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After enduring a series of heartbreaking losses -- including the passing of his father-in-law, legendary Allman Brothers Band guitarist Dickey Betts -- Frank Hannon turned to the one thing that's always carried him through: his guitar. What followed was Reflections -- the most personal album of Hannon's four-decade career. Known to millions as the co-founder and lead guitarist of TESLA -- the multi-platinum rock band behind hits like 'Modern Day Cowboy,' 'Little Suzi,' and the timeless power ballad 'Love Song' -- Hannon continues to evolve, both as an artist and as a man. He joined us in the LifeMinute studios to talk about the music that brought him back to his roots, the family legacy that shaped him, and the journey that inspired Reflections . This is LifeMinute with Frank Hannon.
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00:00Hey everybody, I'm Frank Hannon. I'm the lead guitarist of Tesla, and I'm also a solo artist, and you are watching Life Minute TV.
00:14He may best be known as co-founder and lead guitarist of rock band Tesla, but Frank Hannon also has a solo career that spans decades.
00:23After losing his father-in-law, Allman Brothers legend Dickie Betts in 24, he turned to his guitar for healing.
00:31The result? Reflections, his most personal album to date.
00:34He joined us at the Life Minute studios recently to tell us all about it and play us a few tunes.
00:39This is a Life Minute with Frank Hannon.
00:43Last year, 2024, was a very tough year for my family.
00:47We had moved out to Florida and spent the past couple years with my father-in-law, who was terminally ill.
00:56And we took care of him and spent time with him and had the honor of being there with him during that time.
01:02It was a very emotional time, you know, especially for my wife.
01:07After he passed away, we were struggling living there because of the weather.
01:12And we had horses that we had moved out there.
01:14My wife and I train horses and have our animals, and we had moved our whole life there.
01:20And in October, there was about three hurricanes in a row, bam, bam, bam, of last year.
01:26And the third one, Milton, on the news was coming straight for us.
01:31And I was like, honey, we've got to get out of here.
01:33You know, I was worried that our horses were going to die.
01:36We high-tailed it out of there.
01:37We evacuated and drove across the country.
01:40And one of our horses got sick, and we ended up having to put it down.
01:44And anyway, enough of that sad story.
01:47It was a tough time.
01:48And when I finally got home, I was like, I just want to play guitar.
01:54That's all I want to do.
01:55And so I started playing guitar, and I discovered this really easy-to-use microphone.
02:02It's called Otigo.
02:04It's about this big, and it records to your cell phone.
02:08And I just started recording ideas with that, playing from my heart, from the pain and the
02:13emotion of what we had gone through.
02:15My wife would peek in.
02:16I would be in my little spare bedroom that used to belong to my daughter.
02:20I took over her room, made a studio out of it.
02:22My wife would be in the kitchen washing dishes, and she would stop, and she'd peek in and go,
02:26wow, keep doing that.
02:28I'm feeling that.
02:29So I kept doing that, kept doing that.
02:31And I ended up with 12 songs, and they're all from the heart.
02:36Emotionally charged music that uses the guitar to sing.
02:41Because I've tried singing in the past, and I'm an okay singer, but I'm not really a very
02:45good singer, really.
02:47Guitar is my number one instrument.
02:50So I started writing these songs to use the guitar to convey what I was feeling.
02:56For the first time that I've done in my whole career, and I've been playing music for 50
03:00years, and I've had a very successful career with Tesla, the band.
03:04And I still do.
03:05We're out playing shows all the time.
03:07People could hear that departure.
03:09Even the members of Tesla could hear it.
03:12And we're like, wow, this is really different, Frank.
03:14And they were supportive of it.
03:16Because I wasn't trying to sing.
03:17I wasn't trying to rock out.
03:19I was just playing real genuinely felt guitar.
03:24Chord changes, real simple, stripped down.
03:26Not trying to overproduce anything.
03:28Basically just ideas and feelings.
03:31Not really even trying to write a song to be a hit or any of that stuff.
03:35Just creating songs that had a mood to them.
03:39And then titles would come to them pretty easily.
03:42Like one of the songs on here is called Walk in the Rain.
