Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left's podcast. Like
Speaker 1: yesterday is the bass player for Tesla, Brian read Brian,
Speaker 1: you wrote a new book and the title is Son
Speaker 1: of a Milkman. Why did you use that title because
Speaker 1: I am the illegitimate son of the milkman. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know today people having babies without being married, etcetera
Speaker 1: is Derek Gurr. But back when you were born, it
Speaker 1: was a little bit pooh pooed. Was it something you
Speaker 1: grew up with that had any negative connotation or any
Speaker 1: negative impact upon your life? Well, just in the fact
Speaker 1: that I come from a large family. There's uh, five
Speaker 1: brothers and one sister now is the youngest. And you
Speaker 1: know the old joke used to be, well you are
Speaker 1: the milkman's kid. Well it's I am the milkman's kid.
Speaker 1: So that's that's kind of why when I sat down
Speaker 1: and started to decide to write a book, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that would be a good title because people think it's
Speaker 1: a joke, But for me, it wasn't a joke. I
Speaker 1: was the milkman's kid. You know. He came by and
Speaker 1: dropped off of cream and my brothers were out there
Speaker 1: ripping off his ice cream truck or whatever he had,
Speaker 1: you know, the dairy truck, and he got mom pregnant
Speaker 1: and cut out. So it was that's how life began.
Speaker 1: So why write a book, Brian, Well, you know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: In this book, I talked a lot about me and
Speaker 1: the things that I have to go through in life
Speaker 1: with autoimmune disease and depression and anxiety and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So getting back to why writing the book. When I
Speaker 1: first started to develop anxiety attacks and I went to
Speaker 1: see this therapist in New York, Dr Hirst Cough, he
Speaker 1: said to me, you know, one day you should consider
Speaker 1: writing a book. It would be a good way to
Speaker 1: help you let go of some of the things that
Speaker 1: you hang onto that maybe are causing you anxiety. And
Speaker 1: at the time we were only on Great Radio Controversy,
Speaker 1: so I went, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, sure, you know,
Speaker 1: and I never really thought about it again. And then
Speaker 1: I think it was when I turned fifty I said, well,
Speaker 1: all right that that came to mind again. You know,
Speaker 1: this thing about a book. I've seen other people's books
Speaker 1: in the bookstores, Duff mckagans and a few other people's.
Speaker 1: I thought, well enough, time has passed in my life
Speaker 1: to actually write something about and the band having a
Speaker 1: career the thirty years or whatever it was at the time,
Speaker 1: because they started the book eight years ago, so I said, well,
Speaker 1: then maybe it's time to do a book. There's enough
Speaker 1: history and people might want to read a story about
Speaker 1: the base player that started the band Tesla. But at
Speaker 1: the time in in No One, when I gave a ship,
Speaker 1: you know, they just wouldn't have that, you know, the
Speaker 1: Tesla was still you know, becoming Tesla and and stuff,
Speaker 1: and so I just thought, you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a turning fifty thing and then turning fifty, turn
Speaker 1: fifty five. And we finished it last year. Okay, did
Speaker 1: you write it alone? How did What was your actual process?
Speaker 1: So I started. I started it eight years ago with
Speaker 1: this guy, Pete mckowski, who used to write for Sounds
Speaker 1: magazine in in England, because I was spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time in England. And we started a draft and
Speaker 1: basically he was interviewing me and interviewing other people and stuff,
Speaker 1: and it was gonna be more of a Tesla book.
Speaker 1: But when I started looking at the drafts of what
Speaker 1: we were doing, it made me sound like it was English,
Speaker 1: like I was an English guy the way he was
Speaker 1: writing it, and so we kind of just lost We
Speaker 1: put it on the back burner and lost connection whatever.
Speaker 1: And then a couple of years after that, this guy
Speaker 1: Kenny Nicholson who worked for Tesla as stage manager, production manager,
Speaker 1: you know, monitor guy, all the stuff that han't known
Speaker 1: as since we started playing in the clubs when we're kids. Um,
Speaker 1: he kind of writes a little bit. He's got some
Speaker 1: degree in journalism, and the said, I said, hey, would
Speaker 1: you do this and let me write? Let me let's
Speaker 1: write this book. You interview me in a series of
Speaker 1: interviews and go kind of like from the beginning to
Speaker 1: where we were at the time, and and let's see
Speaker 1: if if there's something there, and then I'll pitch it
Speaker 1: and see if someone wants to put out this book.
Speaker 1: So we did that, and the feedback we got then
Speaker 1: was it read more like an interview, And a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff that's in the book now wasn't in
Speaker 1: the book, Like the things with the the health issues
Speaker 1: and stuff. It was more geared towards Tesla instead of
Speaker 1: you know, more Brian Wheat. So when I presented that
Speaker 1: to people, my manager Mike kobe Ashi. Actually he said,
Speaker 1: you know, do something a little bit different here, Brian
Speaker 1: than just you know, this is what we did in Tesla,
Speaker 1: this is how we made the albums. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Talk about your life and the things that I know
Speaker 1: that you go through, you know, with your clidas and
Speaker 1: your crones and your depression and all these other things,
Speaker 1: and you know, overcoming alcoholism, all that stuff, believe me.
Speaker 1: And for a minute I went, oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: and then I went, well, if you're gonna do it,
Speaker 1: you might as well just put it all out there.
Speaker 1: And if you're gonna let him be judged, let him
Speaker 1: judge you once and for alln maybe just maybe you know,
Speaker 1: there's some kidding Tara Hut, Indiana with colidas or something
Speaker 1: that's a Tesla fan or suffers from depression or anxiety.
Speaker 1: He reads the book and he goes, as well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not the only guy, meaning him that has this condition.
Speaker 1: Brian has it in Tesla, and I can relate. So
Speaker 1: if then I thought, well, maybe I've been actually helped somebody.
Speaker 1: And that's when I went full four center. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: separate some of the health issues. Let's talk about the
Speaker 1: physical health issues to begin. When did your colitis and
Speaker 1: crone's manifest When did you first notice you had them? Fourteen?
Speaker 1: And what happened then? I just got one day, I
Speaker 1: finished eating dinner and I got really bad stomach pains.
Speaker 1: And then we spent about three weeks going back and
Speaker 1: forth to the emergency room. This is in the mid seventies,
Speaker 1: and they kept saying you got the flu, you know,
Speaker 1: because it was just really bad cramps and the bleeding
Speaker 1: stuff didn't start until later. Until finally, three weeks later,
Speaker 1: they the doctor figured out, well, you've got colitis, and
Speaker 1: basically he put me on a bland diet for four
Speaker 1: months five months and it went into remission and it
Speaker 1: stayed in remission until I was forty years old. And
Speaker 1: what happened at forty tesla was back together. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I have a friend of unfortunately had colitis and ultimately died.
Speaker 1: There's a lot, you know, there's a lot that's unknown
Speaker 1: to what degree is politis amplified by stress. There's a
Speaker 1: lot stresses that you know, they don't know what causes it,
Speaker 1: and they don't have a cure for it, but they
Speaker 1: can you know, kick its ass. Into remission. But stress
Speaker 1: is a big trigger, and you know, that was the
Speaker 1: thing I talked about when Tessa got back together in nineteen.
Speaker 1: After we broke up in ninety five and two thousand,
Speaker 1: there was still a lot of stress in the group
Speaker 1: and we had to find our way, and I talked
Speaker 1: about that in the book as well. Um, so that's
Speaker 1: when it really started to come back, you know. But
Speaker 1: how being said that and you just asking me that,
Speaker 1: I think it started two years before when I was
Speaker 1: out in a van with my other band, Soul Mode,
Speaker 1: because when Tesla quit, I started another band and got
Speaker 1: another record deal and went out there and like in
Speaker 1: a van and played clubs and stuff that I never
Speaker 1: did in the beginning of Tesla. With Tesla, we got
Speaker 1: hooked up with Cliff and Peter and we immediately were
Speaker 1: on David Lee Roth and then def Leppard and that
Speaker 1: was it. So I always called it like my back
Speaker 1: taxes tour. But I think that started to to the stress.
Speaker 1: And then when Tessa got that together, it was stressful
Speaker 1: again because it took us a while to get our
Speaker 1: our bearings on why we broke up in the first
Speaker 1: place and how to not do those same things. So
Speaker 1: stress is very very much a trigger and collidus, And
Speaker 1: so what's the status and you're colleidis today, it's it's good.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm in a good shape these days. I'm you know,
Speaker 1: the last four five years, I've been really good. Okay,
Speaker 1: And what about the crones? Tell us about the crones. Well,
Speaker 1: my symptom is clide's basically crone's is from your mouth
Speaker 1: to the other end, and collidus is just the intestine.
Speaker 1: So how my manifest is is in the intestines and
Speaker 1: you get ulcers and bleeding and cramping and all kinds
Speaker 1: and gnarly stuff. Yeah, I wasn't sure what was going on.
Speaker 1: Thanks for clarifying that. When did you first notice that
Speaker 1: you were haunted by either anxiety or depression? That started
Speaker 1: at funny enough, when I was fourteen too, and it
Speaker 1: was Halloween and I was out riding around my tins
Speaker 1: being Halloween, and I ran into a friend of a
Speaker 1: friend of my brother buddies and he said, hey, do
Speaker 1: you want to smoke some weed? Any I'm a young
Speaker 1: kid wanted to be cool. Go well, yeah, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: what is it? Because it's Panama red man? I said, great,
Speaker 1: So I smoked this weed. And the next thing I know,
Speaker 1: I'm riding my bike and I'm like, I don't know
Speaker 1: where the last ten minutes went. I can't remember anything right,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like Wow. So at that point, when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, I thought, well, I'm just allergic
Speaker 1: to marijuana, so I'd never really smoked pot. I would just,
Speaker 1: you know, when you went to those high school parties
Speaker 1: and stuff, just drink beer, Jack Daniels whatever, stayed away
Speaker 1: from the pot. And it wasn't until right after I
Speaker 1: got married to Sandy Sarea and we were recording Psychotic
Speaker 1: Supper that all of a sudden, these anxiety attacks started coming.
