Scott's Spotlight #8--Extreme
Originally posted to Facebook on October 24, 2024
Link to post:
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Welcome to Scott’s Spotlight #8. (#scottsspotlight) For more info, see this post:
In the spotlight this week, Extreme. I featured their most recent album, “Six” in #scottssongbysong issue #2.
Extreme got together in 1985, in Boston, MA. Coincidentally this is the same city and year as Dream Theater (with whom they will share some other connections), whom I featured in the previous issue (#7).The band’s roots go as far back as 1979, however, when Gary Cherone (vocals), and Paul Geary (drums), began performing in bands together in Boston. One of the band’s they were in together was called “The Dream.” The Dream appeared on an early MTV show called “The Basement Tapes,” where unsigned bands submitted videos for fans to vote on. The song submitted was “Mutha (Don’t Wanna Go to School Today),” (later reworked for Extreme’s debut album) and the video MUST be seen! It's a masterpiece of 80s hair-metal cheese! Here is the link: https://youtu.be/ma4dcGQAkCM (despite the tagging on the video, the band was not yet Extreme, but The Dream with Gary Cherone and Paul Geary.) The video won them the contest. Nuno Bettencourt (guitar god!) was also playing around Boston in a band called Sinful. He and Cherone began to cross paths frequently as each of their brothers were in a different band together, called Flesh, and discovered that they shared a love for the band Queen, particularly the album “Queen II.” Cherone, Geary, and Bettencourt began playing together in 1985. Bassist Pat Badger, who attended Berklee School of Music in Boston (I cannot find out any information as to when he attended, other than he only stayed for a semester, so I don’t know if he crossed paths with the 3 founding DT members there), was in a Berklee-based band called In the Pink, when he left that band to join up with Cherone, Geary & Bettencourt. The band would choose the name Extreme, as it sounded like “Ex-Dream” in honor of the band from which this new band evolved.
Over the next two years of 1986 and 87, Cherone wrote several songs together, and the band quickly built a large following in Boston and the New England region and won the “Outstanding Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Act” at the Boston Music Awards in each of those two years. By 1987, they were signed to A&M Records, and would record their first (self-titled) album in 1988, to be released in March of 1989. The album established their “funk-metal” style. 4 singles were released, with three of them getting played on MTVs “Headbanger’s Ball”--”Little Girls", " Kid Ego,” and the reworked version of “Mutha (Don’t Wanna Go to School Today.” The 4th single, “Play With Me,” was featured prominently in the movie “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” in the “Mall Chase” scene. The debut did moderately well, with approximately 300,000 copies being sold.
The first album was successful enough to warrant a second release. That release started out slowly, but eventually rocketed them to major fame. That album was called “Extreme II: Pornograffitti,” released in August of 1990. The album is a concept album dealing with “Lost innocence and uneasiness.” Many of the songs were in the “funk-metal” style established on the first album. The first single, album opener “Decadence Dance,” failed to chart in the Hot 100, but made it to #45 on the Mainstream Rock chart, and #36 on the UK chart. The next single, “Get the Funk Out,” still missed the Hot 100, but did slightly better, charting in a few other countries, and hitting #36 on the Mainstream Rock Chart, and #19 on the UK chart. The album as a whole had fallen out of the Billboard 200 album chart entirely when A&M Records sent out the third single. This one would change everything for Extreme. An acoustic ballad, that was essentially a duet between Gary & Nuno hit #1 on the hot 100, #2 and the UK and was a top 20 song in several countries around the world. The strength of the single returned the album to the charts, eventually peaking at #10 on the Billboard 200, #1 in Canada, and #12 in the UK, as well as being in the top 40 in many countries around the world. A fourth single, also acoustic based , but this time upbeat, with the full band on the track, called “Hole Hearted,” also did quite well, reaching #4 on the Hot 100, #2 on the Mainstream Rock Chart, and #12 in the UK. “Pornograffitti” would be certified Double Platinum in the US, with sales of over 2 million. Extreme had arrived on the world stage. Unfortunately, however, the fifth single “A Song For Love,” failed to gain much attention, even though it is one of my favorites on the album; Gary’s vocals at the end of the song are so good that they make the hairs in the back of my neck stand up every time. A major appearance at the “Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, “ in April of 1992, (while taking a break from recording the follow up album) would only bring more attention to the band. Brian May introduced them with the following words:
"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".
