking, This is enough!
After a set one night, Tommy and I get into the dressing room, and I confront him about his using. He starts yelling at me. I picked him up and threw him into the lockers and yelled, “Motherfucker, I’ll beat your ass!” I turned to the band and said, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll just split, and Tommy can stay in the band.”
Tommy apologized and went back into rehab again. He joined us on the Canadian leg of the Five Man Acoustic tour in 2005. I think someone bought him a cake because he was supposed to be thirty days sober, but he was all fucked up. I just told him, “You might be bullshitting these guys, but you’re not bullshitting me. You’re finished!” Now I was super stressed with Tesla. I had this massive flare-up with my colitis and almost couldn’t make the Canadian tour because I was in so much pain.
At that point Tom Zutaut was telling us we should start our own label. We went into the studio and started recording the material that was going to become Real to Reel. That’s when Tommy started having problems again. At that point we decided we were going to take six months off, we’re not going to do anything, and let Tommy get his shit together.
Sterling didn’t do anything for us during those six months. There was nothing set up or anything, and everyone was pissed off. So Sterling got fired. He said, “You said you were taking six months off.”
And I said, “We were taking six months off. We weren’t expecting you to take six months off; we were expecting you to have gigs ready for us when we got back.”
Out went Sterling Bacon. Because we were in with Tom Zutaut, who was kind of acting as our guru, producing these tracks that were going to end up being Real to Reel and helping to start our own record label, he said, “I can manage you. I know how to manage a band.” OK. Sure. Why not! We didn’t see a resume of his management background, but we trusted Tom. We’d known him our whole lives; we wouldn’t be sitting here without him. Then it was Tom managing, and I was helping him, and I wasn’t getting fuckin’ paid.
After the tour we went into my studio to record some acoustic songs, and sure as hell Tommy is up to his old tricks. Once he started missing conference calls with management, we told Tommy we were going to piss test him, and he turned in a dirty test. He copped to it and said he had a vasectomy and got a bunch of pills for the pain. That was bullshit, and we’d had enough. I’d had a vasectomy, and I didn’t take a bunch of pills, I just put a bag of frozen peas on my balls. So it was unanimously decided that he be asked to leave. Either that or the band was going break up again. The band couldn’t tour because of Skeoch. People weren’t going to have the ability to earn money to feed their families.
Predictably, the stress of Tommy leaving and the uncertain future that pointed the band towards triggered another onset of my colitis. As bad as the pain was, I was more affected by the prednisone, which kept packing on the pounds. I’d lose weight while the colitis was in charge and then put it on, and more, when I was on the drug. I’ve been losing and gaining the same forty pounds for years. On top of that, I developed a case of gout, which was like having arthritis in my joints. As some kind of coping mechanism, I began to eat more. My weight was now maxing around 250, and coupled with the gout, moving around onstage like I always had was all but impossible. No leaping off the drum riser anymore.
After Tommy exited, we started looking for a new guitarist. Frank saw this picture of Dave Rude on Myspace and thought he looked really cool with the scarves and crazy shit. That was just like it was with Tommy and Nasty Habits. “That guy looks cool,” that’s exactly what it was. Frank contacted Dave and asked him to come up from Oakland and have a jam, and then brought him out to my studio to record something. I stuck my head in the session and could tell he was really good. Frank took him out on a tour with the Frank Hannon Band, and he played a bunch of Tesla material there. We knew that this was the guy. He showed up for rehearsals and fit like a glove.
We went out that summer, played fairs, festivals, and got Dave into the groove of Tesla. We had started recording an acoustic album in the studio. Tom Zutaut had said, “Let’s go record you acoustically in the studio because people really like that.” It was all Tom’s idea. Tom liked covers, and Tesla liked doing them. “Lil’ Suzi” was a cover and so was “Signs.” We would practice songs at sound check and play some in the show. Tom and I went to the South by Southwest music festival to sort out the best distribution deal for Tesla. We settled with Ryko, and they liked the covers album idea. For us it was about getting the band to do something positive and fun and also break in Dave Rude to see how he worked in the studio.
Pat Schneider, who helped build both my studios, knew about this place in West Texas. It was real old school, Neve desk, no automation, no Pro Tools. It was outside of El Paso, right on the Rio Grande river. In 2006 we went down there to this studio called Sonic Ranch for a month. We would pick a song, learn it, and record it. We had a blast. I think Tom’s thinking was to recreate a time when we were a garage band starting out playing Def Leppard covers. The spin on it was that we only wanted to do older songs and do it on analog tape. We set some boundaries and said, “Let’s pretend we’re back in 1975 and only use the technology from that era.” We mixed by hand. We really got inspired by that, and it’s still a fun listen. We wound up doing two records, Real to Reel Volume 1 was a regular release, and Volume 2 initially was only given out as part of the ticket when you came to see us live.
