The Way It Is: Tesla’s The Great Radio Controversy at 35
A quick cheer for a longhair classic from the winter of ’89
Released on the same day The Replacements unveiled Don’t Tell A Soul, Sacramento hard rockers Tesla ensured their greatness in the Dial MTV era with their second LP The Great Radio Controversy.
A formidable segue from their 1986 debut Mechanical Resonance, the songs contained within TGRC were bluesier, grittier and more lived-in. Listening to tracks like “Hang Tough,” “Heaven’s Trail (No Way Out)” and “Yesterdaze Gone,” it was clear that these guys were playing on a different level than their peers of the period. They were straight up jeans, T-shirts and natural hair, no doubt a stark contrast to the likes of Poison and Warrant with their spandex tights and hairspray heads.
VIDEO: Tesla “Heaven’s Trail (No Way Out)”
Even when they slowed it down on TGRC, like on “The Way It Is” and the album’s biggest smash “Love Song,” the vibe veers closer to true blue songwriting for the sake of the song, not the spoils of scoring a hit single. These guys – frontman Jeff Keith, guitarists Frank Hannon and Tommy Skeoch, bassist Brian Wheat and drummer Troy Luccketta – know their classic rock. And a learned ear could no doubt recognize the hints of Montrose, Jeff Beck Group and Thin Lizzy all over TGRC.
“This is hard rock’s call to the party,” wrote our dear friend Evelyn McDonnell in her review of the album from the May 1989 issue of SPIN, “and it will compel anyone with a butt to wiggle and huff and leap around playing air to all eight solos.”
VIDEO: Tesla “Love Song”
“In Controversy, Tesla have produced lean, honest, timeless spit ‘n’ sawdust rock that’s highly saleable with a minimum of crass phrasing,” wrote critic Paul Elliott in the January 28, 1989 edition of the UK music weekly Sounds.
The title, The Great Radio Controversy, is a reference to the historic debate over who was the true father of radio, Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi or Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla, who the band is named after. But there’s no argument that this record, 35 years later, remains one of the very best hard rock albums of a supremely stacked 1989.
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