Simon Rushworth
They walked off with the biggest prize in music in 2008 – rushonrock‘s coveted Album Of The Year gong for their superb Forever More record – and now Tesla are hitting the UK festival stage for the first time in ages!
We can’t wait to see and hear one of the seminal acts to emerge from the US in the 1980s. And if they never quite conformed to the hair metal trend then their music was as good as anything released during that glorious era.
Tours with David Lee Roth, Def Leppard and Poison should have been the springboard for even greater success but after selling in excess of 16m records Frank, Keith and the boys haven’t had a bad career. And they were even namechecked on super cool basketball-themed US show One Tree Hill. You can’t get better than that.
Name: Tesla
Formed: 1984 (became Tesla in 1986)
Home Town: Sacramento
Essential Track: Love Song (1989)
Essential Album: The Great Radio Controversy (1989)
Secret Weapon: Dedicated followers of non-fashion.
Achilles heel: Too cool to pigeon-hole.
Why Download: On the back of their best album for 20 years it’s time the rock world was reintroduced to the bues metal phenomenon that was/is Tesla. And where better to showcase their considerable talents to a new generation than at the world’s premier heavy festival? It worked for Saxon.
Live Rating: 5/10 Only because most of us can’t remember a Tesla show at all, let alone a good Tesla show. We stand prepared to see this rating rocket…