Tesla live in fear of being bottled

Dave Rude says Tesla always fear being bottled at festivals – but they've always escaped the worst excesses of violent crowds because even fans of extreme music end up enjoying the band's classic rock vibe.

The guitarist has got used to finding his band sandwiched between much heavier acts on the summer circuit. He tells TeamRock Radio: “Sometimes we’ll be on bills like Download, when there’s a lot of really heavy bands.

“We did a show in Germany last week with Testament and fucking Annihilator and all these hardcore bands. Every time we’re about to get onstage at those festivals I think, ‘Man, we’re gonna get bottled – it’s gonna be nuts.’

“But no: there’s dudes with leather jackets and upside-down crosses tattooed on their faces, going ‘Love will find a way!’ All the Slayer fans fucking love Tesla.”

He compares his outfit to the way Aerosmith seem to cross so many musical boundaries. “I mean, everybody loves Aerosmith,” he reflects. “It’s classic for a reason, right? That’s why everybody loves it. It seems like it never really goes away.”

And he studiously refuses to pick up any theatrical pointers for some of the more out-there acts they’ve played alongside. “We’re very much old-school,” he states. “We just kind of do it. We don’t do production and we wear whatever we want to wear. It’s just about playing.”

Tesla, who played at Donington yesterday, released seventh studio album Simplicity earlier this month.

Tesla interview

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.