The studio owner had a big pecan orchard that went right up to the river. The studio had big windows facing Mexico, and while we were laying down tracks we could look out and see Mexicans running through the orchard to get into the US and the immigration cops chasing ’em down. They were hiding behind trees; it was trippy. A lot different than Manhattan for sure.
I really loved how we went retro on those two albums, but it’s not practical to make studio albums that way in this day and age. You have to compete in a world of modern technology, and all the advancements in the last forty years are there for a reason. It’s like race cars. Richard Petty in a ’75 Chevy couldn’t compete in today’s NASCAR, no matter how great he is.
We went on tour to support Real to Reel, and it was cool. We sold about eighty thousand copies of each album, which was on our own label. We got a lot of airplay on the lead track, which was Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You.” It was great, but also this is where we banged heads with Zutaut. Tom was very good at motivating the band. It was like the schoolmaster and his kids; the guy could have been a psychologist. It was also fun rekindling our relationship. He was the one who talked us into forming our own label and doing things on our own. Tom brought a lot of good things to the table. But managing Tesla is a hard job. There are four very strong personalities, and I probably know too much for my own good compared with the average musician. I know the mechanics of why everything happens. With Tom there’s never been a problem from an A&R point of view, but when it got to managing the personalities and budgets, that wasn’t his forte. His strength is finding a young, undeveloped band and turning them into Guns N’ Roses, Tesla, or Mötley Crüe. Also he came from a school where David Geffen would give him a checkbook and say, “Spend what you need.” With Tesla now operating as a cottage industry, there was no longer an unlimited checkbook. We had two different ways of thinking, and it didn’t work out.
Once we got out on the road with him, we wound up going in debt for the first time touring. That had never happened before. I saw red. I was frustrated because he was putting a big workload on me, and I wasn’t getting anything from it, not monetarily or anything, and I was running my immune system down. I said, “Wait a minute, you’re the manager.” Even Frank said Brian didn’t do this with Peter and Cliff.
We were hemorrhaging money because he had no idea how to tour on a budget. Bad management, that’s what it was. He wasn’t a manager. Steve Emler always had good advice; he would say, “Look, you guys are losing money here,” and I was seeing the weekly reports where we were spending all the money, and finally we just said enough is enough. So he got fired in Nashville. We’re still great friends, still brothers. I talk to him all the time. He’s going to move to Texas, hopefully here in Baird. I fired him, the band supported me in firing him, but we recovered from that because we’re brothers. We love each other, the band still loves Tom, he’s still part of our family.
Because we were friends it turned into this ugly blowout. I didn’t talk to him for six months. There were some harsh words at the time. His daughter wrote all kinds of nasty shit about me on the internet, which was hurtful. The first thing I wanted to do was write back and say, “Fuck you, bitch!” but I never said anything. Tom didn’t say anything, and out of respect for Tom I didn’t say anything about what his daughter said. He should have, but I don’t know if he ever did. She never apologized for it. I’ve forgiven her for it and have talked to her a couple of times. He was having me produce her, and she’s talented, but too much drama. Tom and I never wrote anything bad about each other, we’re fine. Maybe now he’s learned how to manage somebody on a budget.
We were a week into the Real to Reel tour when Tom left, and everything was up in the air. We were supposed to go to England and play for the very first time in sixteen years, and nothing was sorted out. The band came to me and said, “Why don’t you manage us, Brian? You’ve been doing it all these years. You were always the go-to guy with Peter and Cliff. You were the guy that networks with people.” At that point we were picking up the pieces. We were in recovery mode, I just kept running the campaign. I have to say it was nice to get the 15 percent manager’s fee, but I also know that I earned every fuckin’ penny.
Even when Frank and I started City Kidd I was the contact guy. When Cliff and Peter were managers, they always dealt with me, and I always caught a lot of shit from the band for it. They said I was management’s boy. But I was the guy they dealt with because they probably thought I was the most logical. I learned a ton of stuff from them as far as how to conduct oneself. Today, if I need managerial advice, I’ll still call them.
We kind of got through all that, took a deep breath, and said, “Ok guys, it’s time to make a new studio record.” We’d done a record with Dave Rude and knew he could play. Dave’s really easy to get on with. He doesn’t have any baggage, no drug problems, no drama, no ego, no chip on his shoulder. He’s just a pleasure to be around. Dave was a shot in the arm for the band. He was twenty-nine when he joined and lowered the average age of Tesla by about five years. He was a perfect fit for us. Everyone loves and respects the guy. He’s a great guitar player. Every night he and Frank do this spontaneous jam, and you’d think they’d been playing together their whole careers.