Veteran California rockers TESLA have released the official lyric video for their latest single, “Cold Blue Steel”. The clip, directed by Brandon Gullion and produced by guitarist Frank Hannon, is raw and high electric energy that takes fans back to the roots of TESLA.
Hannon states: “‘Cold Blue Steel’ is influenced by current events of the world, just like our debut single ‘Modern Day Cowboy’ (1986), and touches on the subject fairly and open-minded by asking ‘what’s to blame?’ when it comes to violence in the world. More importantly, the recording and production of the song and video are kept raw and real, just the way TESLA fans want to see and hear us. We are survivors and have been rocking for 35-plus years.”
The 2022 radio remix version of “Cold Blue Steel” is being offered as the version for the airwaves with the guitars and vocals being cranked up louder and with the raw energy being preserved. Frank explains: “Some folks were reluctant to play the track with its explicit lyrics in the verse, so I created a clean version for radio with a bleep. As a bandmember and being the producer, we approve of these changes and really love the remixed audio enhancement for radio play. This is TESLA in real honest form and independently producing our music for the first time as an official release.”
Originally released last August, “Cold Blue Steel” is the first TESLA song to ever be produced by the bandmembers themselves.
“Producing ourselves is allowing us to creatively record new music and keep it as raw and real as possible,” states Hannon.
Last December, Hannon told Let’s Rock that the lyrics to “Cold Blue Steel” have been partially misinterpreted by some fans.
“We’ve been getting a lot of flak from people that only hear the couple of verses in the song, thinking it’s about gun control,” he said. “And in a way it is, but, really, it’s so much deeper than that, the lyrics. We try to definitely not take sides and be political but we wanna sing about a situation. Something like what we did with ‘Modern Day Cowboy’ in the ’80s; we sang about foreign lands and terrorist demands and ‘bang bang, shoot ’em up’ and how that attitude was still happening in the world at that time, being a gunfighter, cowboy situation, but we’re not pointing fingers. And that’s the same way with this song, but some people only hear parts of it and have been giving us some shit about it. But if you listen to the lyrics, it’s asking a question, ‘What’s to blame? Let’s get real.’ And the song is really about people that you give ’em an inch, they take a mile — whether it’s a politician, whether it’s a crook, whether it’s a police officer. And we support our police.”
He added: “There’s evil intentions in all parts of life, and that’s what the song is really about — just observing and asking the question, ‘What’s to blame?’ It’s not talking about ‘take away guns’ or any of that shit. But it started off just being a fun poke at Ronnie Van Zant. That last lyric in the song, ‘Just like Ronnie said, ‘Let’s dump ’em to the bottom of the sea,’ that’s where the song started for fun. And then we took it and tried to make it a little bit more serious.”
Asked if the arrival of “Cold Blue Steel” means that there is a new TESLA album in the works, Hannon replied: “Yeah, it’ll end up on an album, but we’re gonna just do one song at a time. Instead of trying to cram for a test… Making an album is almost like a test — you’ve got a deadline on it and there’s all this pressure and you’ve gotta try to finish it by a certain date. And then what you end up doing is cramming the songs. So we’re not gonna do that. We’re just gonna write a song when we feel it and have fun with it. And then when we have a group of ’em, we’ll put it out together as a collection on an album.”