03:52It was literally written in my head while my wife and I were taking a walk through our
03:58neighborhood.
03:58And then we got dumped on.
03:59It was raining.
04:00And we loved it.
04:01And we got home.
04:01And I had these minor chords going.
04:03And I immediately just whipped out the Otago mic and recorded it within about 30 minutes.
04:09And it came out really good.
04:11And she was like, don't just throw that out there on social media.
04:14Save it.
04:15So let's fast forward to January, which was two months later.
04:19And I had already gathered a bunch of songs.
04:22And I was on a cruise ship out of Florida playing with Tesla.
04:26And I had brought the little portable mic.
04:28And I recorded a really slow blues number called Into the Blue that's on the record.
04:36Again, I sent it to my wife via email.
04:48And she responded and gave me the thumbs up.
04:50Said, wow, that sounds really pretty.
04:51So I sent that to a friend of mine who manages a studio in Nashville that presses vinyl right
05:00there on the spot.
05:01They have a vinyl mastering system.
05:04Pat Krause is his name.
05:06And he works for Universal Music.
05:08And he said, wow, Frank, that's some of the best guitar playing I've heard you do.
05:13It reminds me of Jeff Beck.
05:15I was like, wow, really?
05:17That was a compliment.
05:18I'd never heard that before about my playing.
05:20And he immediately invited me to bring my cell phone that had all the songs recorded
05:26in it to his studio and create a vinyl album, which is what I did right here.
05:32It's a 12-inch, 180-gram vinyl album.
05:37So it went from my cell phone to this vinyl thanks to the technology of this little microphone
05:43right here.
05:44It just made the recording process so easy.
05:48I didn't have to look at a computer.
05:50I didn't try to cut and paste anything.
05:52It was just play live, put this in front of your guitar, and record it.
05:56And it ended up being my vinyl record.
06:05Plank Spanking was recorded live for the studio version in my spare bedroom that's on the record.
06:11But I wanted to do even more live version of it.
06:15So I took the backing tracks from the record and imported them into my phone.
06:20Walked out to my neighbor's field out there.
06:23And I noticed, I remembered he had an old tractor that was sitting out there.
06:27I love the look.
06:28I've been wanting to take pictures with that tractor forever because it's so cool looking.
06:32I'm like, man, that tractor's cool.
06:35And it's just sitting out there by itself.
06:37I'm going to just haul an amp over there and plug it in.
06:39There's a whale house over there.
06:41It had an outlet.
06:41So I plugged in my amp and I hollered at Ed.
06:44Hey, Ed, come on over here, buddy.
06:46And he came over and I set up the Otago mic in front of the amp and asked him to use my cell phone and videotape me playing the song.
06:54It was a lot of fun.
06:55We did it out in that field.
06:57And Ed, he's a tall guy.
06:59So when he had my phone, he was up here.
07:02It looked like it's on a gimbal or a crane or something, you know.
07:05He did a great job, Ed.
07:06Ed's a great friend.
07:07He's my neighbor and he helped me a lot during that time that I told you about where we were in Florida for three years.
07:14Ed watched my house.
07:16He and his wife, they were guarding my house while it was locked up.
07:20He's a great neighbor, great friend.
07:22And he even gave me a ride to the airport to get here last night.
07:25So I want to give Ed some props.
07:28But Ed has that old tractor sitting out there.
07:30And I wanted to capture a live version of Plank Spankin' for this New York trip specifically because that jumping blues feeling, it came out pretty magical.
07:40It was just the first take.
07:41You know, it was about five in the afternoon and the sun was still up.
07:45And then I did five takes of it in a row.
07:48Okay, let's try it again.
07:49And it just gradually, the sun was going down, the shade came in, and I wasn't playing it as spirited as I did on that take.
07:57On that video, that's the first take.
07:59And it was real spontaneous and fun.
08:02And that's always the best.
08:04Well, I started out sitting on my grandma's lap at the Wurlitzer organ that she had in the living room when I was about four or five years old.
08:20And that was my first introduction to music was on an organ, you know.
08:25And I loved it, and I still do love to play a B3 organ.
08:28But my love for guitar came in the mid-70s, 1976, I was 10 years old.