Speaker 1: And we were sitting in pre production with Steve Thompson
Speaker 1: and Michael Barbierro, and next thing I knew, it felt
Speaker 1: like I was up on the ceiling looking down at
Speaker 1: the band. I had disconnected, and I started freaking out,
Speaker 1: and and Steve took me outside and I threw up,
Speaker 1: and I said, I think something's really wrong. I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on. And that just kept happening for
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks while we were in this pre production. Now,
Speaker 1: mind you, Psychotic Supper was a little bit of a
Speaker 1: stressful record to make, so there's all this stress going on.
Speaker 1: So this stress triggers the anxiety and the colidus. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like a double edged sword. So he said, look,
Speaker 1: when we get to New York to record, my brother
Speaker 1: is a doctor. I want you to see him. So
Speaker 1: I went to the hospital there and on Long Island
Speaker 1: or wherever it was, and they ran a you know,
Speaker 1: every test nuner Son, and he came in and he said, uh, well,
Speaker 1: I know what's wrong with you. And I'm like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking I got a brain tumor or something. Right,
Speaker 1: he said, you're you're suffering from anxiety attacks. And I said, what, Well,
Speaker 1: how do you deal with that? And he said, well,
Speaker 1: and you either see a psychiatrist or I give you
Speaker 1: a bunch of pills, you know, to to medicate this.
Speaker 1: And at the time I kind of liked I was
Speaker 1: drinking and taking whatever it was downers or whatever at
Speaker 1: the time. Uh so I don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: I don't want to become a drug addict. Funny how
Speaker 1: my rationale was. So he said, well, you should see
Speaker 1: a psychiatrist and and and it can help. And I said,
Speaker 1: I don't really believe in it. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: know today I'm a strong advocate of it. And it
Speaker 1: was Peter Minch, my manager, that said, I know a
Speaker 1: really good guy. When I told Peter what was going on,
Speaker 1: he was always really helpful, uh with me. You know,
Speaker 1: me and Pete had a really good relationship. And uh
Speaker 1: he said, I know a doctor that's a psychiatrist. Go
Speaker 1: to him and see if he can help you. And uh,
Speaker 1: after I went there for about five weeks, six weeks,
Speaker 1: this anxiety and these attacks started to get a lot less. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, as someone who suffered from panic attacks and
Speaker 1: anxiety myself. Uh, they say that exposure therapy works. Was
Speaker 1: he focusing on the general things in your life or
Speaker 1: did he tell you how to deal with anxiety? He
Speaker 1: was doing cognitive behavior therapy and what's the other one,
Speaker 1: you know, the Freudian thing where you go through your
Speaker 1: life and all that. So he did actual exposures. I
Speaker 1: mean like, uh, some of my things would be I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be in an enclosed space, i won't be able
Speaker 1: to move whatever, and they'll tell you, well, try to
Speaker 1: be in that space, try to overcome the feelings. Did
Speaker 1: he do anything like that where he would put you
Speaker 1: in situations and show that you wouldn't freak out. No, no,
Speaker 1: he was more like, tell me about your life, right,
Speaker 1: and why do you why do you have to drink
Speaker 1: six scotches? Why you drink too? You know? He so
Speaker 1: he started like that kind of thing, but he never
Speaker 1: said why did you have to drink six scotches and
Speaker 1: couldn't just drink? I was young, you know, I was stupid.
Speaker 1: I was young. I mean the question because were you
Speaker 1: self medicating to do I think so? I think so?
Speaker 1: And that's what he said. He's like, why do you
Speaker 1: got to do this? And he also said I had
Speaker 1: this thing called a sundown effect. When the sun went down,
Speaker 1: that's when the anxiety came out. And he said it
Speaker 1: was because you know, I talked about it in the book,
Speaker 1: as well as my mom having a couple of nervous
Speaker 1: breakdowns when I was a kid, and he said it
Speaker 1: it reminded you that you had to go home and
Speaker 1: be this adult and take care of your mother. You know,
Speaker 1: It's what he said, you know, look right, right, So
Speaker 1: there's all this stuff, but long story short, he got
Speaker 1: me to where I was able to really control them
Speaker 1: and and and not freak out. But it took about
Speaker 1: three years and I continued therapy with him for another
Speaker 1: five A couple of questions, Do you still have anxiety today?
Speaker 1: Very rarely, but I take medication today. Did you take
Speaker 1: medication when you saw that psychiatrist? No, there was no medication.
Speaker 1: Only when did you start taking medication? What is the medication?
Speaker 1: It's Paxel And I started taking Paxel and two thousand
Speaker 1: and four and I've been on it ever since. And
Speaker 1: the thing of it is is I tried to get
Speaker 1: off of it last year, you know, after so two
Speaker 1: thousand four to two thousand one nineteen, so twenty doesn't count.
Speaker 1: It's such a blur because the year before that, we're
Speaker 1: on tour feff Leppard in in Canada, and I decided
Speaker 1: to wean off the Paxel because I wanted to get
Speaker 1: off medication, you know, as much as I could. And
Speaker 1: it threw me the worst depression I've ever had in
Speaker 1: my life. I never experienced it before. And then you know,
Speaker 1: I jumped back on it, but it took another five
Speaker 1: months to get it back in your system. When it
Speaker 1: takes five months to get it out of your system, well,
Speaker 1: did you ever get to the the point where you stopped
Speaker 1: completely stopped the paxel. Right, yes, okay, so you were
Speaker 1: off completely. I was weaned and I thought I was great,
Speaker 1: and I got I got to a point where we
Speaker 1: got on tour in Canada. I don't know what it was.
Speaker 1: I woke up one morning and had this weird feeling
Speaker 1: didn't want to get out of my bunk. And you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't anxiety because it didn't feel like anxiety. It
Speaker 1: wasn't them an anxiety attack. This was like a big
Speaker 1: black cloud. I I think it was depression. Certainly sounds
Speaker 1: like it. But you're saying it takes five months to
Speaker 1: ramp back up with the paxel. How did you cope
Speaker 1: biting my nails? You know, you just you just you
Speaker 1: just cope. That's what I've always had to do. I've
Speaker 1: had to cope with it. Well, there's certain certain people
Speaker 1: like Chris Cornell and you know, others who couldn't cope. No,
Speaker 1: I know. And and that's that's funny you mentioned that
Speaker 1: because the only time I met Chris met him one
Speaker 1: time I drove him around l A with my friend
Speaker 1: Ross Halfon to do a photo shoot, and you know,
Speaker 1: he knew I was in Tesla. Obviously, I knew he
Speaker 1: was in Southing Garden because we were peers, but we
Speaker 1: never met or anything. And he started telling me, man,
Speaker 1: I suffer with really bad anxiety attacks. I went, what, man, dude,
Speaker 1: I've had anxiety attacks as I was fourteen. I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I said, I did a lot of therapy
Speaker 1: and now I take packs. Law I'm doing, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty good. And this was two thousand and seventeen or
Speaker 1: whenever it was. But it wasn't too long after that
Speaker 1: that he committed suicide. Who did do you remember if
Speaker 1: he said he was taking any antidepressants. I think he
Speaker 1: said he was taking xanix, right, which is really just
Speaker 1: an anti anxiety medication. People don't understand. That's different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he was, said I think he was. I
Speaker 1: think he said something about Zanex. Okay, so in the
Speaker 1: book you mentioned you had therapy with this guy for
Speaker 1: five years as someone from Sacramentos on the road and
Speaker 1: the guys in New York. How did you do the
Speaker 1: therapy on the phone and did that work? Well, it
Speaker 1: didn't work as good as when I saw him, but
Speaker 1: it did. It was better than nothing. It would be
Speaker 1: great if we have what we have now, these zoom
Speaker 1: meetings right stuff. But you know this is and even
Speaker 1: worse was when I would be on tour in Europe,
Speaker 1: so I'd be calling him, paying him as hourly rate
Speaker 1: and the transatlantic call. I mean, you know it's expensive. Oh,
Speaker 1: that is for sure. That's one thing you also mentioned
Speaker 1: in the book that you got to the point where
Speaker 1: he was too expensive for your budget. Yeah, at a
Speaker 1: certain point with Tesla, and I kind of ended my
Speaker 1: my my therapy with him when Tesla broke up because
Speaker 1: then obviously the money stopped coming in. There were no
Speaker 1: more royalties, so you got your the Paxels. Who prescribed
Speaker 1: the Paxel. That was another doctor I went to later,
Speaker 1: a therapist, psychiatrist, Yeah, I went to it. I went
Speaker 1: to another psychiatrist in Sacramento and Tesla got back together,
Speaker 1: and he's the one that said, I think you should
Speaker 1: take abuse bar and I tried that that didn't do nothing,
Speaker 1: and then he said, well try Paxel, and Paxel worked.
Speaker 1: And I saw him for you know, maybe a year,
Speaker 1: and then the bands on for I want to say
Speaker 1: six months because we were having a hard time making
Speaker 1: the album. Uh into the now when we got back
Speaker 1: together there and uh, I'd seen you know, Metallica doing
Speaker 1: it on their thing. I said, hey, guys, and because
Speaker 1: I've been in therapy, would you come, you know, consider
Speaker 1: going in and and and seeing the psychiatrist? And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to have the band break up again,
Speaker 1: and the guys didn't want to, but we didn't really
Speaker 1: know how to communicate. So we went to him and
Speaker 1: he got us through it. We made the record and
Speaker 1: we're still standing, Wow, and do you have any therapy? Now?
Speaker 1: You're just taking the paxel. Pretty No, I just take
Speaker 1: the paxel. Okay. We're having a very honest conversation about this,
Speaker 1: and certainly as time goes by, these are topics that
Speaker 1: people talk about. But to what degree since you started
Speaker 1: at age fourteen, did you feel these were things that
Speaker 1: you had to hold to yourself and you couldn't talk
Speaker 1: about made you feel separate from people? Well, with with
Speaker 1: any of those things in the book that I talked about,
Speaker 1: they're not glamorous, they're not rock and roll. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm cool, I'm Keith Richards kind of things to talk about.
