Interview with TESLA’s lead guitarist FRANK HANNON – 18/07/09, London, UK.

By Jus Forrest.

Tesla hit UK shores once again this Summer (2009) to tour the recently released ‘Forever More’ album. I caught up with fiery lead guitar man Frank Hannon in London, to find out if there are any guitars on Mars, and what’s next on the agenda for Sacremento’s finest. Not only is Frank Hannon a cool dude who likes a bitter or two, he’s also one of my heroes in terms of being such an amazingly talented guitarist.

Last time we caught up in England, it wasn’t too long before we spoke custom flying V’s and San Francisco’s highly talented street buskers.  With regards to equipment, at that time, Marshall Amplification had teamed up with TESLA, providing backline amps and speakers for the European leg of the tour.  The endorsement was said to be a ‘dream come true’ for Frank.  “I paid 800 bucks for the V” advises Frank of his latest standard Flying V guitar, which to my surprise has absolutely no modifications whatsoever.

Later, I caught Frank Hannon’s right hand man Robbie Furiosi outside the tour bus after the show. It was over fifteen years ago when Frank and Robbie came together to create the band ‘Kaleidoscope’ – a Jimi Hendrix tribute.  ‘Frank’s always writing’ explained Rob, who as well as doing guitar tech duties for Frank, also plays drums in the Frank Hannon Band. ‘He’s one of the best guitarist’s in the world’. It’s now 2pm and it’s a sunny afternoon in London’s Islington.  Just moments earlier the tour bus pulled up and Brian Wheat is the first one to wander over – dressed in what looks like his pajamas.  Brian states he is interested in finding a gym but sadly I have no ideas other than to maybe try the local Hilton just around the corner.

Frank Hannon emerges a short while later looking a little out of sorts – hardly surprising after such a long trip from Glasgow. He takes a weary glance around, shading his eyes, before asking “Where are we, is this the venue?”  He also enquires as to where the local laundry might be.  I’m afraid to admit I don’t actually know – with regards to the laundry that is – had he mentioned it during our phone conversation just the previous week however, I’m sure we could have worked something out.  Nevertheless, for now I accept I must surely be a mine of useless information.

Despite spending most of the afternoon chatting to Frank about his obsession with aliens and his passion for skateboards and snowboarding, plus the notable benefits of yoga (which Frank reveals he once practiced while living in Camden for two years, way back when recording one of Tesla’s albums) – we don’t actually get around to our planned interview until around 2 am. A good while after tonight’s show see’s myself and Frank wandering into the local underground NCP car park and me having a ‘bottomless hole‘ handbag moment.  Frank enquires “Is it dangerous down here?” Would you believe I have absolutely no idea!  Frank then tells me that the aliens came during the show.  Strangely I know exactly the moment he’s referring to. Eventually I find that Dictaphone ……

JUS: Your currently touring your latest album ‘Forever More’ – how has the U.K tour been for you guys so far?

Frank Hannon: “It’s been fantastic, and you know, Belfast was amazing because the first time we came to Belfast, we had never been, you know obviously never been here before so the fans were just absolutely nuts.  We had an in-store and they were pushing up against the wall for autographs and like going crazy ‘Tesla, Tesla’ and we never came back – and I always wanted to come back to Belfast, but that was the first night of the tour, and a lot of the same people were that but they’re just older now you know.”

JUS: Up until 2007 Tesla hadn’t been to the UK in a good while  – what was it that urged you to venture over here once again?

Frank Hannon: “Well we had managers that didn’t bring us here because they couldn’t make any money, and because they couldn’t make any money then they couldn’t come, and we had a lot of our own problems too, like we had toured for twelve years straight and never took a break, and then we broke up and when we got back together and then we went through more problems until we finally got Dave [Rude] in the band, and once we got Dave in the band it was a lot easier to make our own decisions and make goals and go for them because we were no longer like dysfunctional you know.”

JUS: Did it help with you taking on the management now, yourself and Brian?

Frank Hannon: “Yeah, yeah big time yeah, we can make our own choices and decisions now and make plans and stick to them, and make goals and make them happen, and we realize our goals now a lot better.”

JUS: It must be a challenge to manage that while also maintaining focus on the music?

Frank Hannon: “It’s very difficult, it hard to balance the music and being a band member and also doing the manager part and doing all the extra work, organizing schedules and people, and crews and merchandise and artwork and er all that stuff and still you know, and still manage to make music like when we were making the album ‘Forever More’ I was recording the album during he day and then at night I was going to the video studio, editing ‘Cummin’ Atcha Live 2008’ the DVD, and I would literally get 2 hours of sleep – I never saw my family and it was just very difficult.”