08:35There was a lot of music in our house, Credence, Clearwater Revival, Santana, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, all this San Francisco music.
08:46Because we're east of San Francisco about an hour, and that local scene there was a big influence on me and my mom being a hippie from that era.
08:56Between my mom and my grandma, they really supported me as a young kid playing music.
09:02And so I broke my leg on a dirt bike when I was 11.
09:08My older cousins, specifically Mike, my older cousin, had already began playing guitar.
09:15And I just wanted to play really bad.
09:17And I was laid up in the cask with my leg up all summer long, and it was a pain.
09:21And so he brought over a guitar, and my stepdad had a little nylon string, and I would just lay there on the couch with a broken leg playing it and listening to records, you know.
09:31I'm doing this.
09:32This is the action of putting the needle on songs and replaying it, trying to learn by ear.
09:38So the whole summer of 1977, I just did that until I was able to walk again.
09:45And then once I got out of that, that's all I wanted to do.
09:49No more skateboarding, no more dirt bike riding, none of that.
09:52Just guitar.
09:54And by the time I was 14, 15 years old, I was already playing with older kids and in the nightclubs and took a test and got out of high school early so I could pursue what we ended up doing.
10:06And, you know, I'm very lucky and very blessed to come from South Sacramento to have had an over 40-year career with Tesla.
10:26I was always the youngest guy in the band, and I didn't realize at the time what we were accomplishing when I was 16, 17 years old.
10:35We had met a manager guy who owned a car lot, and he was really driven.
10:42He would drive us, you know.
10:43If we were late, he would yell at us and practically beat us up for being late to band practice, you know, because he had a warehouse he would let us practice in.
10:50And he let us use the cars that he had on the lot to show up.
10:55The stipulation was, you've got to show up to practice if I'm going to let you use these cars, you know.
10:59One thing led to another with him introducing us to Ronnie Montrose, who was a guitar hero in San Francisco at the time.
11:07He discovered Sammy Hagar, and that was a big deal.
11:09And we would drive to L.A. and work with these people, thanks to Steve, our manager I was telling you about.
11:15And they bought me a little four-track recorder for my birthday when I turned 16, and I started writing the songs that ended up being on Tesla's first album with that four-track.
11:27One of the best memories, though, is when we finally got signed to a record company, and they flew us to New York.
11:36And we went up to, the first time we ever came here to New York in 1985, I was like, wow, you know, just tripping out.
11:47We went up to upstate New York to record our first record, and again, I was only 18 years old.
11:52And looking back on it now, I can't believe being that young and experiencing one thing after another like that.
12:01Because then, after that, we went out on tour with David Lee Roth, who at the time was a huge rock star.
12:07And Def Leppard, and Alice Cooper, and just one thing after another started happening for us.
12:14And being an 18, 19-year-old kid, just going, just going with it.
12:19And now, looking back on it, going, wow, I can't believe that happened, you know.
12:24I probably would have waited until much later to get married and all that stuff, you know.
12:28Because I'm happily married now, and I wouldn't change anything, actually, because those things led me to the life I have now.
12:35I would probably have told myself back then, being the person I am now, to not smoke so much weed,
12:42and not spend time recovering from being hungover and all that destructive behavior.
12:47I would have probably told myself to avoid that.
12:51Because, you know, there's only so much time.
12:53And I spent a lot of time trying to recover, you know.
12:58So, I would have probably changed that, if anything.
13:02Still to this day, we play Modern Day Cowboy, which is the first song that we put out.
13:19It's one of my favorite songs to play on the guitar, because it's got some exciting guitar riffs in it.
13:24But even more than that, the lyrics that J.K., our singer, came up with, you know, are still ringing true today, you know.
13:33The third verse is talking about the USA and the USSR.
13:45It's like, we didn't know then that even still now there'd be all this stuff going on in the news, you know.
13:51So, that's one of my favorite songs that I'm proud of.
13:54Love Song was one of our biggest hits that we fought for.
13:58The record company didn't feel it was commercial at the time,
14:01and we had to really fight to put it on the record, and it ended up being our biggest hit.
