Hailing from Boston, Extreme would come up with other alternative acts including Pixies, Throwing
Muses and the Lemonheads. Extreme’s classic lineup would be made up of frontman Gary Cherone,
guitarist Nuno Bettencourt, drummer Paul Geary and bassist Pat Badger. The four musicians had been
circling one another playing in the boston music scene in other bands before coming together in
1985.. The principal songwriters of the band would be Cherone and Bettencourt and the band would nab
a deal with a major label in the late 80’s. Gary Cherone would tell loudersound what
set Extreme apart from their peers in boston saying “We were the bastard children of Queen,
Aerosmith and Van Halen. “Yeah, we looked the part. But we were never a party rock
band. That stuck with us for a few years.” As record labels were looking for fresh new
blood they expanded beyond the likes of new york and los angeles and zeroed in on boston and found
extreme. Bettencourt would tell loudersound “We signed that deal on air on a radio station,
we’re bragging to everybody that our career is gonna take off,” “We start recording the
album and we don’t like the way it sounds and the record company’s not happy with it. They tell us
they’re gonna hold off on it because we missed all these deadlines. We went into this depression.”
The label would eventually release the group’s self titled debut album in 1989
which sold around 300,000. You have to remember back then labels nurtured bands and could stomach
a slow start for an act. The single “Kid Ego,” a straight forward rocker put the band on the map,
despite the fact that Gary Cherone told Rolling Stone he cringes when he hears the
song and points to production problems during the making of their first record. The song Play
with Me would appear in the film billy and ted’s excellent adventure. Extreme was making a name
for themselves thanks to their live performances. Extreme was given an opportunity record a follow
up album, titled Pornograffitti from their label. Bettencourt would tell loudersound “When the first
album was delayed, I said f*** it’ and kept writing,“By the time the first album came out,
Pornograffitti was eighty or ninety per cent finished. Instead of crawling into a hole and
moping, it gave us a different headspace. It was, like, ‘Fuck you – we’re nobody
again.’ That’s why that album was so intense.” By the band’s own admission they didn’t know
that other popular bands like the Red Hot Chili Pepeprs and Faith No More were playing a style
of music similar to them. It couldn’t have been more perfect timing. The resulting album would
be Pornograffitti (or Extreme II: Pornograffitti (A Funked Up Fairytale) pleased critics and made
many year end lists. The industry started to take notice of guitarist nuno bettencourt’s
with guitar magazines featuring him on the cover and he soon earned his own guitar with Washburn.
But despite getting more attention the band’s second record’s sales seemed to plateau at 300,000
copies with the first two singles. “Decadence Dance” and “Get the Funk Out,” not garnering much
airplay on radio or on mtv. The band was still building their audiences through live shows,
but they were struggling to land opening slots on major tours. They would eventually hit the
road with Winger. Side note guys i’ve done a whole video on Winger. The link is down below..Rolling
Stone magazine would point to several reasons the band had struggled to connect with other bands,
radio programmers and MTV - the band didn’t really have an identity or personality out of music,
the band’s eclectic musical style was difficult to pinpoint and their lyrics were a little more
on the conservative side especially with songs dealing with the themes of morality and being
prolife.. Gary Cherone would tell Rolling Stone “There is a morality that I fight with,
But I’m certainly not perfect. I could say I’m prolife, but to tell you the truth,
if I knocked up my girlfriend and didn’t have the money, I might be going…’ Everyone’s human… There
is a lot of contradiction on this record because human beings are contradictory.”
That would however change with the release of their third single the acoustic ballad ‘more
than words.’ and the follow up hole-hearted that pushed teh album to sell over 2 million copies
stateside. The band fought with their label who never wanted to release more than words, but the
band won out and the song topped the billboard hot 100 charts. Cherone would tell Rolling Stone
how the song came about recalling Nuno was on the porch strumming, he showed it to me, I ran
in my bedroom and scribbled the first “More than words is all you have to do” — and it was obvious,
after you read the first verse to go, “OK, that’s the title.” You think it’s genius but it’s an
accident. We were just in a groove writing, and that was just another song. I think we might have
played it at a club that week.The song made the band a household name with Bettencourt telling
Loudersound “if I had a dollar for everyone who told me they’d got married or conceived a baby
to it, I’d be richer than Bill Gates. By the band’s own admission the peak of
pinnacle of their career was playing the freddie mercury tribute show in 1992 alongside the members
of Queen. It was following that show things took a downward turn for the band’s career.The success
of More than words made the band more ambitious with their songwriting
with the Bettencourt adding to Loudersound “We were pretty cocky to start with,
and we got cockier and more aggressive,”“Like, ‘Now the work really begins.’ I was on the road
writing. I’d have a suite with an adjacent room with a drumkit, a bass rig, a keyboard rig. I
was out of my mind: [aggressively] ‘Okay, let’s show ’em what we got.’ Immaturity and youth…”
The band’s follow up record 1992’s Extreme: III Sides To Every Story was too ambitious according
to the band. They would take inspiration from 70’s rock icons Led Zeppelin, Queen and Yes,
but with band’s like Nirvana making waves with simpled strip down rock, Extreme went in
the opposite direction employing a more serious tone including war and racial injustice. Added
on top of that was an orchestra and putting out a concept album that went largely unnoticed and
was a commercial failure. Bettencourt would tell Loudersound “We had all this material,
there were themes running through the lyrics, so I said, ‘Let’s try and put together a concept
album.’ Yeah, we were ambitious. It came out in 1992, that’s when Nirvana’s stripping down the
whole world. The band struggled to shake off their soft rock image due to the success of More Than
Words. Cherone would add in the same interview “Nuno and I were always trying to write the next
song,”. “It would have been nice if we smelt the coffee a little bit more during that time. There
were no drugs, nothing to get people distorted. We always got on. It’s just that you put four guys in
a bus for that long and you get burnt out.” Despite initially selling more copies than
it’s predecessor the album would stall out at half a million copies going gold.
By 1995 the band put out their final album for the time being Waiting for the punchline. The
album would peak at number 40 on the billboard charts but that was it. Bettencourt wanted to
leave the band, while Cherone wanted to keep Extreme together. The musicians would go their
separate ways politely. Cherone would end up joining van halen and put out one album with
the group before leaving in the late 90’s. While the members of Extreme kept in touch
during their years apart they would play a handful of one off shows before reuniting for good in 2007
minus drummer Pat Geary who has gotten more on the management side of the music business managing big
acts including alter bridge, steel panther, the smashing pumpkins and even his old outfit extreme.
The band’s most recent album 2008 Saudades De Rock. While the members have talked
about having written new music since 2016 there hasn’t been any word of when we can
expect a new album, but Extreme has been active on the touring circuit.