For the band Extreme, they have always been about making rock & roll multidimensional, never sticking to the same formula for every song. To them, rock & roll is a blank canvas and there are a million colors just waiting to be splashed upon it. So when a bare bones harmonic ballad leapt to the top of the charts, it wasn’t too much of a surprise to fans that had been following the rocking Boston band since the early days. And twenty-five years down the road, with the release of the celebratory Pornograffitti Live 25:Metal Meltdown DVD, it’s not only “More Than Words” that still sounds fresh and exciting.
With Pornograffitti, Extreme’s second major label release, in the summer of 1990, the band was able to step out from the hair metal scene it was wrongfully clumped into. By March of 1991, “More Than Words” was #1 on the Billboard charts and by May the album had reached gold record status. In 1992, Extreme was invited to play at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert where Queen’s Brian May introduced them as “possibly more than any other group on this planet, the people that understand exactly what Queen have been about all these years, and what Freddie was about all these years.” High praise indeed.
Pornograffitti also solidified Nuno Bettencourt as a bonafide Guitar Hero. Good looks and saucy, bluesy chops brought him accolades and guitar magazine covers galore. In 1997, after Extreme announced they were breaking up the year before, Bettencourt released his first solo effort, Schizophonic. He worked with Dweezil Zappa on the progeny’s 1991 CD, Confessions, and for a short time was in Perry Farrell’s Satellite Party band in the early 2000’s. In 2009, he began touring with Rihanna.
Recently, Glide had a quick chat with Bettencourt about the new DVD and being praised by Queen’s Brian May.
When you went to recreate the Pornograffitti album live for the tour in 2015, for you, which song took you the longest to get the feel back to?
There were definitely some songs we hadn’t done. The ones we probably didn’t do live over the years took the longest, like “Lil Jack Horny;” that took us a minute. But you know, some of this stuff we’ve always been doing through the years but some of this we had to kind of be an Extreme tribute band and learn this stuff from scratch cause we never did it. So that was pretty interesting.
Was there a particular song that you’d never played live before?
That’s a good question. Off of that album I think we might have possibly at one point or another in local clubs before we started, we might have played everything.
Did your fingers get adjusted really quickly to some of those more obscure songs you didn’t play?
It takes you a second and you’re kind of asking yourself, like, if you really did write it that way, you know. You’re learning stuff you don’t remember doing but at some point muscle memory kicks in and you start to remember, your body starts to remember playing these even though it’s been many, many years ago.
When you started working on what would become Pornograffitti, do you remember what the first song was that got everything going?
I think it kind of started from the front of the album, with “Decadence Dance.” I remember writing that initially and I think that song sparked the album.
One of the most interesting songs on the record is “When I First Kissed You.” Why put a torchy, Sinatra/Nat King Cole-ish song on a rock & roll record?
We’ve always had songs on our records – that song, “More Than Words” – that supposedly don’t belong on rock & roll records. But what I grew up on was rock bands that did all that stuff so rock & roll to me was not so much heavy guitar riffs and stuff, it was the frame of mind that you could take it and do what you wanted. Other bands we grew up with – Queen, Zeppelin, Van Halen – they all just played music. Yeah, they were rock & roll bands but they just played what they felt like playing and played what they wrote and it’s what we did.
On the DVD, Brian May says some pretty remarkable things about your playing.
I hope he got paid well for that (laughs). It was pretty amazing. I had no idea that that would ever happen in a million years, to have somebody that basically changed the way you played and affected you so incredibly and to have it kind of come full circle and watch this icon, this hero, say things about you. You know, I have not seen the DVD yet. I’ve not seen any of it. I’ve never watched any of our live stuff ever, since we started. I don’t go on YouTube and look at clips, I never saw the last one we did and I probably will never see this one (laughs). I just had a small clip sent to me by my manager when they did it and when I watched it, it’s pretty surreal. I kind of watched it a couple of times to make sure it was real (laughs) and was pretty blown away, pretty emotional about it. It was really amazing, really sweet.
I heard you played drums early on before you started playing guitar, is that correct?
Yeah, that’s right. I played a lot of different instruments before I settled on guitar.
Tell us about your connection to Washburn guitars.
I couldn’t afford to buy a guitar so I just got these parts from music stores that I pieced together. It was much cheaper than buying a name brand guitar. So I put it together and it was Washburn that came to me and wanted to endorse me. I didn’t want to play any of their guitars so I told them that they’d have to do mine. That’s why the guitar had no paint cause I couldn’t afford paint at the time so we left it.
You also play wonderful piano by the way
I play one or two songs really well (laughs)
When you started playing with Rihanna, did you have to make any adjustments to your style or your tone for her songs?
Not really. She wanted me to do what I did and I got a chance to use the same guitars, same rig, same everything, and she basically allowed me to ruin all her songs (laughs). I think the reason I got asked to do that gig was not just because of what I did with Extreme. You have to be able to play a lot of different genres of music and believe it or not, as easy as people think that gig is it wasn’t. You have to wear a lot of different hats and you have to be able to not only play these parts, you have to feel all these different genres. So it was challenging but it was nice. And that’s probably why they reached out to me. She wanted me there cause she knew that.
How much fun it is to play with the Kings Of Chaos?
It’s incredible. I mean, it’s like a dream sequence version of doing shows. You’re up onstage with these heroes of yours like Steven Tyler and Billy Gibbons and Robin Zander. You can’t even explain it. It’s literally like you’re dreaming while you’re doing it.
For you, what was your first I can’t believe I’m here moment?
You have a lot of those through the years, like getting a record contract. A big one is being in a van traveling and you hear one of your songs on the radio for the first time. That’s a pretty powerful moment that you never forget. The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert. I feel really blessed.
Do you remember the first time that you heard a crowd singing “More Than Words” back to you?
They started doing that before it was even a single. That’s why it became a single. We were telling the record company that we were playing these small clubs when we were on tour with Alice In Chains or something and we were trying to tell them, man, we’re playing “More Than Words” and the crowds are singing it and it kind of dictated that it was a single.
What’s the most fun thing you’ve tried in the studio when you’ve been recording?
I’m not the biggest fan of recording. I love performing live. But I would say recording the orchestra on III Sides To Every Story. Recording the seventy piece orchestra was pretty fun.
You were honored in your hometown in Portugal. That must have been an exciting moment for you as well.
That was a big deal for me, one of the big milestones for me. It was where I was born and having a kind of plaque/statue to honor me was very emotional, for my family especially, my mom. It was pretty amazing.
What plans do you have coming up for next year?
We have a new Extreme album. We’re just finishing them up, wrapping the songs up, and hopefully will release it sometime in the spring of next year.
Portrait by Enzo Mazzeo
One Response
Loved the Pornograffitti revival but it’s time for some new stuff and I hope you guys land a big hit on radio again, you deserve it.