Speaker 1: You know, Uh, there's a stigma to them. People think
Speaker 1: you're weak mentally weak if you suffer from anxiety or depression. Um,
Speaker 1: so I kind of kept him to myself. It wasn't Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Brian, I have you know, I have collidus and
Speaker 1: I suffer from anxiety. What's your name? You know? So
Speaker 1: it was kept to myself a lot. And that's the
Speaker 1: thing about putting it in the book, Bob is it
Speaker 1: was kind of liberating for me. It really was, in
Speaker 1: the sense that you let it go. The doctor was right,
Speaker 1: how about the side effects of paxel? Do they affect
Speaker 1: you in anyway? Well? Well, okay, you know the worst
Speaker 1: side effect of paxel. If you take too much, you
Speaker 1: can't come right. How do you deal with that? Cut
Speaker 1: down your dose? Uh? Yeah, Because they had me up,
Speaker 1: they and he ramped up on the high dose there
Speaker 1: for a while. As to say, doc, you know, dude,
Speaker 1: you know what's going on. He said, well, I got
Speaker 1: that in half and we found the right dosage and stuff.
Speaker 1: And do you supplement that with VIAGRAA or anything like that. No,
Speaker 1: I don't need any of that. Okay, that's good. I'm
Speaker 1: good with that these days. Okay, let's go to the band.
Speaker 1: The band had instant success. They're on a major label, Geffen.
Speaker 1: Then the band broke up, got back together. You had
Speaker 1: a deal with Sanctuary. Now you say in the book
Speaker 1: you turned down a deal with Sony you felt that
Speaker 1: you can make more money yourself. What's it like now?
Speaker 1: Granted the whole landscape change in this period, but what
Speaker 1: was it like being on a major label and being
Speaker 1: independent today? Well? I tell people, and they find it
Speaker 1: hard to believe, but I say, we make more money
Speaker 1: now being independent than we did back then, having Geffen
Speaker 1: and Q Prime and all that, you know, all the
Speaker 1: people that come with it, and I prefer And I
Speaker 1: also tell people that I'm prouder of the second half
Speaker 1: of my career that I am the first, only in
Speaker 1: the sense not of the work we did. Because the
Speaker 1: work we did, I think it's really good. There's some
Speaker 1: really good moments, but just in the fact that we
Speaker 1: survived and we had to do it on our own
Speaker 1: and we learned how to do it, and I think
Speaker 1: that was an accomplishment for that band. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we we sold a million and
Speaker 1: a half records on mechanical residents and never saw any money.
Speaker 1: You know, it was paid. Did you ask for the money.
Speaker 1: And what did they say, Well, we were too stupid.
Speaker 1: We thought everything was free. They thought like we thought,
Speaker 1: like when they came to the show and they took
Speaker 1: you to these nice meals and stuff, that David Geffin
Speaker 1: was just a really nice guy. He really liked you, right,
Speaker 1: And when they flew you and they put you in
Speaker 1: the Sunset Marquee to do press and all this stuff, like, man,
Speaker 1: what a place. It wasn't until many years later that
Speaker 1: we thought was that we found out that we were
Speaker 1: paying for it. It's like, oh, okay, these two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollar videos you got us making, we're paying for him,
Speaker 1: right and and and unfortunately that band at that time,
Speaker 1: I didn't really watch what we were doing. You know,
Speaker 1: I did later, and you know, when certainly got back together,
Speaker 1: I steered the business end of Tesla. But at that
Speaker 1: time we were spending money like crazy. And you'd be amazed,
Speaker 1: you know how much money was just going all over
Speaker 1: the place. Okay, Uh, when you were having your first
Speaker 1: hit era MTV was dominant. You get a video on
Speaker 1: there blows you up all over the world. You certainly
Speaker 1: with the beneficiary of that. That scene no longer exists.
Speaker 1: So it's hard for almost anybody. You know, even the
Speaker 1: biggest acts on the so called chart don't reach everybody. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what's it like to be in the marketplace knowing
Speaker 1: that inherently it's incredibly difficult to reach everybody? Are you
Speaker 1: happy with the audience you have? Do you want to
Speaker 1: grow it? How do you grow it? Well? You always
Speaker 1: want to grow it. You know. Today we make money
Speaker 1: from tickets and t shirts, make no money on records,
Speaker 1: no money on publishing, no money on you know, Spotify
Speaker 1: and Apple Music. That's you know, that's when no one
Speaker 1: gets nothing, you know, unless you're a super act. So
Speaker 1: we're I was trying to grow it. You just you
Speaker 1: try to get on the bigger tours like we've done
Speaker 1: in the past, in the in the summer, big Live
Speaker 1: Nation tours to try to build your audience bigger um.
Speaker 1: But Tesla has a cult following. We We can roll
Speaker 1: into any town and do two thousand seats, you know, anywhere,
Speaker 1: in some places four and five thousands, So that I'm
Speaker 1: thankful for. That's what all that hard work we did
Speaker 1: in that first half allowed us to be able to
Speaker 1: still do. If you go to those markets to what
Speaker 1: degree can you play new material? Well, we might play
Speaker 1: three or four songs maximum out of how many how
Speaker 1: long it said, how many our forty five minutes? You know,
Speaker 1: an hour forty five minutes set, you might hear four
Speaker 1: new songs and and and you know it's not like
Speaker 1: it was back in the eighties and early nineties. You know,
Speaker 1: people they go off and get a beer and do whatever,
Speaker 1: and you know they want to hear the hits. They
Speaker 1: want to hear the things they know, They want to
Speaker 1: hear the way it is. They want to hear signs
Speaker 1: and want to hear Susie Cowboy, what you give love song?
Speaker 1: You know, they there's a certain percentage of our fans
Speaker 1: that do like that. You know, we'll sell fifty sixty
Speaker 1: seventy thousand albums still today, which is is pretty good,
Speaker 1: but not compared to when you were selling two and
Speaker 1: a half million. So you know, there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, we do though we we put them in.
Speaker 1: We put three or four in, but never more than
Speaker 1: four because it's just okay. And getting on those live
Speaker 1: nation package tours in the sheds. Who makes that happen? Um, Well,
Speaker 1: we have a we have a great agency, a G.
Speaker 1: I Adam Cornfield and Dennis Arthur, and recently we were managed.
Speaker 1: I managed the band from two thousand five until about
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen sixteen, and at that point we hooked
Speaker 1: back up with our old buddies and Deaf Leopard, and
Speaker 1: I got us on that one Deaf Leopard Sticks Tesla
Speaker 1: package that was out that one summer, and then we
Speaker 1: did two more. But at that point I think I
Speaker 1: felt that if we were going to take the band
Speaker 1: any far farther and try to grow that thing, I
Speaker 1: needed to get with a big manager right now, mind you.
Speaker 1: I called Peter and Cliff back in the beginning and
Speaker 1: they were like, no, it's okay, we're not into When
Speaker 1: we got back together, went on into nostalgia and I
Speaker 1: understand that. How did it make you feel, though? Well?
Speaker 1: I hurt my feelings at first, you know, when Cliff
Speaker 1: said that to me. But Cliffs are genius and Tesla
Speaker 1: would not be what Tesla was without Cliff Bernstein. Cliff
Speaker 1: Burnstein was one of the dry be forces. Well can
Speaker 1: you stop there for a second and say what Cliff
Speaker 1: added or what Cliff did? Well, Cliff, outside of being
Speaker 1: a business genius, has a really good musical ear and
Speaker 1: and Cliff he was like our A and R guy.
Speaker 1: I mean Tom Zutat was there the first record and
Speaker 1: he took us to Cliff, but after that Guns and
Speaker 1: Roses had exploded and he wasn't really you know, it
Speaker 1: was Cliff. It was Cliff and Peter we were sending
Speaker 1: our songs to. Tom was involved to a degree, but
Speaker 1: not like Peter and Cliff, and mainly Cliff. Peter was
Speaker 1: more the touring guy, you know, the stage, that guy
Speaker 1: the muscle and if you wanted to talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: doing a track with a symphony or something, you know Peter,
Speaker 1: I mean Cliff was that guy. And their relationships there's
Speaker 1: there's the two of them and you know both of
Speaker 1: them well, but um, being on your end, it I've
Speaker 1: never been represented by them. Uh, they were the best.
Speaker 1: What was the band happy with what they said? Or
Speaker 1: would you tend to argue with the two of them.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, we were happy to what they what
Speaker 1: they said. And the problem is is that once the
Speaker 1: band becomes successful, then they don't want to listen anymore.
Speaker 1: And there was one bad mistake that was that we
Speaker 1: never let Peter and Cliff or Tom Zoo tat ever
Speaker 1: forget and that's that. The three of them never wanted
Speaker 1: to put Love Song on that album. They said, it's
Speaker 1: three songs, it's not a song. And we fought tooth
Speaker 1: and nail, and so anytime we after Love Song that
Speaker 1: we said something they didn't agree. We said, well, you
Speaker 1: didn't like love Song either, and I'm sure they got
Speaker 1: tired of hearing. Now. Look, we were a paid in
Speaker 1: the asked to manage. You know, we never really cracked
Speaker 1: it like Guns or Metallica or Leopard or Motley. We
Speaker 1: were in the second level of the band. You know,
Speaker 1: I'd like to say we we were the B B
Speaker 1: level bands. We had a couple of hits, but never
Speaker 1: massive and at a certain point, I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: for those guys, it was just too much trouble when
Speaker 1: it was worth. You know, we had problems with the
Speaker 1: guitar player, and you know, we were dysfunctional, and you know,
Speaker 1: I can't blame him. But at the time when Cliff
Speaker 1: said he wasn't in a nostalgia me being naive and
Speaker 1: being the positive guy that I am, I thought, I'll
Speaker 1: called Peter, Will call Cliff, Will call Thompson, Barbiuro We
Speaker 1: get the whole band back together. We'll just pick up
Speaker 1: where we left off. No, No, that's that's not what happened.
Speaker 1: So what year were in when you're having these conversations.
