Nuno Bettencourt is not one to shy away from the opportunity to match his exemplary musical skills with equally talented and virtuosic players.
That’s why the co-founder and guitarist for the superb 1990s rock band Extreme jumped at the notion of sharing the stage with friend and mentor Steve Vai (David Lee Roth, Whitesnake), legendary Swedish hard rock guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen, bone-crunching former Ozzy Osbourne axe-slinger and current Black Label Society leader Zakk Wylde and budding star Tosin Abasi (Animals as Leaders) as part of the upcoming Generation Axe: A Night of Guitars Tour.
Beginning April 5 in Seattle, the tour will wind its way through North America, wrapping up May 8 in Providence, Rhode Island. There are two Canadian dates on the tour: April 6 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver and May 4 at Toronto’s venerable Massey Hall.
The brainchild of Vai, Generation Axe is so much more than just five great guitar masters jamming onstage – and that’s what convinced Bettencourt to hop on board.
“When you get a phone call from Mr. Vai, who I admire and respect so much, you take it and listen to what he has to say. He’s reached out to me before when he was doing something similar, but for those shows the guitarists would do practically their whole shows and they were primarily solo artists. But I have always been part of a band; my music has always been more song driven. I had never even done an instrumental album, so I always declined,” he told Music Life Magazine.
“But this time he said it was different and explained it was along the lines of the Kings of Chaos tours I had done where we all get together and there’s a great anchor rhythm section, usually Duff [McKagan) and Matt [Sorum] from Guns N Roses, and then there would be myself and maybe Slash, Glenn Hughes, Billy Gibbons, Steven Tyler and Robin Zander and others and we would do a couple of songs of each other’s, then another guy would come on and it would be like a tag-team, relay race kind of thing.
“So I thought it would be a great concept for this tour. It’s not about coming to see each guy do their full show. It’s for people who are curious to see what Yngwie is going to do with Zakk, and what Vai is going to do with me. That’s what makes it exciting and what turned me on about it. It wasn’t about us as individuals; it was about coming together and unifying and what we can do in harmony and do something that is so unpredictable that nobody would expect it.”
A big part of the allure is the chance to work in close quarters with guitarists who Bettencourt admires and who have contrasting styles, approaches and musical philosophy to his own.
“It was pretty f***ing amazing to sit at rehearsal that first day. I called it my first day of school. It was really interesting to just watch everybody do their thing and work on their parts individually with the backing band and then we got some time to do stuff together. Everybody works so differently. Some guys are just like ‘yeah, let’s just rock it out.’ And others are like, ‘no, no, was have to work everything out exactly and we have to learn it like it was recorded.’ Everyone has a really meticulous ways to do stuff,” he said, adding that even though he is as esteemed as his tour colleagues, he still holds Wylde, Vai and Malmsteen in particular in great awe.
“I remember being a teenager and desperately trying to see Yngwie where I lived in Worchester, Massachusetts and sneaking into this theatre and trying to get into sound check. I was a real fan of his. And with Zakk I remember running into him, dare I say it, when we were both kids. I was in L.A. for the first time recording and I see this guy on Melrose Avenue and he was so baby-faced – no facial hair at all. He was skinny as heck, although I think his biceps were pretty big. And I remember that’s the time when we both kind of started and I have loved following his career.
“And of course with Steve Vai, when he played with Alcatrazz [replacing Malmsteen, actually] and came out with the Flex-Able album and then worked with David Lee Roth – that was the music that influenced me early on as a player. These guys aren’t just peers, they are important musicians who influenced me at an important time in my life.”
Abasi is not nearly as well known by the masses of music fans, and was even a bit of a mystery to Bettencourt when he was first
added to the Generation Axe roster.
“He plays an eight-string guitar, which is crazy. And it took me a while to figure out what he was doing, but once I wrapped my head around it, it’s so cool and so advanced. The stuff he is doing with Animals as Leaders has all the band playing in unison and they’re doing all these polyrhythms and they’re dropping beats and doing all these crazy time signatures over other ones. Once you kind of let go of how out there and complicated it seems, you get it. It’s like telling a foodie to forget trying to figure out all the ingredients in a dish – just eat it and enjoy,” he said.
“When you see him actually play live there is such a ‘wow’ factor. I kind of describe it like the rest of us are all speaking English with different accents and he is speaking Chinese or some other completely different language. And there’s a lot of newer players who really know about him. I have some younger nephews and they were so excited to hear he was playing with us and I didn’t have a clue as to who he was. I can see why so many are getting into Animals as Leaders, it’s like Tool on crack; it’s progressive, and so advanced. The musicianship is insane. You have songs that sound like koRn and then it transitions to something like Alan Holdsworth – it’s really quite a journey.”
Bettencourt said while he is excited about the onstage experiences that will happen over the course of the tour, he is intrigued by what is going to happen offstage when five unique creative personalities – and egos – are in such close quarters over the intense, month-long schedule of the Generation Axe tour.
