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Tesla

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Love Song - Guitar Lesson

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Band Overview

History and Guitar Legacy

Tesla emerged from Sacramento, California in the mid-1980s, originally called City Kitten. Unlike their hair metal contemporaries, they built their sound on blues-based, organic Hard Rock influenced by Bad Company and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The guitar duo of Frank Hannon and Tommy Skeoch created a muscular yet melodic twin-guitar attack grounded in real tone and solid musicianship rather than flash and shred, making them rewarding for intermediate guitarists to study.

Playing Style and Techniques

Hannon and Skeoch brought complementary styles to their arrangements. Hannon handled much of the lead work and acoustic arrangements, favoring warm, singing legato with tasteful vibrato and blues-inflected bends. Skeoch was the grittier, rhythmically aggressive player, laying down chunky power chords with palm-muted precision and raw, punchy tone. Together they crafted layered arrangements where rhythm and lead parts interweave beautifully, demonstrating how two guitars can share sonic space without stepping on each other.

Why Guitarists Study Tesla

Tesla songs demand solid open-chord transitions, clean-to-distortion dynamics, expressive bending technique, and confident rhythm playing without requiring virtuoso-level chops. Tracks like 'Love Song' require careful attention to acoustic strumming patterns and dynamics, while heavier songs demand tight palm-muting and controlled overdrive. Their unplugged work, especially 'Five Man Acoustical Jam,' is essential study material for improving acoustic playing, open tuning knowledge, and dynamic control.

Difficulty and Learning Path

Tesla occupies a sweet spot of accessibility for developing guitarists. You won't encounter sweep-picking arpeggios or neo-classical shred runs, but you'll develop versatile, blues-rooted hard rock vocabulary with real feel and tone awareness. This band teaches that great guitar music doesn't require complexity. Instead, it demands conviction, expressive technique, and understanding how to sound great without needing advanced technical skills.

What Makes Tesla Essential for Guitar Players

Tesla's twin-guitar harmony approach is rooted in classic rock traditions. Frank Hannon and Tommy Skeoch often harmonize in thirds and sixths during lead passages, making their songs great material for learning how to play dual-guitar arrangements with another guitarist or for layering parts in home recordings.
Their rhythm guitar work relies heavily on open-position chords mixed with power chords, palm-muted chugging, and clean arpeggiated passages. Songs shift dynamically between these textures, so learning Tesla tunes trains your ability to transition smoothly between clean and overdriven tones within a single song.
Frank Hannon's lead style emphasizes melodic phrasing over speed. His solos use pentatonic and blues scales with expressive full-step and half-step bends, slow vibrato, and occasional hammer-on/pull-off legato runs. This makes his solos very learnable and excellent for developing your own melodic voice on the fretboard.
Acoustic guitar plays a huge role in Tesla's sound, especially in songs like "Love Song" where open chords, strumming dynamics, and fingerpicked passages drive the entire arrangement. Mastering these parts builds right-hand control and teaches you how to make an acoustic guitar sound full without a band behind you.
Tommy Skeoch's rhythm tone is built on tight downpicking with palm-muting and aggressive strumming on the lower strings. His parts have a punchy, percussive quality that teaches you how to lock in with a drummer and keep your picking hand disciplined, essential skills for any hard rock rhythm guitarist.

Did You Know?

Tesla recorded their iconic "Five Man Acoustical Jam" live in 1990, predating MTV Unplugged's mainstream popularity. The entire performance was captured with acoustic guitars, proving the band's songs held up without walls of distortion, a rarity for late-'80s hard rock acts.

Frank Hannon built his own guitars as a teenager and has been a lifelong gear tinkerer. He's known for modifying his instruments and experimenting with different pickup configurations to chase specific tones for each album.

"Love Song" was originally an electric song that the band rearranged acoustically. The acoustic version became their biggest hit, peaking at #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1989, proving that sometimes stripping a song down to its acoustic bones makes it more powerful.

Tommy Skeoch's rhythm guitar tone on "Mechanical Resonance" was achieved by cranking a Marshall amplifier with minimal effects processing, relying almost entirely on amp breakup and picking dynamics for his distortion, a classic old-school approach.

Frank Hannon has cited players like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Joe Walsh as primary influences, which explains Tesla's blues-rock DNA. You can hear Page-style acoustic fingerpicking ideas throughout their ballads and Walsh-like melodic slide work in several solos.

Tesla named their debut album "Mechanical Resonance" after a physics concept related to Nikola Tesla's work with electromagnetic frequencies, and the guitar tones on that record genuinely resonate with a warm, organic quality that reflects the concept.

During live performances, Hannon and Skeoch would frequently swap lead and rhythm duties mid-song rather than sticking to rigid roles, making their live shows a masterclass in collaborative guitar dynamics.

