SLASH Says FRANK HANNON Was 'Dreaming' When He Accused GUNS N' ROSES Of Ripping Off TESLA

During an appearance on the November 13 episode of VH1 Classic's "That Metal Show", TESLA guitarist Frank Hannon accused GUNS N' ROSES of ripping off an early TESLA track for the GN'R classic "Patience". (See video below starting at around the 41-minute, 40-second mark.) The accusation came during a debate over whether or not "Patience" was a better acoustic "hard rock" song than TESLA's "Signs".

TESLA and GUNS N' ROSES were both signed to Geffen Records by the label's then-A&R executive Tom Zutaut. TESLA's debut album, "Mechanical Resonance", came out in 1986, while GUNS N' ROSES' first LP, "Appetite For Destruction", followed a year later.

Said Hannon: "Let me tell you something: 'Patience'... We were labelmates with GUNS N' ROSES on Geffen. There's a demo of a song that we wrote called 'Better Off Without You'. It is 'Patience' note for note . . . I don't know if they ripped us off or Tom Zutaut or Geffen or somebody passed them the tape."

In response, former GUNS N' ROSES guitarist Slash wrote on his Facebook page, "I heard that one of the guys from TESLA claimed GN'R stole 'Patience' from them. I'm assuming he's smoking super crack. Or dreaming out loud . . . I didn't hear the actual interview so I won't jump to conclusions based on hearsay. I'll just make emotiphants!"

In the meantime, Hannon took to TESLA's official forum to clarify the comments he made on "That Metal Show", explaining, "The demo of 'Better Off Without You' I was talking about is an acoustic guitar version we did live at the Oasis Ballroom in 1985 that Geffen Records had on a 'live' cassette tape of a show we played. They did make some copies of it with labels on them and handed them out to people before we made our first album. If anyone can find one, that would be awesome. I was not talking about the piano version that's floating around on a bootleg.

"Also, for the record: 'Better Off Without You' is a song in 'D' and it does the 'D/F#-to-G' chord change in it. This is also the same type of change that GN'R used at the end of 'Patience' and also the same change that John Lennon uses in 'Imagine'...

"I do not seriously feel that we wrote 'Patience' in ANY WAY.

"The song 'Patience' is a great song that they [GUNS N' ROSES] wrote themselves, and it is only the end part that has any similar part to the guitar chords we used.

"I apologize for any controversy or disrespect I may have projected in my joking around with Eddie Trunk ['That Metal Show' co-host] about this."