Speaker 1: Two thousand, Okay, so it's not not that long. It's
Speaker 1: five years after the band break Yeah, it's five years
Speaker 1: after the band broke up. Okay, let's go into a
Speaker 1: few things here. You were, you know, Thompson and Barbierro
Speaker 1: you had mixed feelings about yeah, yeah, and then ultimately
Speaker 1: you felt Thompson I believe added something. And first what
Speaker 1: the guy doing, but in retrospect you said he was
Speaker 1: a key influencers approach. Yeah, and again it's it's it's
Speaker 1: that thing of being young and and nowaive. You didn't
Speaker 1: really get what Steve was doing until you look back
Speaker 1: on it later, you know, because we associated everything. Unless
Speaker 1: you were turning knobs or playing guitar, you weren't really
Speaker 1: doing anything. Well, Steve didn't play the guitar, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't an engineer, but he'd come in there and he'd
Speaker 1: speak in these these metaphors like I want you to
Speaker 1: inject some energy here, and we're like, okay, great, what
Speaker 1: fucking key you know what I mean, and you know,
Speaker 1: so yeah, at the time, you know, and we and
Speaker 1: I and I also say we had a phone out
Speaker 1: with with with barberro In in the end of Psychotic
Speaker 1: Supper where he walked out and me and Frank had
Speaker 1: to finish mixing the album. You know, those those were
Speaker 1: just things you go through when you've got success, money, drugs,
Speaker 1: people telling you how fucking cool you are. Um, although
Speaker 1: I did feel that we had outgrown him by the
Speaker 1: third album, I felt that it was time and I
Speaker 1: think we all did to try, you know, something different.
Speaker 1: But I was at the point when we got back
Speaker 1: together I had seen all that and realized that, and
Speaker 1: you know, it was like and the thing that Thompson
Speaker 1: and barber Erero said to me was well said to
Speaker 1: the bend, was we'll we'll do a record if the
Speaker 1: songs are good. And that kind of was like, well,
Speaker 1: what the funk weren't the song is good the first
Speaker 1: time around? You know that kind of again, we're passed off,
Speaker 1: you know, for a day. But you know, the funny
Speaker 1: thing about it is I speak to Steve quite often
Speaker 1: and Mike I don't speak with too much that I
Speaker 1: think Mike, you know, he harbors a little ill feelings
Speaker 1: to me because he says I wouldn't let them go
Speaker 1: mix the Guns and Roses record and walk off Psychotic
Speaker 1: Supper and that, you know, I cost him a lot
Speaker 1: of money. And I said, Mike, but you made four
Speaker 1: of the records that were multi platinum records in that
Speaker 1: same time for hime, I cost you anything. I mean,
Speaker 1: why why would anyone say, oh, yeah, go ahead, we'll
Speaker 1: stop you go ahead, you know, ACXL, Slash, Mike, Steve,
Speaker 1: Tom everyone, you know. I mean, you can imagine how
Speaker 1: how he felt. But I think Mike still to this
Speaker 1: day kind of harbors a little bit of that fell feeling.
Speaker 1: I hope he doesn't, but I since he does, because
Speaker 1: I don't. It's never been really quite the same between
Speaker 1: me and Michael. Let me and Steve are fine, okay.
Speaker 1: You know, to the outside observer, they would think a
Speaker 1: song by love Song would be what the label and
Speaker 1: the manager would tell you to do a ballad. So
Speaker 1: what what is the story of how love Song was created?
Speaker 1: What was it from the band's side, Well, we were
Speaker 1: just in doing demos, you know. We we had this
Speaker 1: little rehearsal room and we had a a track tape
Speaker 1: machine set up, and we were just writing songs for
Speaker 1: the next record after Mechanical Residents, and we had Heavens
Speaker 1: Trail and Hang Tough and and and and what It
Speaker 1: Is and What You Give was even ready for that record,
Speaker 1: but Jeff didn't have the lyrics together. And but the
Speaker 1: one that we all thought were like was the the song,
Speaker 1: the one that we thought was the hit on that
Speaker 1: record was love Song. And we played it to Peter
Speaker 1: and Cliff and Tom and they said, we don't like it.
Speaker 1: It's it's just sounds like three songs. And Jeff Keith
Speaker 1: literally started crying, like fucking crying tears and all, and I,
Speaker 1: how can you say that, you know? And and I
Speaker 1: think that was the first time Cliff ever saw Jeff
Speaker 1: that emotional, which he got to see much later in
Speaker 1: our career. And they were all kind of taken back,
Speaker 1: and we're like, you know, guys, we really believe in
Speaker 1: this song. And and uh, you know, we had to
Speaker 1: twist some arms and really kind of say, look, well,
Speaker 1: we'll throw off fucking lazy days, crazy nights. And that's
Speaker 1: Cliff Bernstein's favorite song. I just gotta mention because I
Speaker 1: was gonna bring that up because that's one of your
Speaker 1: that was the only very successful track you hadn't mentioned
Speaker 1: yet and certainly my anthem and he and he remember
Speaker 1: being at backstage at the meadow Lands and def Lepper.
Speaker 1: We were playing with Queens Rich and we were working
Speaker 1: on the second album and and we said, you know
Speaker 1: what we're putting love song on? We don't, we don't
Speaker 1: fuck it. We'll take we're taking Lazy Days, Crazy Nights
Speaker 1: off the record. He I'll buy that song from you.
Speaker 1: How much you want for it, I'll buy it. I
Speaker 1: want that song. He said, Okay, okay, calm down, okay,
Speaker 1: because he really, he really loved that song. And but
Speaker 1: you know, that was the thing that they just didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, all the powers to be didn't wanted to
Speaker 1: put it out, and that's why it came out on
Speaker 1: that record. I don't know if you remember, we put
Speaker 1: out Heavens Trail first, and then we put out Hang
Speaker 1: Tough and it's stalled, and everyone's like, oh, that's it
Speaker 1: for Tesla and uh. At that point we pleaded with
Speaker 1: Tom Zootat to go to Eddie Rosen Black and give
Speaker 1: us one more track, and he said okay, and it
Speaker 1: gave us love song and took Peter and Cliff's credit.
Speaker 1: At that time, they were doing the Steel Wheels tour,
Speaker 1: and I know they bartered, you know, tickets for uh
Speaker 1: shots like mash Trash. If you give Teslas Master trash,
Speaker 1: let it see if people fans react to it, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll give you tickets or whatever. There was some of
Speaker 1: that going on. So in the end they did believe
Speaker 1: in it and and help make it a hit. It
Speaker 1: was it took like fourteen weeks for that track to
Speaker 1: to build up to what it came and then it
Speaker 1: kind of blew up for a while. But in the
Speaker 1: beginning they did not want to put that on the record. Okay,
Speaker 1: have you always been the business guy in the band?
Speaker 1: How did that happen? Minch? You know, Peter took a
Speaker 1: liking to me and he said, look, I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: sure that you're not one of those guys that don't
Speaker 1: know how to to book a plane flight or a
Speaker 1: hotel room. And so I kind of always paid attention
Speaker 1: to what they were doing and ask questions and advice
Speaker 1: and stuff, and I caught shipped from some of the
Speaker 1: guys in the band. They used to call the manager's
Speaker 1: boy and stuff, you know, because I would say, guys,
Speaker 1: I think we should listen to him. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: you're always agreeing with him. Well they're successful, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, um, so yeah, I always wound up wearing
Speaker 1: that hat and I still do to this day. And
Speaker 1: you know, it was originally five members. Now four original members.
Speaker 1: How do you keep the band together? You know, there's
Speaker 1: just something, there's a brotherhood there, okay, And I thought
Speaker 1: the other guy was part of the brotherhood, but you know,
Speaker 1: he chose drugs versus the band. The whole band got
Speaker 1: clean for him, you know, tried to support him, and
Speaker 1: he just couldn't. He couldn't do it. He couldn't hang
Speaker 1: and the four of us did. And then I think
Speaker 1: when we were play faced Tommy with Dave Rude, he
Speaker 1: was such a perfect replacement because it could have went
Speaker 1: the other way, we could have wound up breaking up again.
Speaker 1: That we all just realized that it's a special thing
Speaker 1: we have that doesn't come easy to two people, you know,
Speaker 1: being able to play and have people buy your concert
Speaker 1: tickets and your t shirts year after year after you're
Speaker 1: a special thing. And we realize it. I mean, sure,
Speaker 1: we fight now and again like brothers do. But we're
Speaker 1: brothers and you know, we have other outlets now to
Speaker 1: where we can do other things where it's if we
Speaker 1: don't feel like, you know, we want to do something
Speaker 1: that's outside the framework of what teslayers because it's a brand.
Speaker 1: Tesla is a brand. You expect a certain sound. If
Speaker 1: if we deviate too much, your fans bitch at us.
Speaker 1: You know. So we have things that we can go
Speaker 1: do outside, but we always come back to to Tesla
Speaker 1: and quite honestly, it's how we make our living as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, we were never the level to where we
Speaker 1: all became like multi meonionaires, right, So we're working band.
Speaker 1: That's how we that's how we earn our living is
Speaker 1: going out and playing a hundred shows a year. It's
Speaker 1: a nice living, don't get me wrong. But you know
Speaker 1: you stop it for two years for Corona, it takes
Speaker 1: an effect on you, your your your bank account. Trust me, buddy, Okay,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about changing the band's name to Tesla,
Speaker 1: and especially in light of the car at this point, Well,
Speaker 1: the card the car didn't come around ntil two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, so it's funny, Like I call someone today
Speaker 1: and go, Hi, this is Barnian Wheat from tests and
Speaker 1: they go, oh the car company. No, I'm with the
Speaker 1: band you know started And you know, when Cliff brought
Speaker 1: that to us, we said, what the Fox of Tesla?
Speaker 1: You know that was Jeff exactly words and what the
Speaker 1: Fox of Tesla man? And he told us who Tesla was.
Speaker 1: We never in a thousand years would have picked that
Speaker 1: for a name for the band. We didn't know anything
Speaker 1: about him. It wasn't taught to us in school. And
Speaker 1: none of us were like science fanatics, you know, we
Speaker 1: were music fanatics. Um as far as the car, I
Speaker 1: think the car is cool. I've reached out to Ellen
Speaker 1: a couple of times, tried to get him to a
Speaker 1: a show, uh, because I saw a picture where he
Speaker 1: was wearing our T shirt at Sundance, you know, and
Speaker 1: had our faces on it. And Okay, he obviously knows
Speaker 1: who we are, right And so I got hold of
Speaker 1: his executive p A and sent message and he said
Speaker 1: some shirts, some Tesla shirts. We sent him some more
Speaker 1: Tesla band shirts and we were never able to get together,
Speaker 1: but I'd like to meet him some day. He seemed
Speaker 1: like he's a pretty cool guy. Speaking of high profile people.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of stories about you being friends
Speaker 1: with Jimmy page. How did that happen and what is
Speaker 1: the nature of your friendship. Well, Jimmy is a really
Speaker 1: good friend of mine. Um, I met Jimmy with Ross Halfin,
Speaker 1: who's a really good friend of mine. And Ross Halfin's
Speaker 1: like Jimmy's brother, and I met him backstage at Hammersmith
Speaker 1: onean at our David Lee Ross show. So Ross said,
Speaker 1: I was there mixing busting nut with Terry Thomas and
Speaker 1: Frank Annon. Ross call ups today, you want to go
Speaker 1: see David Lee Roth. Yeah, sure, I ain't got nothing
Speaker 1: to do. So Jenny's coming out. Don't be stupid, don't
Speaker 1: be a fanboy, they said, don't be a punter, right,
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I know a hand of myself. I'll
Speaker 1: be okay. And you know I'm not gonna gush all that.
