There was a very prescient observation made by Extreme vocalist Gary Cherone part-way through his interview with Music Life Magazine last week where he basically inferred that our conversation, and indeed the entirety of the current press campaign announcing the launch of Pornograffitti Live 25/Metal Meltdown package, might not be happening if not for one song that was included on the original album back in 1990.
The incendiary concert experience was released Oct. 14 worldwide.
“Looking back, even though I think the whole record is really good, I don’t think we’d be celebrating the 25th anniversary of it in such a big way if not for the success of More Than Words. It introduced a lot of people to us, and to the rest of the material on the album,” Cherone said.
More Than Words, the song that showed another side to the band – a quieter, melodic – dare we say it – sweeter side of the band, and a song that launched a million slow dances or make-out sessions, was the third single from the Pornograffitti album. The first two singles, the high-octane, groove-oriented Decadence Dance and Get the Funk Out were moderate hits and helped put the Boston-based band on the map.
But when the simple, elegant, black-and-white video for More Than Words hit the airwaves of MTV and other video channels around the world, and the single started getting radio airplay in March 1991 – for a brief time Extreme dominated that musical map.
“I think in the end, any song that stands the test of time hits a universal chord. I think people identified with the sentiment of it. The melody was simple enough to sing to. And, it’s funny, because to this day, every time we play and talk to people there’s always someone who says it was their wedding song. Or it was the prom song, or the break-up song. I’ve had guys say they hate that song because it reminds them of their first girlfriend who broke up with him. Everyone of a certain age seems to have a story about that song,” Cherone explained.
“As for how the song came together, Nuno [guitarist Nuno Bettencourt] and I were writing; we were writing three or four songs a month or even more and at the time More Than Words was just another one of those songs. And when we wrote it, I think we were gigging at a club in Boston, and we thought it was a good song. We thought it was better than some of the other songs we wrote at the time. But we had no idea that the song was going to be bigger than the band and was going to explode the band onto the world stage. That you can never predict. If it was that easy, we would have written 10 more of them.
“It was a song that definitely came from the heart. Nuno had a chord progression and we were messing around with a cool melody and I wrote the lyrics and it just all came together. But that process was the same for every song we were writing at the time. And it’s funny because that song, because of the time we were in, gets lumped in on a lot of these ‘metal power balled’ compilations, and it isn’t a power ballad. It didn’t have big drums [it had NO drums in fact] it didn’t have big soaring vocals and have this big crashing crescendo. For me, it was inspired by the Beatles song If I Fell: it was meant to be simple with just one guitar and two voices.”
While More Than Words was a stratospheric and revelatory success for Extreme, for Cherone, Bettencourt, bassist Pat Badger and then-drummer Paul Geary, the Pornograffitti album itself was a signature moment in their career, and helped establish what would be called the Extreme ‘brand’. This was a band that created music that was outside the bounds of what was contemporarily popular in hard rock circles – it had more groove, there was a funk element, but also a remarkable fearless variety of sounds, styles and genres, executed via the band’s virtuosic musicianship, breathtaking vocal harmonies, and uncanny ability to bring together all these facets of their sound into a unifying whole.
“I think the album did stand out from the crowd at the time for a number of reasons. One was that it was our second record and I think it really was the record where the band found its identity. The construction of the album and the tone wasn’t a conscious thing. We weren’t trying to be different than all the other hard rock or hair metal bands at the time. I think on our first record [a self-titled release that came out in 1989] we wore our influences on our sleeves. We were the bastard children of Aerosmith, Queen and Van Halen and on that first record you could really hear those influences loud and clear. Although, I think you can still hear those influences throughout all of our music. That first record came out in 1989 but it should have come out in 1988. It was delayed a year for political record company remixing and all that crap,” he said.
“Because of that delay, we had a lot of extra time to write for the next album and work out the songs in the clubs. So we were evolving and really finding out voice. By the time that Pornograffitti was recorded in 1990, we had those songs in our back pocket and I think that’s why it was so much better than the first record.
“And also what I think was different was that we incorporated some horns and stuff. And also we had a concept behind the album although, again, it wasn’t something that we were doing consciously. It was just a band that was wide-eyed saying, ‘let’s do this. Let’s build this record around some characters in the songs’ and that kind of thing. And listen, there’s no doubt that Queen was a template for us. You go to many of their albums and you will have the heaviest song, followed by something like Love of My Life or some really eclectic, vaudeville-sounding track. Even as straight ahead as Aerosmith was, they had boogie and they had groove and then you the pyrotechnics and virtuosity of Van Halen. All of that was there, but we were not conscious of that. We were a band that was just following our muse.”
The songs on Pornograffitti do explore what might be termed the proliferation of more decadent pursuits in the world, such as sex, money and excess and how these activities are not just exploited and trivialized but often celebrated in popular culture. Songs such as Li’l Jack Horny, When I’m President, He-Man Woman Hater, and It (‘s a Monster) bear this theme out.