“I told Steve we should put up four GoPro cameras in the corners on the bus and just run them after every show and see what happens, because this is going to be better than Big Brother. It would be a great experiment – five guitar players on one bus. We could see if someone is going to bring up religion or politics and who is going to offend who. There are a couple of guys who are really intellectual but in different ways and coming at it from different perspectives. This shit should be captured, man,” he said with a chuckle.
And Bettencourt wanted those thinking about coming to any of the shows to realize that it’s going to be a truly a musical experience, not simply a display of string-bending pyrotechnics.
“This is like going to a buffet where you get just a taste of what each guy is about and what each guy can do. It’s like the X-games where you see guys doing the tricks on the skateboards and the bikes. You try to do your best stuff in that short period of time. For us, we have to be concise and let people know who we are in 20 minutes. You have to do your greatest stuff and what you think is special to who you are.
And for the fans, I don’t think that’s something they’re going to want to miss. ‘I wonder what Vai is going to do for his 20 minutes. What is Nuno going to do?’” he said.
“For me I might be one of the only guys singing. I am still going to do my thing, I may do an acoustic instrumental piece although I really don’t have any proper instrumentals. So I might try to put together a mini-medley of the coolest Extreme riffs in a big mash-up. Yeah, I will have to do some tricks, but if I only do tricks and I don’t do anything graceful or with dynamics, people are just going to go, ‘meh.’ As a guitar player, you’ve got to balance the tastefulness and the craziness and figure out how you are going to wow people and not look like you’re just musically masturbating all over the place.”
Bettencourt was fortunate to come from a musical family. His parents hail from Portugal and he himself was born on of the islands of The Azores, a Portuguese territory in the Atlantic Ocean. The family moved to the U.S when Bettencourt was little, allowing for even more exposure to music.
“I am the youngest of 10 kids and everybody played. My dad played a bunch of instruments and there were all sorts of instruments in the house. You would just pick something up and start playing. And when there were weddings or other family gatherings we all jammed. We didn’t even play Christmas songs at Christmas, we pulled out the Beatles catalogue and my family and I would sit around doing all the Beatles stuff. That’s been a part of me for my whole life. Music was like oxygen – it was just there and you chose to either do it or not, and some of us did it for fun, some played at parties and some were more serious,” he said.
Growing up, Bettencourt was attracted to the versatility, musicianship and song-crafting skills of bands like Queen, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and Van Halen.
““I was attracted to all the guitar playing but I loved the fact that you could orchestrate the riffs and guitars in a song to make it musical, and you had this 20 second solo to say something amazing within the body of the song. The Queen II album really hit me hard. And from the more rock side it was Aerosmith’s Get Your Wings. And obviously when Van Halen’s first album came out that changed everything guitar wise for a whole new generation,” he explained.
“And I used to hear Led Zeppelin coming out of my brothers’ bedroom all the time. They were so versatile and I loved hearing their fourth album over and over again because there were so many different styles and genres. Jimmy Page, Brian May of Queen and Eddie Van Halen were probably the three most well-rounded influences for me, and then you throw in The Beatles as far as songwriting goes and it’s over. With all those bands and players, they basically said to me I could do whatever the f*** I want. Rock and roll is whatever you want it to be. There are no rules.”
Bettencourt’s own versatility was on display for millions of non-rockers over the years, as he was tapped to be the touring guitarist and onstage musical director for pop superstar Rihanna – an experience that Bettencourt said he truly appreciated and enjoyed for the past few years.
“When I got the call I asked why does she need me, there’s no guitar in her stuff. They said that’s why she was reaching out. She saw me and wanted me to take every song from the last show and make it mine, add power chords, riffs and make it rock. I remember saying ‘really? I get to destroy every one of her songs? Okay.’ But when I got to rehearsals thinking I was going to be playing with a supposed pop act, they had these amazing, veteran musicians together who were going to make it sound so special live,” he said.
“Sometimes I would do two or three-minute solos and she would go off stage and let me do my thing. It was quite an experience and I learned a lot. Rihanna is Rihanna to everyone, but what we were doing as a band, and what we were doing to those songs live with the revamped versions was pretty f***ing cool.”
The working relationship with Rihanna has ended, amicably, as Bettencourt has chosen to concentrate on writing and recording a new Extreme album with bandmates Gary Cherone, Pat Badger and Kevin Figueiredo. It will be the band’s first new music since 2008s Saudades de Rock.
“We’re working pretty hard. We’re about 15 songs deep now. We’re just finishing up some lyrics and stuff, but we are definitely in recording mode. So hopefully by the fall or early winter we will have it done and maybe put it out in January,” he said.
For more information on Bettencourt, visit his Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/nunorocks/
For more information on Extreme, visit http://extreme-band.com/site/
For more information on the Generation Axe tour, see http://generationaxe.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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1AxoPTAgxA