JUS: Very stressful!

Frank Hannon: “Very difficult but we’re working as hard as we can right now, harder than ever to try to save enough y’know, income to hopefully be able to settle down in a few years.”

JUS: Are they any plans to take Tesla further next year, for example more touring?

Frank Hannon: “Oh of course, we are planning on working for five or six years solid you know, we’re gonna make another album we’re gonna keep touring and keep doing what were gonna do until we can afford to take a break.”

JUS: I’d like to talk about the Frank Hannon Band.  How active is this project?   Was ‘Guitars from Marz’ a low key release?  It seems impossible to find!

Frank Hannon: “That project started out as my tribute band that I had, playing tribute to Jimi Hendrix and it was called Kaleidoscope and that was mostly guitar based covers a lot of Robin Trower a lot of Jimi Hendrix, and then we started doing some Black Sabbath and then we started doing some Zepplin and it was an outlet for me to just play covers because I love playing covers and playing tribute to my favorite guitar players. But, I decided that I wanted to have a legitimate album and right at that time I was writing the instrumental songs and we started joking around about the space probes that America was sending to Mars and how much money they were spending – billions of dollars – sending these robots to Mars – and we thought it was a fucking joke because there’s so many people starving in the world and in America that we thought it was ridiculous for them to spend all that money to send stuff to Mars when we need, really need help here on Earth and er so we thought about making a joke that if they did discover life on Mars they would probably kill it and eat it, [laughs] then we started thinking well you know what – maybe they’ll find guitars on Mars. And maybe they’ll bring them back. So that was kind of the concept of the record. Kind of like a 2112 where they find a guitar from an ancient civilization and bring it back because they didn’t find the oil that they were looking for on Mars. Because Cos they’d used that up years ago.”

JUS: So you said this is a low key kind of thing – kinda quiet – you can’t get hold of the album?

Frank Hannon: “Yeah, I probably, I rejected record deals I had many offers for record contracts and I turned them all down. Because I don’t want a record company telling me what to play so I purposely just kept it a very eccentric eclectic album and er you know its part of a trilogy and I’m working on the other two parts of it – we’re gonna re-record some of it and re-release it, hopefully by December I will have a new version of ‘Guitarz from Marz’ and it will be live in the studio along with the original demos that are on the original version.”

JUS: I’ll try and get hold of a copy then!

Frank Hannon: “Well I try to keep it like that cos I want it to be more of a collectors piece for the true fan that doesn’t care about commercialism or anything like that.”

JUS: Technology is fast paced – particularly for the guitarist – do you stick with tried and tested gear or are you eager to experiment and try new pieces of equipment.

Frank Hannon: “I have played around with every piece of equipment, and pedals and amps  – I even tried to make my own amp and I decided you know what – all the amp companies always say “oh it sounds like a Marshall” and so I decided you know I’m tired of wasting my time messing around with stuff I just stick with what I know works and that is a Gibson SG and a Marshall 100 watt amp and those two things just sound the best, so I don’t waste time with that anymore I spend my time playing guitar instead of toying around with noises and stuff.”

JUS: The Forever More album is quite an emotional album isn’t it?

Frank Hannon: “It was made during a very emotional time for Jeff, the singer, he was going through divorce at the time and his ex wife was crazy and causing a lot of problems and so for him it was very emotional. For me it was very demanding because I was working triple time hours, editing video and making new websites, and the fan club – Tesla troops and doing all of that stuff at the same time.”

JUS: For Dave Rude it was, apart from ‘Real to Reel’ his first collaboration with you guys?

Frank Hannon: “Yeah first time we wrote together yeah. And he’s a natural and when we get in the studio it becomes really natural for us and pretty easy and really and if it turns Jeff on – because Tesla is kind of like the Jeff Keith band really because its based around his voice and his singing.”

JUS: Finally any advice for young upcoming guitarists?

Frank Hannon: “Yeah record yourself, buy yourself a four track digital recorder, tape machine, doesn’t matter, but practice recording yourself and learn how to program a drum machine and play along with that and overdub yourself, and start that early and also learn how to sing and try just singing and writing simple songs.”

JUS: Thank you very much!

Frank Hannon: “You got it, thank you for interviewing me, bye bye!”