14:05Because it starts off with the mellow acoustic,
14:09and then it doesn't stick to the normal formula for hit songs of the 80s.
14:16And so, that's one of my favorites.
14:18And then the other one that we do is called What You Give.
14:21I love the lyrical message in that it's the most simple, heartfelt guitar riff that just plays some very simple notes.
14:39But every time I play it live, I'll just take a breath and I'll wait for the audience to calm down.
14:44And then as soon as I pick that first note, they recognize it, and they cheer.
14:49And there's nothing better than that feeling of when they recognize one of your songs that you wrote that is so simple, but they like it.
14:58You know, so What You Give is one of my favorites.
15:00I really like Marcus King a lot.
15:03My brother-in-law, Dwayne Betts, is a great guitar player.
15:07Man, he's a chip off the old block, but he even takes it to his own level of playing.
15:12I love Lucas Nelson.
15:14I remember Lucas Nelson, when he first came out, he had a band called Promise of the Real.
15:19And they were a little bit more edgier than what he's doing now.
15:22I love what he's doing now, but back then he was more like a Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix vibe, and he's amazing.
15:31And there's a guitarist that I've stumbled on named Jonathan Stout that plays swing guitar so effortlessly with the chords that he plays.
15:41And it's kind of like music that takes you back to the roaring 20s or something, you know, like...
15:47And when I hear it, it fascinates me because I would love to be able to play like that.
15:52So I'm hoping to take some lessons from him, actually.
15:55I'm going to try to get him on the phone.
16:03I met Dickie, gosh, 2001.
16:07So 24 years I got to know him.
16:10And we connected more on a level of hanging out on the couch or going golfing and joking around and talking.
16:18And we played together here and there, but mostly just hanging out and I'd listen to him speak, you know.
16:24And I always admired his creativeness and his dynamic personality.
16:30You'd be like listening to him and go, wow, he's got so much wisdom.
16:33And then he would just crack a joke and you'd be like, what?
16:36Where did that come from?
16:37You know, so he was a very dynamic person and he treated me very well as his son-in-law and I miss him a lot.
16:45He always had these sayings that stuck, you know, like when I first met him, he encouraged me to sing.
16:51You know, we were passing a guitar around in this hotel room one night and he was playing Jimmy Rogers and yodeling and just blowing my mind.
16:58And then he'd hand me the guitar and I'd be like, okay, and then he would like, hey, man, come on, what are you doing?
17:05Why don't you sing something?
17:07So he encouraged me to do it.
17:11And then one of the things he said to me was, man, you got to keep on swinging because this is a tough business and you're going to get knocked down.
17:19You're going to always get knocked down.
17:20He goes, we had disco and, you know, I lost my friends left and right in my band and I had to keep getting up and keep on swinging.
17:30He was a fighter, that little guy, man.
17:31And I say little because he was a little package, man.
17:36He was a dynamite, a dynamo guy and a very dynamic person.
17:41So he rubbed off on me in those ways as far as inspiring me to keep on swinging and don't give up and play guitar
17:49and just keep on doing what you feel and love and be true to yourself.
18:05Music provides an escape and it also provides a theme or a soundtrack to their life or what they're going through at certain times.
18:14And that's why certain people, you know, will have a certain song that takes them back to a great memory that they'll always love as some of their favorite songs.
18:24It depends on the time that you experienced it.
18:26And I think that music does that for the listener.
18:30You know, like I'll always remember some of the first songs that I heard that still stick with me, like Dream On by Aerosmith.
18:36I remember the first time hearing that when I was a little kid at the community swimming pool, you know, and it was playing in the background.
18:44I'll always remember that memory.
18:46So I think music creates memories and stimulates memories for people.
18:57Recently, we've really, since we've been home, we've really discovered the joy of gardening.
19:02And I've been growing peppers and pickling them.
19:08Seriously, you know, creating a broth and putting some vinegar and some water and some garlic and sugar and salt and boiling it and taking the peppers off of my pepper plants and slicing them up and putting them in there.
19:21And that's been a lot of fun.
19:23You know, I guess those are the things you do in your late 50s.
19:26So I like doing that, but I also enjoy horses and my dogs and cleaning up the yard, landscaping.