Speaker 1: So Jimmy came in Ross and induced me to Jimmy.
Speaker 1: I said hi, Jimmy said hi, and then everyone flocked
Speaker 1: Jimmy as they do. And then when all that settled down,
Speaker 1: I said, Jimmy, I'm gonna go get something at the bar.
Speaker 1: Do you want something? He said yeah? He said okay,
Speaker 1: so I came back and I gave him his drink
Speaker 1: and he said thank you. I said, you're welcome. He said,
Speaker 1: I really like five Man Acoustic Jim, and I think
Speaker 1: it's great. And I went, what he said, five Man
Speaker 1: Acoustic Jim. I think it's a great album and no
Speaker 1: one talks about it. And I went, Man, I didn't
Speaker 1: even think you knew who I was. Of course I
Speaker 1: know who you are. You're in Tesla, we're on the
Speaker 1: same label. We're on Guffing because he had Outrider, and
Speaker 1: and then when he toured with Page Plant, I would
Speaker 1: go see him. You know, he'd reach out to me
Speaker 1: if when he was in the States, his his assistant, Hey,
Speaker 1: Jimmy's gonna be in town. You know, you want to
Speaker 1: come to see him, see him? And I just developed
Speaker 1: this friendship over the years, and really we got to
Speaker 1: be really pretty good friends in the last ten years.
Speaker 1: More um, because I was going to England a lot
Speaker 1: with Ross and seeing Ross, and Jimmy was always around,
Speaker 1: so we'd go we'd go out, you know, record shopping
Speaker 1: or whatever. And he's actually the one that got me
Speaker 1: into collecting vinyl because I had given up all my
Speaker 1: vinyl and him and Ross would go to these record
Speaker 1: shops and and freak out a re Vinyl and I'd go, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to a coffee shop. I listen to
Speaker 1: the CDs and Jimmy said, no, Brian, he really missing
Speaker 1: it here, man. Vinyl sounds much much better. And one
Speaker 1: night I was over there and I had given him
Speaker 1: a Hoffner for his birthday I don't know, six seven,
Speaker 1: eight years ago, and so me and my wife Monique
Speaker 1: went to his house to pick him up. And he's like, well,
Speaker 1: we'll go to this place to Troubadour and and they
Speaker 1: have some food and they do poetry and stuff there,
Speaker 1: and he put on Johnny Burnette trio train kept rolling
Speaker 1: on vinyl. And because we're just sitting in his living
Speaker 1: room getting ready to go, and he's showing me this
Speaker 1: where I'm showing him the base and he's going, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: and he put I was just like, whoa. And at
Speaker 1: that point in when he's right, it does sound better.
Speaker 1: And then I started collecting vinyl. So I've been lucky
Speaker 1: because my two heroes when I was a kid with
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney and Jimmy Page, and I've met him both.
Speaker 1: Paul I just met, you know, he he has no
Speaker 1: clue who I am. But Jimmy I developed the friendship,
Speaker 1: and that that's something that's really special and cool to me.
Speaker 1: And what is the friendship based on? Why do you click?
Speaker 1: We both like, we both like chicken, we both like
Speaker 1: are we we both like going to weird places, we
Speaker 1: both like vinyl records. We're peers. I know that's funny
Speaker 1: for me to stay right, but they'll say you're a peer,
Speaker 1: you're a fellow musician, Brian. You know, so just all
Speaker 1: of at and I think the fact that he liked
Speaker 1: me for some reason, I didn't freak out and go,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you're Jimmy Page. You know, he he
Speaker 1: liked me, and he because he easily could have just said,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever it was, you know, it was on him,
Speaker 1: and he extended it out and we just became friends.
Speaker 1: Now you're painting that you're obviously a talkative guy with intelligence.
Speaker 1: To what degree do you spend every day emailing talking
Speaker 1: to people or are you more of a hermit when
Speaker 1: you're not on the road. Who are you keeping contact
Speaker 1: with all these people? Recently? I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time talking well, you mean, like to my friends or
Speaker 1: just in general. I didn't you know, what kind of
Speaker 1: person are you? In general? Uh? I have a small
Speaker 1: group of friends, you know. I have two guys that
Speaker 1: are in bands, Joe Eliott and Jimmy Page that I
Speaker 1: would say, well, they're my friends, no acquaintances or peers.
Speaker 1: And then I got some other kind of people, Ross
Speaker 1: and you know, a doctor, different different people, different walks alive.
Speaker 1: But I got maybe ten of them, and I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't. I speak to a couple of them every day,
Speaker 1: you know. It depends on where I'm at. Like my
Speaker 1: friend Marvin and Tommy here in Texas. You know, if
Speaker 1: I'm in Texas, I'll speak to them every day. If
Speaker 1: I'm in New York, I might speak to him every
Speaker 1: three or four days. Where I have a friend in
Speaker 1: New York named Mike, and I speak to him every
Speaker 1: day when I'm in New York. It depends Ross I speak.
Speaker 1: I spoke to Ross this morning. Jimmy I texted with
Speaker 1: on his birthday last week. Um. I used to hang
Speaker 1: with Ross a lot in the eighties, and the last
Speaker 1: time I saw him was with Jimmy. If he was
Speaker 1: warning me about something about similar with Jimmy and then
Speaker 1: I ended up not even talking to me. It was
Speaker 1: at the premiere of it might get loud, you know,
Speaker 1: just like everybody's hanging around Jimmy, I'm not gonna go Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ross is really protectively Jimmy. Yeah, but you making I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, Ross, But you make a point in the
Speaker 1: book that you have flown all over the world with Ross.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about that? Well. Ross is one
Speaker 1: of my best friends, and I love Ross Helfing. I
Speaker 1: know there are a lot of people can't stand them.
Speaker 1: They hate it. And I look at Ross and I go,
Speaker 1: I'm surprised you've never been punched some of these ships.
Speaker 1: You say to people, the ship that comes out of
Speaker 1: your mouth, Ross, and he goes, you know, I just
Speaker 1: do it because it blows their mind. They can't believe
Speaker 1: I said it. I said, one day, you're gonna get punched.
Speaker 1: He's like a brother to me, you know, um he um.
Speaker 1: I met him first when we did that first photo
Speaker 1: session for Mechanical Residents, and he said, you know, don't worry,
Speaker 1: I'll put you in the back. You're not the lead singer.
Speaker 1: And I thought, what an asshole, you know, And I
Speaker 1: told Peter Minh said, you know, this guy's a fucking dick.
Speaker 1: He said, just tell him the funk off, you know,
Speaker 1: that's what he likes. So I did, and the whole
Speaker 1: band did. And then what happened was we wound up
Speaker 1: on on tour in England with Leopard on the Hysteria
Speaker 1: Tour of England, and Ross was their photographer, and he
Speaker 1: just connected with me. You know, I like UFO. He
Speaker 1: was friends with Pete Way. You know, we we kind
Speaker 1: of bonded over UFO, I think more than anything, because
Speaker 1: Pete Way was another hero mine and we just developed
Speaker 1: this friendship over the years. And and I'd see him,
Speaker 1: you know, all through the nineties until we broke up.
Speaker 1: And then I didn't see him for four or five
Speaker 1: maybe six years, and we actually didn't talk for maybe
Speaker 1: three or four years. Not that we were mad at
Speaker 1: each other anything, just saving saving happened to me. I
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. People are on different different
Speaker 1: And then I remember calling him because we were we
Speaker 1: were in the studio making the real the real records,
Speaker 1: and and I just I saw his blog or something,
Speaker 1: you know what I should call him, And I called him.
Speaker 1: He goes, oh, what do you want? I'm like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, what do any what I want to call
Speaker 1: to say hello your cox sucker um. And we just
Speaker 1: kind of picked back up where where we left off.
Speaker 1: And there was a point where he was going through
Speaker 1: a bad period in his life and me and Monique
Speaker 1: flew over to help him out and be with him
Speaker 1: because we didn't want him to be alone. And I
Speaker 1: think that that struck something with him, you know, And
Speaker 1: he's just he's just he's just like like I said,
Speaker 1: he's like a brother. The book that you take to
Speaker 1: go to Asia with him. Yeah, when we were talking
Speaker 1: this morning, he's like, let's go back to Bangkok. I said, well,
Speaker 1: and he was just in Dubai with kiss. I said, well,
Speaker 1: let me get this hernia surgery out of the way
Speaker 1: because I gotta have a hernia surgery and he just
Speaker 1: had one yesterday. I said, And we'll go somewhere in March,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll either go to Dubai or you know
Speaker 1: wherever people allie us to go right now with all
Speaker 1: these travel restrictions, Uh, we'll go. So it's funny because
Speaker 1: just this morning, you know, come on, you should come
Speaker 1: over and we should go. You know, we should go here,
Speaker 1: We should go there. He's been going to Egypt the
Speaker 1: last couple of months and he's really been into Egypt, so,
Speaker 1: you know, and so from going with him, I'd always
Speaker 1: take pictures on my iPhone and I'd say, Ross, you
Speaker 1: may be the greatest rock and roll photographer, but I'm
Speaker 1: the world's greatest iPhone photographer, right, need to say, I'll
Speaker 1: fuck you, Brian. So one day he gave me one
Speaker 1: of his Lias to play with while we were out
Speaker 1: on one of our trips, and I started taking photographs
Speaker 1: of travel stuff, you know, and he said, Brian, those
Speaker 1: are pretty good. You got a good eye list at all. Thanks.
