Tesla - Five Man Acoustical Jam
On November 13, 1990, "Five Man Acoustical Jam", the acoustic live album by the American hard rock band "Tesla", was released.
In the summer of 1990, the American rock world was dominated by an exaggerated culture of giant amplifiers, dazzling pyrotechnics and puffy hairdos. But right in the middle of that noisy decade, five musicians from Sacramento, California, who wore flannel shirts and ripped jeans long before Seattle grunge took over the world, decided to turn off the electric amplifiers and start a quiet revolution. The band "Tesla", which included the rough-voiced, soulful vocalist Jeff Keith, the virtuoso guitarists Frank Hannon and Tommy Skeoch, bassist Brian Wheat and drummer Troy Luccketta, never felt comfortable under the glam metal label that was tried to be applied to them in the late 1980s. Her roots were deep in Southern blues-rock, 1970s classic rock, and working-class honesty, and the album "Five Man Acoustical Jam" became her definitive declaration of independence and the document that helped ignite the acoustic wave of the 1990s.
The seeds for the album had been sown a few months earlier, while the band was opening for Mötley Crüe's massive Dr. Feelgood tour. To pass the long hours in dressing rooms and hotels between shows, Keith, Hannon and Skeoch would sit down with acoustic guitars and enjoy stripped-down versions of the band's songs alongside classics they had grown up listening to, by artists like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Led Zeppelin. The band's managers, captivated by the natural energy that emanated from these spontaneous encounters, convinced the quintet to play a series of intimate acoustic shows at small clubs during the tour's off-season, under the name "An Evening of Acoustic Music with "Tesla"."
One of those shows took place on July 2, 1990, at the historic Trocadero Theatre in Philadelphia, an 1870s Victorian building that had once served as an opera house and burlesque venue. The band brought a mobile recording device and camera crew to record the evening as a home video for fans and as material for B-sides only, with no intention of releasing an official album. The stage was set with rugs, bar stools, and a cooler full of beers, and the band sat down in front of an excited, sweaty audience after just three days of rehearsals, with no safety net. When Geffen Records heard the tapes produced by Dan McClendon and Pat Regan, they knew they had pure gold. After "Signs" became one of the most requested songs on Boston radio station WAAF, the label green-lit a live EP, but the band decided to mix the whole show into a full album. Geffen asked to polish the tapes with vocal overdubs, but the band refused - "It's not a live album if you do that," Wheat says. The only added recording was Wheat's own bass, which had failed to track during the show, so he replayed it in one continuous take, just like a live performance.
The album opens with "Comin' Atcha Live / Truckin'", a sweeping acoustic version of the opening track from the band's 1986 debut album "Mechanical Resonance," in which Hannon and Skeoch prove that acoustic guitars can produce groove and dynamics as heavy as a wall of Marshall amps, while weaving in a surprising tribute to the "Grateful Dead" midway through the song. From there, the band moves on to an emotional and soulful rendition of "Heaven's Trail (No Way Out)" and "The Way It Is" from their successful second album "The Great Radio Controversy" from 1989, in which Hannon's slide guitar work and warm piano give the songs a Southern bluesy depth reminiscent of "The Allman Brothers Band."
The real magic of "Five Man Acoustical Jam" lies in the natural and loose combination of the band's original material and cover versions that highlight its musical heritage. The quintet pays homage to "Creedence Clearwater Revival" with a rhythmic and muddy rendition of "Lodi", surprises with a harmonious and precise rendition of the classic "We Can Work It Out" by "The Beatles", and delivers a painful and exposed interpretation of "Mother's Little Helper" by "The Rolling Stones", in which Jeff Keith's husky voice sounds as if he was born to sing the blues of the sixties. Alongside these, the short and virtuoso instrumental section "Tommy's Down Home" stands out, in which Tommy Skeoch demonstrates a dizzying finger-picking technique that puts the Philadelphia hall into ecstasy.
But the moment that completely changed the fate of the album and the status of the band came on the fifth track, a cover version of the Canadian protest song "Signs", originally written and performed in 1971 by Les Emmerson and his band "Five Man Electrical Band", from which "Tesla" also humorously borrowed the title of the entire album. Keith and the band took the old hippie anthem, dressed it with a live, rough and explosive rock and roll energy, and even slightly changed the lyrics while incorporating spontaneous interjections to the audience. Without any prior planning, the live performance of "Signs" became a huge hit that conquered radio stations and MTV, jumped to eighth place on the American Billboard chart and became the most successful song of the band's career.
Another emotional peak on the album is the acoustic rendition of the band's signature ballad, "Love Song." Without the studio version's long classical guitar opening and the chorus's distorted electrics, the song is revealed here in all its melodic beauty, with the Philadelphia crowd singing every word with immense power alongside Jeff Keith, and Hannon and Skeoch engaging in a breathtaking acoustic solo duel. The album also includes a rare glimpse into the band's creative process with "Paradise," a heartbreaking ballad from the band's 1989 album "The Great Radio Controversy," played here in a new, simplified arrangement in the style of "Golden Slumbers" from "Abbey Road."
The album winds down with the loose closing boogie "Down Fo' Boogie". For all the covers the band did play that night, Wheat says he has only one regret: "We should have done a Zeppelin song."
Standing the test of time, "Five Man Acoustical Jam", which sold over a million copies in the United States and achieved platinum status, is much more than a successful live album. Although the MTV Unplugged television show was already on the air, "Tesla" did it without the power of MTV's branding and proved that a hard rock band could strip its songs of any electrical effects, rely on pure songwriting and virtuoso playing, and conquer the charts. The album's huge success came years before the celebrated acoustic recordings of bands like Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and KISS. Wheat himself laughs off the idea that his band started it all - "MTV Unplugged was already going before Five Man Acoustical Jam," he says - but he proudly repeats what Jimmy Page told him after the release: "You didn't make the first acoustic album, but you made the first acoustic live album."
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