Songfacts®:

• "Love Song" was written by Tesla vocalist Jeff Keith and guitarist/keyboardist Frank Hannon. It is Tesla's signature song, and one with a very strong connection for the band.
  
  "Tesla's always been about the love," Keith said in a 2015 Songfacts interview. "We will forever play 'Love Song' every time we ever play. Because love is how we all got here. Love's what makes the world go 'round. Love stands above everything, even the hate."
• The album version runs 5:25, with a lengthy, noodling guitar intro that takes up the first 1:33. The single was trimmed to a radio-friendly 4:03, cutting most of this intro. The live, acoustic version that appears on Tesla's album Five Man Acoustical Jam (the album that produced their hit cover of "Signs," runs 9:54, with Frank Hannon stretching the intro to 3:50 before Jeff Keith joins him on stage. On this intro, Hannon incorporates a few licks from the Heart song "Crazy On You."
• Tesla formed in 1984. Hailing from Sacramento, California, their original name was City Kidd, but on the advice of their manager (and the fact that another band already went by that name), they decided to pick a new name. Their name does indeed come from Nikola Tesla, the legendary Serbian scientist and inventor who quite possibly is single-handedly responsible for the "mad scientist" trope.
  
  Nikola Tesla was the "Linux Torvalds" to Thomas Edison's "Bill Gates"; Tesla had all the scientific smarts and wanted to deliver world-changing scientific breakthroughs to the masses, while Edison had all of the ruthless business smarts and basically drove Tesla into poverty and obscurity all while profiting off of his contributions. In a similar vein, the title The Great Radio Controversy refers to another case of stolen credit - this time the Italian scientist Guglielmo Marconi, who took credit for inventing radio.
  
  On a parallel note, Tesla came along at just the right time to have an identity crisis. They were seen as a "glam metal" band right when glam metal was dying like disco; it didn't help that when touring, they often shared a bill with Def Leppard and Poison - and of course, they were on the Geffen label. Tesla tried to redefine themselves by dressing down in jeans and T-shirts, playing more blues-driven rock and acting more like a jam band than a stadium band. It's almost as if they would have loved to have invented grunge, had they only been a couple states north and thought of it first.
• Tesla was on the vanguard of the acoustic rock trend of the early '90s, performing love song acoustically at various showcases where plugging in would be a challenge. The song lends itself to the acoustic treatment and got a great response when they performed it that way. They fed this demand by putting together a full acoustic set, which they performed at a show in Philadelphia in 1990 when they had an off day as opening act on Mötley Crüe's tour. In addition to "Love Song" and other Tesla originals, each band member chose a cover, and Jeff Keith picked "Signs." Released as a single, it went to #8 in 1991 to become Tesla's biggest hit. It also prompted other artists to release their standout covers from the MTV Unplugged series as singles, notably Mariah Carey, who went to #1 in 1992 with her version of "I'll Be There," originally by The Jackson 5.