Speaker 1: I know nothing about a camera, BOK. I'm not the
Speaker 1: technical guy, aperture all that stuff. I'm one of these
Speaker 1: points shoot guys. And uh. I just started taking pictures
Speaker 1: and I got really into it. And then he gave
Speaker 1: me one of his Nike on D three's, so then
Speaker 1: I got more better at it, and he let me
Speaker 1: use some of his lenses and I got into it.
Speaker 1: But again with him, it's it's anything from photographs to
Speaker 1: food too KFC, to vinyl records to going to really
Speaker 1: weird places. I think you know. We went to Burma,
Speaker 1: which was pretty trippy. That was kind of that was
Speaker 1: kind of an eye opener. We were in Hanoi a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, which was really cool. I love it.
Speaker 1: So he's my travel buddy, and you know, he's he's
Speaker 1: a he's a friend, he's a dear friend. Okay, you
Speaker 1: mentioned Monique. Now in the book you talk about your
Speaker 1: first marriage, So a couple of questions, how do you
Speaker 1: keep a relationship together when you're on the road, and
Speaker 1: to what degree have you taken, whether it be earlier
Speaker 1: in your career now taking advantage of the so called
Speaker 1: perks of the road, are you Are you alluding to
Speaker 1: women on the road? Yes, I am. Okay, Well that's
Speaker 1: not my style, to be honest with you. I um,
Speaker 1: I had a super cool wife and I had a
Speaker 1: super cool first wife. My old there is, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna do that, you don't need to be married. And
Speaker 1: I did plenty of that, Bob, you know, from nine
Speaker 1: eight seven to nine when I married Sandy Serea and
Speaker 1: then you know we split up in ninety three or
Speaker 1: ninety four until I got back to got together with Monique,
Speaker 1: and you know, I I was like a guy in
Speaker 1: a smart news board, you know, Okay, but how do
Speaker 1: you know the first wife it broke up. You say
Speaker 1: it was because she wanted a career, but you know,
Speaker 1: I remember when Cliff was telling me about Metallica or
Speaker 1: some many they all went on the road for two
Speaker 1: and a half years. They all came home and got divorces. Uh,
Speaker 1: how do you keep the relations ship together when you're
Speaker 1: away so much. Well, that's the thing I had the
Speaker 1: advantage of. It was hard to keep the relationship together
Speaker 1: with my first wife because she was on do in
Speaker 1: her career in Peter and Cliff managed her too, and
Speaker 1: I was off doing Tesla, and then you know, she
Speaker 1: wanted a family. All these things point we were just
Speaker 1: young and wound up getting a doors like most people
Speaker 1: do when they were young. Well, it wasn't too long
Speaker 1: after we got a divorce. My band broke up, so
Speaker 1: I wasn't on the road for another five years. So
Speaker 1: I spent five years at home with Monique basically, and
Speaker 1: then when I went out on the road, I went
Speaker 1: out all the road with Soul Motor, which was like
Speaker 1: for three months. And it wasn't until two thousand that
Speaker 1: Tesla got back together that I actually went back on
Speaker 1: the road. But going back on the road in two thousands,
Speaker 1: you know, you're not talking, you're gone for six months
Speaker 1: at a time, or you know, a two year tour
Speaker 1: where you have a break every eight weeks. Now, in
Speaker 1: Tesla tours, unless it's one of those big summer packages,
Speaker 1: we'll go out for a month and we come home
Speaker 1: for a month, and then we go out for a
Speaker 1: month and we come home for a month. So he
Speaker 1: wanted at me and gone six months out of the year,
Speaker 1: but we're home every other month. And I think that's
Speaker 1: been easier on on all of us because I've been
Speaker 1: with Monique now twenty six years. And did you ever
Speaker 1: want to have children yourself? No? No. That was part
Speaker 1: of the problem with me and Sandy was she wanted
Speaker 1: to and I didn't really want to. I thought I did,
Speaker 1: but I really didn't want to. And Monique that doesn't
Speaker 1: want children. I don't want children. I had to sector
Speaker 1: me at like thirty something years old because I didn't
Speaker 1: want her to have to take birth control pills anymore.
Speaker 1: And we have Jack Russell's there are children we have.
Speaker 1: We have three of them. We've had had seven of
Speaker 1: them total. What's the specific reason you don't want to
Speaker 1: have kids. I mean I don't have kids either. I'm
Speaker 1: just asking, well, I think you know a lot of reasons.
Speaker 1: I don't think I would have been a good dad.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a dad, so I don't know how
Speaker 1: to be a dad. Right. The other thing is unselfish.
Speaker 1: I want to go when I want to go. When
Speaker 1: you have children, you can't do that, right, And that
Speaker 1: was that was the thing about me and Monique. We
Speaker 1: both wanted to, like if we wanted to pack up
Speaker 1: and go to London, you couldn't just do that if
Speaker 1: you had two or three kids. It's not that simple.
Speaker 1: And there's the financial part of it as well. Kids.
Speaker 1: You know, kids are expensive, cost a lot of money
Speaker 1: to provide and take care of children. So those those
Speaker 1: things were it. But really I just never I never
Speaker 1: thought because I didn't have a dad and I came
Speaker 1: kind of from a dysfunctional family, not even kind of
Speaker 1: was this action that I didn't want to, you know,
Speaker 1: that was the one thing in therapy the doctor said,
Speaker 1: you gotta break the chain, Like you know, your father
Speaker 1: gives you his bad habits, you give your children and
Speaker 1: just keeps going down the line. And I didn't want to.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to hand off whatever bad habits I
Speaker 1: man had or whatever to a kid. Either. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of factors, but that not to make me it. Okay.
Speaker 1: The other thing that you have a huge interest in
Speaker 1: is Victorian homes. You first bought one downtown Sacramento. Why
Speaker 1: don't you tell us about your interest and especially what
Speaker 1: happened with the one in Sacramento with a fire, et cetera. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I love architecture, you know. And when we were kids
Speaker 1: starting out Tesla, when we're city kid, the place we
Speaker 1: used to play was this place called the Oasis Ballroom.
Speaker 1: It was in the oldest part of Sacramento, kind of
Speaker 1: the historic district. There's all these cool Victorian homes. They're
Speaker 1: from eighteen fifties eighteen sixties Sacramento. You know, it was
Speaker 1: a gold mine town. It came after the gold Rush.
Speaker 1: And I used to always say to Frank, one day,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna own one of those Victorian mansions, man, And
Speaker 1: he'd said, well, cool man. And one day I finally
Speaker 1: got to buy one. So I bought the one on
Speaker 1: on J Street in n three, and you know, I
Speaker 1: restored it and did all the things that you do
Speaker 1: in one of those houses. And in two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: I had built a building and back because I had
Speaker 1: the it's a deep lot, it was, and this is
Speaker 1: like in the kind of Greenwich Village neighborhood of Sacramento,
Speaker 1: that kind of feel and those you know, those kind
Speaker 1: of big, deep lots, and I had built a recording
Speaker 1: studio back there. Well, I had a fire, and I
Speaker 1: actually have a fire. My neighbors had a fire and
Speaker 1: it you know, those houses only five ft apart, and
Speaker 1: it jumped from his house which was five next to
Speaker 1: my studio, went up the wall and caught my my
Speaker 1: roof on fire on the studio building, and it destroyed
Speaker 1: that building. And then the embers, because I had a
Speaker 1: wood shake roof on the old Victorian house, caught that
Speaker 1: roof on fire. But they were able to put that out.
Speaker 1: There was water damage in the house, but the studio
Speaker 1: was completely demolished, and uh then we just re rebuilt
Speaker 1: the studio, fixed that house. And I had that house
Speaker 1: until about two thousand and fifteen or sixteen, and then
Speaker 1: I was just I belonged to these groups on Facebook,
Speaker 1: you know, like vinyl collectors groups or Victorian homeowners groups
Speaker 1: or bathrooms or whatever, and this picture came up with
Speaker 1: this really nice house in Texas. This is where I
Speaker 1: am now. It was a Victorian built in nineteen hundred.
Speaker 1: Mine was built in eighteen when Sacramento, and it said
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And that was what
Speaker 1: I just gotta be a mistake, right, because you know
Speaker 1: Victorians can be very expensive, especially in San Francisco. They're
Speaker 1: really expensive. So I looked at it and just you know,
Speaker 1: I was getting tired of California. You know, I lived
Speaker 1: there in my whole life. We really have a really
Speaker 1: bad homeless problem in Sacramento. I mean really bad. And
Speaker 1: it got to where people were, you know, shipping and
Speaker 1: piston on the side of my house, camping on the
Speaker 1: side of my house. And I am with this two
Speaker 1: million dollar Victorian mansion and nothing can be done about it.
Speaker 1: The city won't do nothing, you know, the mayor. I
Speaker 1: just got fed up and I just said, fuck it,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna leave. And this house was in Texas. This
Speaker 1: other house for almost as nice, needed a little bit
Speaker 1: of work, at least I thought it was almost as nice.
Speaker 1: And I'll get to that in a minute. Um. So
Speaker 1: I called money, because today would you but you can
Speaker 1: consider moving to to Texas. She said yeah, because she
Speaker 1: grew up there. I said, okay, So we we moved
Speaker 1: to Texas and we left the house in Sacramento. We
Speaker 1: rented it out and but we didn't realizes once we
Speaker 1: got to Texas, we got rattlesnakes in our backyard and
Speaker 1: it killed one of our dogs. Right, So that never
Speaker 1: really quite fit. So it was decided, then, well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to leave Texas because Jack Russells and Texas
Speaker 1: don't go. So then it got to looking for another
Speaker 1: place somewhere in the country. And I was looking for
Speaker 1: a place that didn't have state income tax, but couldn't
Speaker 1: find that I did like that in Texas. I gotta admit,
Speaker 1: who wouldn't, right, Um. So I found a place in
Speaker 1: upstate New York, in in the Finger Lakes area in Auburn,
Speaker 1: New York, which was John Doulas's Senator John Doulass house
Speaker 1: when he was a kid, where the family lived there.
Speaker 1: And it was just really beautiful, beautiful Victorian mansion. And
Speaker 1: I mean my other houses were houses, you know, there
Speaker 1: were five six thousand feet. This thing is like ten
Speaker 1: thousand feet. And I'm like what's wrong with this picture?
Speaker 1: It was like five hundred grand, right, So I said, Monique,
Speaker 1: I think I found the place. So when I called
Speaker 1: the real estate, do you got rattlesnakes? There? No? No rattlesnakes. Okay,
Speaker 1: well do you have tornadoes? No? No tornados haill storms. No.
