Nor, if we’re being honest, will you get much insight into the creative process behind the songs themselves.īut the fact remains that Pornograffitti was the point when Extreme went from bit-part players to leading men. If you’re coming to Extreme for tales of hedonism or substance abuse or studio trashing or even great anecdotes, then you’ll be disappointed.
Let’s step out of the story for a moment. Pornograffitti was by turns playful, earnest, riotous, fun and – yes – funky. In Cherone’s words, the band were “full of piss and vinegar” when they wrote it.
#ROGER DALTREY ROBERT PLANT LOOK ALIKE FULL#
That album, Pornograffitti (or Extreme II: Pornograffitti (A Funked Up Fairytale)to give it its full and partially mis-spelt title), was and is Extreme’s masterpiece. But it was precisely that “thing”, as headed up by the likes of Faith No More and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, that gave Extreme the leg-up they needed. “I thought we were one of the bands initially playing it,” he says. Nuno Bettencourt insists that he didn’t know there was “a funk-metal thing going on” when his band released their second album in 1990. The cover of Extreme’s breakthrough album Pornograffitti It was, like, ‘Fuck you – we’re nobody again.’ That’s why that album was so intense.” Instead of crawling into a hole and moping, it gave us a different headspace. “By the time the first album came out, Pornograffitti was eighty or ninety per cent finished. “When the first album was delayed, I said ‘Fuck it’ and kept writing,” says the guitarist. Rather than slinking back to Boston with their tails between their legs, Extreme were given another chance. “The label were telling us, ‘You’ve reached a quarter of a million people – that’s a lot’,” says Bettencourt. What happened next is the perfect illustration of the difference between the music industry now and the music industry then. Massive numbers today, but barely enough to cover the catering on a video shoot back then. Co-produced by Queen associate Reinhold Mack, it had its moments – Kid Ego and the Mozart-referencing Play With Me indicated they had the chops and, when they put their mind to it, the tunes – but it was just too prim for its own good. Extreme’s self-titled debut album wasn’t that great. They tell us they’re gonna hold off on it because we missed all these deadlines. “We start recording the album and we don’t like the way it sounds and the record company’s not happy with it. “We signed that deal on air on a radio station, we’re bragging to everybody that our career is gonna take off,” says Bettencourt. What happened next was a textbook Music Industry 101: band gets signed, band records an album, label sits on album, album emerges a year later than it should have. Eventually it settled on Boston, and on Extreme in particular. Having exhausted all possibilities in Los Angeles and New York, the laser eye of the music industry cast its gaze further afield. “We were the bastard children of Queen, Aerosmith and Van Halen,” says Cherone. But they also had the sort of vaulting ambition that set them apart. In Nuno Bettencourt, they had a bona fide guitar-hero-in waiting. They had the hair (and the ill-advised headbands to match).
That’s what made Boston.”Įxtreme were different from the rest of Boston’s rock fraternity, even the bands who were playing the same strain of rock as they were.
And of course there’d be a lot of fights, but it was fun.
“When they let us all out at one o’clock in the morning, we’d all end up in this one place, the Pizza Pad,” says Nuno Bettencourt. Big of hair, flashy of guitar, fierce of ambition, their territory was clubs with names like Narcissus, The Rat Skeller and The Channel. But in their hometown of Boston, a musical jungle ruled by the awkward, cerebral college rock of Pixies, Throwing Muses and the Lemonheads, they were an alternative to the alternative. Not in the tattooed squat-punk, didgeridoos-and-dreadlocks fashion. Once upon a time, Extreme were an underground band. Extreme at the start of their career (Image credit: Brian Rasic/Getty Images)
0 kommentar(er)