19:34And I like to be outdoors.
19:36There's no way I could do a job in an office building.
19:38I don't think I'd have to.
19:39If I didn't play guitar, I'd be outdoors doing something.
19:42Well, what's next for me?
19:50I'm still writing more music in this genre with the guitar.
19:54I'm still discovering new things with the guitar.
19:57That's what I love about guitar.
19:59And even Les Paul said this himself, that you'll never unlock all the mysteries of it.
20:05It'll always torment you as a guitarist because you'll always discover that you don't know something and then you want to learn it.
20:13You know, like I had mentioned that guitarist Jonathan Stout, the way he plays, I want to learn some of that stuff.
20:18And so I'm going to continue writing more instrumental music.
20:21I hope to get some of my music placed in film or soundtracks because most people that hear it say that we could see that or hear that in a film of some sort.
20:32So I'm going to pursue that.
20:34I got a new video for a song that's very cinematic.
20:38It's called This Is Goodbye.
20:44My wife plays a little acting role in it.
20:47And it was filmed in an old cemetery from the settlers in my county that I live in, in Northern California, where the gold rush came in 1849.
20:57And all the gold miners and the cowboys and stuff that lived in that era are buried in this graveyard.
21:03And they invite you to come there and take pictures and stuff.
21:06So we filmed a video for this song there and it came out really great.
21:10I'm like, wow, this really came out better than I thought it would.
21:13So I'm hoping that that will get looked at and the right people will get the idea to maybe put it in some film work or something, you know, cinematic stuff.
21:22Multiple things inspire me creatively.
21:24Basically, the quest for learning new styles and learning new chords on the guitar is inspiring.
21:31That's what I was just talking about, that quest to learn more.
21:34The inspiration really comes mostly from the emotions that I'm feeling.
21:39And if I'm contemplating things or feeling a certain way, if I pick up a guitar and start strumming some chords and it really is reflecting what I'm feeling,
21:50then that inspires me to pursue it and record it and listen back to it.
21:54And the recording process is fun, especially with the Audigo microphone because it's so easy to do.
22:02And listening back to what you've just created and then going, wow, I just kind of created that out of nothing, you know, just from some emotion.
22:12That is always very rewarding when you can listen back.
22:15And then even further is when you play it for somebody else and they feel the same way and they react to it.
22:22That interaction between me as an artist and them as a listener, there's nothing like that feeling of interacting.
22:29And so that inspires me creatively.
22:32Best piece of life advice, realize the value of time.
22:36Try to manage it as a priority and how important it is and realize that the people you love are so important and how you spend your time with them is so important.
22:48And realize the value of time and realize the value of the people in your family that you love and put those two together.
22:56Okay, this song that I'm going to play for you is my latest single off the Reflections album.
23:01The music of this song really reflects how I was feeling after experiencing loss and grief.
23:10And sometimes, you know, even if you get to say goodbye to someone in their last days, it's not enough.
23:17And sometimes you don't get to say goodbye to someone that you love.
23:20So this music was written at five in the morning when I was saying goodbye to my wife as she was on her way to the airport to say goodbye at her dad's memorial service.
23:33And it came to me very quickly and naturally.
23:37And I'm going to stop talking about it and play it for you now.
23:40This is called This Is Goodbye.
23:41This is Goodbye.
23:41This is Goodbye.
23:50This is Goodbye.
24:20This is Goodbye.
24:50This is Goodbye.
25:20This is Goodbye.
25:21This is Goodbye.
25:25This is Goodbye.
25:30guitar solo
26:00guitar solo
26:30guitar solo
27:00All right.
27:19This next song here, you never know what you're going to get.
27:23Because I rarely ever play it the same way twice, except for the intro.
27:29That's it.
27:29After that, after the first 10 seconds, it's just on like the break of dawn improvising.
27:35Okay.
27:35So this is a song that improvises in the key of B to E, kind of like a jump in 1-4-5 blues.
27:44And it's fun to make stuff up.
27:46So here we go.
27:48This is a song about playing a guitar.
27:50And this is called Plank Spankin'.
27:53Clank Spankin'.
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