Speaker 1: So we wound up finally moving there about a year
Speaker 1: and a half ago and we love it up in
Speaker 1: up state New York. But you told me earlier before
Speaker 1: we turned on Mike's that you live the winter in Texas.
Speaker 1: We did so long. What happened was because I live
Speaker 1: in Texas and Texas is my main residence. I you know,
Speaker 1: I don't have to pay state income tax? And are
Speaker 1: there rattlesnakes in the winter? No? Okay, let's go back,
Speaker 1: you know. So one of the stories that kind of
Speaker 1: amaze me, based on my personality is your original house
Speaker 1: was downtown and you would have these parties where all
Speaker 1: kinds of people came by. Were you weren't you worried
Speaker 1: they were going to trash the house and steal stuff? Man,
Speaker 1: I was high, you know at that time. That's pre Monique.
Speaker 1: Once Monique got there, she ran everyone off, like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you ran off all my friends. She said, no, those
Speaker 1: who are your friends. Um, you know, I, I my nephew,
Speaker 1: my my sister. She's the second oldest. Her son is
Speaker 1: only four years younger than me. He lived with me,
Speaker 1: so he kind of kept an eye on everything. But
Speaker 1: at the time I was, you know, I was at
Speaker 1: the height of of being high, and you know, I'll
Speaker 1: go to the club down the street, get get get
Speaker 1: some blow. You a wasted. Everyone will just come back
Speaker 1: to my house and stay there until six seven in
Speaker 1: the morning. It was insane, but you know, it just
Speaker 1: goes show. You live through it. You live through it.
Speaker 1: You mentioned how a recording studio. That's another big thing
Speaker 1: in the book, how you get invested in recording students.
Speaker 1: What's happening with that today and what can you tell
Speaker 1: us about your rein running a recording studio. Well, I
Speaker 1: I have, I have, I still have a management company
Speaker 1: and a and a and a small label that you know,
Speaker 1: I have distribution and stuff, and I go out now
Speaker 1: and I try to find young bands to develop because
Speaker 1: I don't think people are doing an R anymore really,
Speaker 1: not like when I came up what a R was.
Speaker 1: So I have a really nice recording studio. I'm a songwriter,
Speaker 1: I'm a producer, I'm a mixing engineer and mixer. Um,
Speaker 1: I manage bands. So I've got this little company that
Speaker 1: I go look for young bands and try to mold
Speaker 1: them and help them get to the next level. And
Speaker 1: kind of everything's under one roof. Generally speaking, that's a
Speaker 1: labor of love. It's hard to make money doing that.
Speaker 1: It's a labor of love where where you may mean,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll make some moneys if you pop one of
Speaker 1: these bands one day, and how much of your time
Speaker 1: is dedicated to that. When I'm not doing tesla, that's
Speaker 1: what I'm doing, I'm either I mean, I mean they're
Speaker 1: painting because I do the thing with the painting and
Speaker 1: the photography, or I'm doing stuff, you know, with with
Speaker 1: the bands, or I'm doing tesla, or I'm doing nothing. Okay,
Speaker 1: do you still own a recording studio? Yeah? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: still it's a beautiful studio. Say to the art that's weird.
Speaker 1: That's in Sacramento. Okay, Now the band also rehearses in Sacramento.
Speaker 1: You'd not even bother to rehearse. Uh, we still record.
Speaker 1: We've made the last three albums in that well. The
Speaker 1: last five album has been made in my studio, but
Speaker 1: two of them were before Burnt and then the other
Speaker 1: three were in the new facility. Um. I still have
Speaker 1: a house in Sacramento I rented out as an Airbnb,
Speaker 1: and then when I go to town to work with
Speaker 1: bands or work with Tesla, I stay in that house
Speaker 1: and don't rent it out. Okay, that just because I'm interested.
Speaker 1: You know, it's hard to move is when as you
Speaker 1: get older. So do you have any friends in Texas
Speaker 1: or New York? Or is it generally with the internet
Speaker 1: your friends could be in where No, No, I have
Speaker 1: friends in Texas. I have two good buddies here in
Speaker 1: Texas where I live, in the town I live in.
Speaker 1: I have two or three really good buddies in Auburn,
Speaker 1: New York. And then in Sacramento. Because I'm there, I'm
Speaker 1: there quite often as well. Now because I've been in
Speaker 1: this COVID, I've been going about every other week, every
Speaker 1: two weeks back and forth to work on projects. Have
Speaker 1: been producing some some records for for young bands. You
Speaker 1: also go into the breakup of Tesla. You know, from
Speaker 1: an outside observer, it would appear that the band's arc
Speaker 1: was going down and that would break up the band.
Speaker 1: But you say, you just made a new deal with
Speaker 1: Geffen and then all of a sudden the band imploded.
Speaker 1: Tell us about that. Well, that's the funny thing, you know.
Speaker 1: We we we had just made a new deal with
Speaker 1: Geffen and we put out Bust to Nut and it
Speaker 1: didn't reach platinum and only went gold. I think it
Speaker 1: was six hundred thousands. And uh, we were hearing rumors
Speaker 1: that Geffin was gonna drop us. You know, we're going
Speaker 1: How could you in my mind that we're all of us.
Speaker 1: I think we're just you know, this whole grunge thing came, right,
Speaker 1: we were having internal problems at the same time. Right,
Speaker 1: I won't say we weren't. We were. The grunge thing came.
Speaker 1: We weren't on the radio like we had been the
Speaker 1: previous five records or four records, um, and we were
Speaker 1: being labeled as as a hair band and and your
Speaker 1: your your your record company is you know, we're around
Speaker 1: the campfires as you're getting you're getting dropped. And even
Speaker 1: Cliffs said to me said, look, I'm sorry to tell you,
Speaker 1: I think it's over for you guys, And I could
Speaker 1: I meant I could not wrap my head around it.
Speaker 1: It just sucked my head up, you know, and I
Speaker 1: think it sucked everyone's head up. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: we lose the guitar player, right, this is the first
Speaker 1: time you've been asked to leave, because he'd been asked
Speaker 1: to leave twice or three times. I lose track. Jeff
Speaker 1: has an incident in Reno and falls falls apart, and
Speaker 1: it just next thing, you know, we broke up and
Speaker 1: what were your feelings then? I was I was probably
Speaker 1: piste off, you know, piste off. Obviously I wasn't in
Speaker 1: my right mind at that time. You know. I didn't
Speaker 1: do any drugs until the last part of that first
Speaker 1: part of Tessa's career. I would just drink alcohol, so
Speaker 1: I started experimenting with drugs towards the end before we
Speaker 1: broke up. I don't know, I guess deflated, you know,
Speaker 1: really's is how you how you could put it? He went,
Speaker 1: you know, wow, how can you go from you know?
Speaker 1: In two years? It was literally, of course, to two
Speaker 1: years because Busting Nut came out and what fo Yeah,
Speaker 1: Psychotic Supper was and we toured for two years on that.
Speaker 1: We came off that tour thinking this next record was
Speaker 1: going to be the record that was gonna be like
Speaker 1: the Black album you know from Metallica. That's okay, we're plois,
Speaker 1: this is this is it, you know, and uh it didn't.
Speaker 1: It should have been called Busting Up instead of busting nut. Okay,
Speaker 1: for five years the band is on hyatta hiatus. What
Speaker 1: are you doing for money? Or did you have enough
Speaker 1: money that you made? No, I started mortgage in my house.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, there was still you know, I was
Speaker 1: still it was some publishing, but there, you know, there
Speaker 1: obviously wasn't T shirt money. There was no live gate money,
Speaker 1: which that that was the bolt and the record money
Speaker 1: because we had done a new deal with Geff and
Speaker 1: they had given us quite a large advance. So we
Speaker 1: did have some money, but not not enough. Probably the
Speaker 1: last five years we thought we were rich, but you
Speaker 1: know we weren't. So um. You know, you just hustled, man,
Speaker 1: You're out there hustling, you know, producing bands, demos whatever. Luckily,
Speaker 1: my expenses weren't that high at the time, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean Jeff, poor Jeff, he got a job as
Speaker 1: a DJ and a strip club when we were off
Speaker 1: for five years. Um, Frank, I think he was doing landscaping.
Speaker 1: Troy was roofing, and I was, you know, live off
Speaker 1: the equity in my house. Wow. Okay, So when you
Speaker 1: go on the road a hundred days with Tesla, these
Speaker 1: these days when it's not COVID, do you enjoy it
Speaker 1: or you're earning a living? No, I still enjoy it.
Speaker 1: I still enjoy it. And you know, Code is kind
Speaker 1: of a blessing in the sense that I think it
Speaker 1: we needed a little bit of a break because we've
Speaker 1: been going twenty years straight since we got back together,
Speaker 1: and we may have been getting a little bit tired,
Speaker 1: but it still was you know. Look, one thing I'll
Speaker 1: say about the band is we never phone it in
Speaker 1: that hour and forty minutes on stage. That's that's the
Speaker 1: real deal. It might be a pain in the ass
Speaker 1: the other twenty hours, you know, said, here's someplace just
Speaker 1: going on. You know, what the funk are we doing? Here?
Speaker 1: Was parking lot? You know. But the playing is always
Speaker 1: the thing that kept us together. But I think the
Speaker 1: good thing is when we do get to go back
Speaker 1: and play again now that this COVID thing, it would
Speaker 1: be like a shot in the arm again because we
Speaker 1: realized again it it took the breakup to make us
Speaker 1: realize how much we really did cherish it and how
Speaker 1: we fucked it up. And with COVID, it's just another
Speaker 1: thing going. Look, we really do miss playing with each
Speaker 1: other and doing this. I mean, we're okay for for money,
Speaker 1: a lot better financial situation than we were in in
Speaker 1: n You know, you ever think of giving up and
Speaker 1: going straight? What do you mean leaving the entertainment, leaving
Speaker 1: the circus behind? Well? Would I do? Okay? That that's
Speaker 1: the thing. I mean, seriously, you know, Bob, the only
Speaker 1: job I ever had was I was the manager of McDonald's.
Speaker 1: So I mean really, it's like you know in yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it crossed my mind, but only for a second,
Speaker 1: and I thought, you know, what am I gonna do?