Essential Albums for Guitarists

Mechanical Resonance 1986

Tesla's debut is a masterclass in blues-based hard rock guitar. Tracks like "Modern Day Cowboy" teach tight palm-muted rhythm work and dual-guitar harmony, while "Little Suzi" features expressive pentatonic soloing with big bends and controlled vibrato. This album shows the full range of the Hannon/Skeoch partnership at its hungriest.

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The Great Radio Controversy 1989

This is the album that features "Love Song" and represents Tesla at their most dynamic. The record shifts between heavy riff-driven tracks like "Hang Tough", great for practicing aggressive downpicking and power chord transitions, and acoustic-driven ballads that demand clean fingering and strumming finesse. The solos throughout are melodic, singable, and perfect for intermediate players building phrasing skills.

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Five Man Acoustical Jam 1990

Essential listening for any electric guitarist who wants to improve their acoustic chops. This live acoustic album features reworked versions of Tesla originals plus covers of songs like "Signs" by Five Man Electrical Band. It teaches open-chord voicings, dynamic strumming control, and how to make an acoustic guitar fill a room. The interplay between Hannon's lead acoustic lines and the rhythm parts is a blueprint for unplugged arranging.

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Tone & Gear

Guitar

Frank Hannon is most associated with Gibson Les Paul Standards and custom double-neck guitars (Gibson EDS-1275 style) for live work, along with various custom-built instruments he's crafted himself. Tommy Skeoch primarily played Gibson Les Pauls and Charvel superstrats during the classic era, giving him a slightly hotter, more modern edge on rhythm parts. For acoustic work, Hannon favors Gibson J-45 and J-200 acoustics, the rich, warm low-end of those jumbos is a big part of songs like "Love Song."

Amp

Both guitarists relied heavily on Marshall amplifiers during Tesla's classic period, primarily JCM800 heads and older Plexi-style units pushed into natural tube saturation. Hannon has also used Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifiers for heavier tones on later albums. The key to their sound is amp breakup from cranked tube amps rather than pedal-driven distortion, giving their tone a dynamic, touch-sensitive quality where picking attack directly controls the amount of grit.

Pickups

The Les Pauls used by both Hannon and Skeoch featured standard Gibson PAF-style humbuckers, warm, medium-output pickups in the 7.5–9k ohm range that deliver a thick midrange growl without over-compressing the signal. This lower output allows for dynamic range and cleanup when you roll back the volume knob, which is essential for Tesla's clean-to-crunch transitions. Hannon has also experimented with Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro pickups for a slightly more vintage, airy lead tone.

Effects & Chain

Tesla's effects approach is decidedly minimalist. Frank Hannon uses a wah pedal (Dunlop Cry Baby) for select lead passages, a chorus pedal for clean arpeggiated sections, and occasionally a delay unit set to subtle slapback for solos. Tommy Skeoch ran almost entirely straight into his Marshall with no pedals during the classic era. The philosophy is tone from the fingers, pickups, and tubes, what you hear on records like "The Great Radio Controversy" is mostly guitar straight into a cranked amp with studio reverb added in the mix.

Recommended Gear

Guitar

Gibson Les Paul Standard

Frank Hannon and Tommy Skeoch built Tesla's signature tone on Les Paul Standards, with their thick midrange and PAF-style humbuckers delivering the dynamic, touch-sensitive response essential for the band's clean-to-crunch transitions.

Guitar

Gibson Les Paul Custom

Hannon's custom Les Pauls and double-neck variants (EDS-1275 style) became Tesla's live visual signature while maintaining the warm, full-bodied tone that powers their acoustic-to-electric arrangements on tracks like 'Love Song.'

Amp

Marshall JCM800

The JCM800 was Tesla's core tone engine during their classic era, with both guitarists relying on its natural tube saturation and cranked amp breakup to achieve their dynamic, finger-controlled grit without pedal distortion.

Amp

Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier

Hannon adopted the Dual Rectifier on later Tesla albums to capture heavier, more saturated tones while retaining the touch-sensitive response that defines the band's playing style across their evolving sound.

Pickup

Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro

Hannon experimented with Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pros in his Les Pauls for a more vintage, airy lead tone that complements Tesla's minimalist effects philosophy and emphasizes sustain over compression.

Pedal

Dunlop Cry Baby Wah

Frank Hannon uses the Cry Baby selectively on lead passages to add expressive dynamics to Tesla's otherwise straight-into-the-amp approach, maintaining the band's focus on tone from tubes and fingers.

How to Practice Tesla on GuitarZone

Every Tesla song page on GuitarZone includes a built-in Practice Toolbar. No app to download, no account needed. Open any song, then use the toolbar to slow the video to 0.5× speed, set an A/B loop around the exact riff you're working on, and jump between song sections instantly.

The toolbar appears automatically on every guitar tab, lesson, and cover page. Pick a song below, hit play, and start practicing at your own pace.

Practice Love Song - Guitar Lesson