For the 25th anniversary concert, which was part of an extensive celebratory tour and recorded at The Joint at the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas last year, some of the songs from the Pornograffitti saw the light of day for the first time as the album was played in its entirety in chronological order.
“We had seen other bands celebrate watershed records so we were a little reluctant to do it. But when we dove in to do it, I actually got out-voted by the other guys because I didn’t want to do it in chronological order. I was like, ‘I can’t sit down on a stool and do More Than Words as the fifth song of the night. So that was a bit of a mental barrier for me. But it turned out that when we did do it in chronological order it had this wonderful ebb and flow to the show. We launched in with Decadence Dance, Li’l Jack Horny, When I’m President and Get the Funk Out and by then we’re 25 minutes into the show and we sit down for More Than Words and then we build the intensity up again,” Cherone explained.
“And then there were songs we hadn’t done in 25 years and there were songs that we’d never done live, like When I First Kissed You comes to mind. For me, that was one of the highlights, with Nuno sitting at the piano and there was that whole old Frank Sinatra standards feel to it. It was fun. And we hadn’t done Suzi (Wants Her All Day What?) or Li’l Jack Horny or Song for Love in at least 20 years. And surprisingly all of those songs got huge responses, so we will take those lessons forward when we’re putting set lists together for future tours.”
Of course, when a band has a hit album – especially a largely unexpected hit – there is some pressure to try and repeat that success. Usually that pressure is external, as the ‘powers that be’ want to keep the money train rollin’.
For the members of Extreme, they were already well into the writing process for their third album when More Than Words came out and blew up the charts.
“Some people forget that it wasn’t just More Than Words. That song was followed by Hole Hearted, which gave us another hit. It was a nice transition because it was also acoustic based, but it was more upbeat. That song made the top five, reaching number four. So in a span of six months, we had two top five hits songs. When More Than Words came out, the album was actually kind of dead in the water and we were writing the third record and playing clubs and stuff,” Cherone said.
“When the song blew up, we kind of put the writing aside because all of a sudden here comes the Bon Jovi tour, here comes the ZZ Top tour, here comes the David Lee Roth tour. We were on the road for the next two years. But because of that success we had some clout when it came to the next record. We could do what we wanted. But it’s the old story: the record company has a success and they want you to repeat that success because that’s the easiest way to get from Point A to Point B. The thing with Extreme, I am proud to say, is that we were arrogant about it. We were in a bubble of our own creation and didn’t let any outside forces in. We had the budget and yes with what ended up becoming III Sides to Every Story, I am sure they were probably looking for More Than Words Part 2. We didn’t deliberately not give it to them; we just expanded our musical horizons and followed the same process we always had. But we had an even bigger vision.
“And even though it wasn’t as successful as Pornograffitti commercially, I look back on III Sides as being a better record – better conceptually. We were definitely ambitious and indulgent. We were living our dreams and, again using the Queen model, we just went for it, bringing in an orchestra and separating it into three sides and having a different concept.”
III Sides to Every Story was released in 1992 but it was three years before the band’s next album, Waiting for the Punchline came out. Following the tour in support of that album (by which time Geary had left the band), Bettencourt had decided to leave to pursue a solo career, eventually becoming the guitarist and music director of Rihanna, with Cherone having a short-lived stint as lead vocalist for Van Halen. Extreme was on ice for much of the next decade, with a few sparse one-off shows taking place. A full blown reunion between Cherone, Bettencourt and Badger happened in 2007 with the album Saudades de Rock released in 2008, featuring new drummer Kevin Figueiredo behind the kit.
The band would reunite a number of times over the next few years, schedule permitting, with the band playing their first shows in Russia and China in 2012 and a triumphant tour of South America in 2014.
And fans will be pleased to know that Extreme will soon be heading into the studio to record their first album in eight years.
“In describing the new music, it always starts with the familiar. You are going to hear Extreme. And what is Extreme? It’s Nuno’s guitar, it’s the harmonies, it’s the range of styles and genres. You will hear everything you heard from the past but I think with Extreme and the lives we’ve lived apart from each other and the different influences that we have, we come into the studio knowing there’s already going to be some new elements to it. And, again, there’s nothing contrived. We don’t sit down and say, okay let’s write Decadent Dance 2. We write songs and make records in the moment, and some are naturally going to be more successful than others,” he said.
“We do know that it will happen sometime next year. We are recording it this year. We’ve got more than enough material; it’s just getting our four heads together under one roof to record it. We’ve got a few producers that we’re looking at, so it’s kind of about scheduling. But we are determined to put out new material. We feel we owe our fans a new record. And if it were up to me, I wouldn’t play another show until we had new music to bring to people. So once that album is out, we’re going to hit the road, and definitely get back up to Canada again.”
Pornograffitti Live 25/Metal Meltdown is available in DVD, CD and Blu-Ray formats, and is available in most virtual or bricks-and-mortar retailers.
For more information, visit www.extreme-band.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com
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