Speaker 1: So I did what I the only thing I knew
Speaker 1: how to do was I started another band and I
Speaker 1: got signed by Sanctuary, you know, Tom Lipsky signed me
Speaker 1: to another record deal, and I was trying to put
Speaker 1: that together and it was we were starting to make
Speaker 1: some headway. And then you know this guy in Sacramento,
Speaker 1: Pat Martin, that's the DJ the have been there for
Speaker 1: many many years, was at dinner at my house when
Speaker 1: Knight said, if the other guys would agree to playing
Speaker 1: for one night, would you do it? And they went, yeah,
Speaker 1: as long as Tommy skille Is is in the band,
Speaker 1: I want the original five just gonna be for one night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then that turned into us being back together for
Speaker 1: twenty years. But honestly, if you asked me today, I
Speaker 1: don't know what I do. If I stopped today, what
Speaker 1: would I do? I can't go to a work for
Speaker 1: a record company, you know what I mean? There's there's
Speaker 1: no I mean, does that even exist? Really not for
Speaker 1: people who are over the age of thirty five? But
Speaker 1: can you eat? Can you still eat a filet of
Speaker 1: fish or quarter pounder? Are you burned out forever? No?
Speaker 1: I can't eat that ship man. I like to diet
Speaker 1: coke though. That's the only thing I can eat, Okay?
Speaker 1: And to what degree today? Are you clean? Drugs? Alcohol? Oh?
Speaker 1: I haven't done any drugs and fourteen fifteen years alcohol.
Speaker 1: If I go to my house in Italy, I may
Speaker 1: have a glass of wine because those people love to
Speaker 1: and I love Italy. I think I talked about that
Speaker 1: in the book too. I have a house in Italy
Speaker 1: and I really loved going there. I might have a
Speaker 1: glass of wine. And I'm usually there twice a year,
Speaker 1: once in the summer for a month and once at Christmas.
Speaker 1: So usually around Christmas as a festive period, I might
Speaker 1: have a glass of wine, nice burnello, you know. But
Speaker 1: but that's it. I it just kicks my ass. That's
Speaker 1: why I stopped. Really, it wasn't that, you know, I felt, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm a funk up. It was just a minute, just
Speaker 1: the hangovers got So what happens the other ten months
Speaker 1: with your house in Italy when you're not there. My brother,
Speaker 1: my oldest brother, who was like my father buddy, Um,
Speaker 1: he stays there about six months out of the year.
Speaker 1: He goes there for three months and then comes back
Speaker 1: and then goes for three months. He so he gets
Speaker 1: to really enjoy it and it just sits. You want
Speaker 1: to go, let me know, give me the keys man. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's quite an invite. But people would say, you're living
Speaker 1: on the street and you can't really see anybody's bank account.
Speaker 1: You've got four houses. You're doing Okay, I'm not. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying I'm broke. All I'm saying is that that
Speaker 1: Tesla Earnest living from playing, playing and going back to
Speaker 1: your other question that you asked earlier. Do I feel
Speaker 1: it's better now without all the big record companies and stuff.
Speaker 1: There there's your answer. I'm doing better to day and
Speaker 1: the second half of my career financially than I did
Speaker 1: in the first step. Okay, let's talk about rock. Hip
Speaker 1: Hop has a huge place in the market today. What's
Speaker 1: the status in future of rock? Man? I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, I just try to do the best work
Speaker 1: I can do, you know, and Tesla whatever we're we're doing.
Speaker 1: We try to make the best record we can. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like there's many platforms for it.
Speaker 1: You know, there's not an MTV anymore. There's fewer and
Speaker 1: fewer fewer rock radio stations. And I still think that
Speaker 1: radio is the biggest mover of music, especially rock music.
Speaker 1: You know, Um you have these these spotifying and iTunes
Speaker 1: that you know, artists get nothing for putting their music
Speaker 1: up there people and people now are being conditioned that
Speaker 1: they don't want to buy music. So I don't know
Speaker 1: what the future of rock is. It made me really
Speaker 1: happy when I've seen Paul McCartney had a number one
Speaker 1: record at seventy eight years old. The other month. That
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. Um, but I mean, really, I don't know.
Speaker 1: You you probably could answer because you're it's it's not
Speaker 1: optimistic that that would take an hour for me to explain,
Speaker 1: you know as well documented. You know, I'm a huge
Speaker 1: Tesla fan. I think a lot of people would like
Speaker 1: I think we have to go back to the roots
Speaker 1: of what blues based. You know, all the English musicians
Speaker 1: to talk about Jimmy Page, etcetera, were influenced by Robert
Speaker 1: Johnson and all the other Delta blues people. We've gotten
Speaker 1: so far from that. If you listen to the active
Speaker 1: rock radio channels that still exist, there's not much melody.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of the basics that form the loan.
Speaker 1: You know. That's funny you bring that up, because you're right,
Speaker 1: it's more it's more hip hop based. You know else,
Speaker 1: it's you know it, it's more it's moving more into
Speaker 1: a thrash direction, and inherently that is a marginalized place.
Speaker 1: I'm not judging it, but it's not gonna appeal to everybody.
Speaker 1: A couple of vinyl questions. Do you press vinyl to
Speaker 1: sell on the road? Now? Absolutely always how much you
Speaker 1: charge and how much? How many will you sell a
Speaker 1: gig um? Well, I don't know what they're charging because
Speaker 1: our merch deals through Live Nation, so we're kind of
Speaker 1: at their mercy, you know. Once I signed up uh
Speaker 1: on those Live Nation tours and we you know, kind
Speaker 1: of went that way before we were doing it ourselves,
Speaker 1: and and you know I was, I was, you know
Speaker 1: Jim Cuomo no oh okay, he used to run Ricco
Speaker 1: distribution and and stuff. So when Tessa started our own
Speaker 1: label and oh six and we were we were doing
Speaker 1: stuff with Jim Komo and Rico. I mean we would
Speaker 1: sell maybe a hundred a night at twenty bucks apiece,
Speaker 1: and you know, we were more in charge of what
Speaker 1: the pricing was back then. Our last couple of records
Speaker 1: have been on Universal with Andrew Dawes, so we're being
Speaker 1: kind of part of that model. But now we're free again.
Speaker 1: We're free agents again. So I think that once we
Speaker 1: start playing again, we're allowed to get back and play.
Speaker 1: I know Frank wants to get together and do another album.
Speaker 1: We'll explore, you know a bunch of stuff, but always
Speaker 1: doing vinyl. Yeah, okay, of your collection, what are the
Speaker 1: two best sounding vinyl records? I'm not talking about the
Speaker 1: quality of the music you just put sound. I have
Speaker 1: an original pressing a Revolver, first pressing it sounds a
Speaker 1: min and I have a first pressing a Rubber Soul
Speaker 1: that sounds amazing. Probably those two. But then when you
Speaker 1: listen to you know, Abbey Road, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to top that, but I think Revolver, to me,
Speaker 1: is is the one for for me, just you know.
Speaker 1: And then you got Pete Floyd and you know, and
Speaker 1: there's so many sonically great records, you know, Alan Parsons,
Speaker 1: Le Zeppelin. I mean, there's just some e L. I've
Speaker 1: been into e L a lot lately, and you know,
Speaker 1: you just listen to some of those records and this
Speaker 1: space that he, Jeff Lynn was able to create with
Speaker 1: all them instruments, you know, but of course he got
Speaker 1: it from the Beatles and George Martin, jeff Emery. I
Speaker 1: came friends with jeff Emery before he died, and that
Speaker 1: was really cool. Well, I used to hang with him
Speaker 1: a few times. We were in uh Rio inighteen and
Speaker 1: Jack Douglas used to put together these dinners before he passed.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you know the funny thing about jeff you
Speaker 1: never know is you know, hanging with famous people. One
Speaker 1: of the rules is you're talking about Jimmy, you don't
Speaker 1: play fan and you don't ask him about that stuff.
Speaker 1: But I was told that Jeff likes to talk about
Speaker 1: the Beatles. He would go on about it. It was
Speaker 1: just great. One of the one of the coolest things
Speaker 1: was how I met him was he was holding this
Speaker 1: camp at a recording studio where you got to spend
Speaker 1: three days with them and talk about and because I'm
Speaker 1: an engineer and stuff, I wanted to pick his brain. Well,
Speaker 1: we hit it off immediately because he knew who I was,
Speaker 1: and I knew people that he knew. And the coolest
Speaker 1: thing was sitting with him one night and he said, Brian,
Speaker 1: let me tell you something about all those Beatle records.
Speaker 1: He said, they were all meant to be heard in mono.
Speaker 1: He said, the band was never even there for the
Speaker 1: stereo mixes. He said, with the exception of Abby wrote,
Speaker 1: every one of those records was meant to be in mono.
Speaker 1: And he played me the mono version of Sergeant Pepper.
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting with him and we're going through the
Speaker 1: whole thing, and we're air drama and air guitar and
Speaker 1: and every single measure of that album is a hook.
Speaker 1: Every measure is a hook. If it's a high hat part,
Speaker 1: it's a hook, you know. I mean, it was just
Speaker 1: it was one of my all time rock and roll experiences. Okay, Brian,
Speaker 1: this has been fantastic. I could see why you have
Speaker 1: a million friends. You're obviously a great guy, you know,
Speaker 1: great talking. I could talk to you for days. So
Speaker 1: there's certainly plenty in the book we haven't covered. Uh,
Speaker 1: certainly like you, I can't wait for Live Vieuse to
Speaker 1: come back. Thanks so much for doing the podcast, Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me, and thanks for always you know, saying
Speaker 1: kind things about my band. I've watched and the Wings
Speaker 1: through and and Voyered, and I really appreciate that well.
Speaker 1: As I say, you know, we're doing this and I'm not.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a huge Tesla fan. You know the
Speaker 1: way I used to put the way it is lazy
Speaker 1: days and crazy night love songs. You know, once you
Speaker 1: got a CD player, you could program it punching those
Speaker 1: tracks and put it on at infinitem and just play
Speaker 1: it forever. And of course you know the acoustic record
Speaker 1: were could go on. But for the sake of our audience.
Speaker 1: Once again, Brian, thanks so much for doing this. Bob,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me pleasure. Until next time. This is
Speaker 1: Bob left sense