Next up for Extreme, is my personal favorite album of theirs: “III Sides to Every Story,” released in September of 1992. The album is a concept album, divided into 3 sections, “Yours,” “Mine,” and “The Truth,” representing the 3 sides to every story referenced in the album’s title. The “Yours” section is hard funk-metal, and focuses on political-type concepts such as war, peace, government, racism, and the media. The lead-off single for the album, “Rest in Peace” is from this section. While the song hit #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart, it only barely broke into the Hot 100 at #92. Two of my favorite, and most technically stunning Extreme songs come from this part of the album: “Peacemaker Die,” and “Cupid’s Dead.” Those songs are borderline prog-metal to me. The next 2 singles on the album came from the more introspective and mellower “Mine” section. “Stop the World,” hit 95 on the Hot 100, and #9 on the Mainstream Rock chart, while “Tragic Comic,” failed to chart in the US. (All 3 did much better in the UK, incidentally, hitting 12, 22, and 15 respectively.) “The Truth” section of the album is essentially a prog-rock epic, in the form of a 3-part suite titled “Everything Under the Sun” with the following 3 segments: “I- Rise n’ Shine,” “II- Am I Ever Gonna Change,” and “III- Who Cares?”. Part II was released as a single, but only charted on the Mainstream Rock chart at #10, and no other charts. Unfortunately, while certainly not a failure, the album did not do nearly as well as its predecessor, achieving Gold status of 500,000 copies sold. It reached #10 on the Top 200, and #2 in the UK. As I stated, this is my favorite Extreme album, as they flirt with prog-rock here, and I think the album is just brilliant. In my opinion, it suffered from the beginnings of grunge taking over the rock music scene and bands (rightly or wrongly) associated with the 80s hair metal style quickly fell out of favor.
The next Extreme album fell victim to grunge even more so than the previous one. “Waiting For the Punchline,” was released in January of 1995, during the height of the grunge era. When listening to bands that began in the 80s with the 80s hair-metal style who released albums in the mid 1990s, it is apparent that many of them felt (or were possibly told by their record labels) that they needed to adopt a more grunge style to sell albums during that era. While some reports say it sold 600,000 in the US, a search of the RIAA database returned no results for the album being certified gold. It certainly did not get the attention that the previous 2 albums got. While Paul Geary played drums on the majority of the tracks, he left the band amicably during the sessions in 1994 to pursue a career in artist management. Mike Mangini (another DT connection) was chosen to replace Geary, and played on three of the album’s tracks–”Hip Today,” “Leave Me Alone.” (for which he received a writing credit), and “No Respect.” Only one of the album’s four singles charted at all, as “Hip Today,” made it to #26 on the Mainstream Rock chart and #44 in the UK. The other three were: “There is No God,” “Cynical,” and “Unconditionally.” I don’t think it's a bad album, it’s just not reflective of Extreme’s normal style. The production is quite raw and the arrangements aren't as tight as on the previous albums. Nuno, of course, is Nuno and shreds all over it. He also has a very cool acoustic solo with a drum machine backing called “Midnight Express,” that is worth checking out (he played it on tour this year, which I personally was lucky enough to attend). I also got into, album opener, “There Is No God,” which rocks hard. “Hip Today,” is probably the best known of the tracks, and they played it as well on the recent tour.
Following the tour for “Waiting For the Punchline,” the band broke up amicably. Nuno wanted to try a solo career, releasing an album under his own name called “Schizophonic,” followed by 2 albums by a band he formed with his nephew playing bass called “Mourning Widows.” Later, in the early 2000s, Nuno had another band initially called Population 1 and later renamed DramaGods that band included a drummer named Kevin Figueiredo. Nuno, Kevin and another member of Population 1 worked with Jane’s Addiction leader Perry Ferrell in a band called Satellite Party. Not long after Extreme’s break up, Gary Cherone found himself in Van Halen following Sammy Hagar’s departure. Although Gary was with them from 1996-1999, they only released one album with him (“Van Halen 3”), while it was reported that a second album with Cherone was rejected by their record label, Warner Brothers. After his time with Van Halen, Cherone formed a band called Tribe of Judah which included Pat Badger and Mike Mangini on several tracks, and released an album called “Exit Elvis,” in 2002. Meanwhile, Pat Badger otherwise took a break from music and ran an Alpaca farm in Massachusetts with a business partner, and as far as I know, this is still going. Mike Mangini was hired by Steve Vai to be his drummer from 1996-2000. Following that, Mangini became a professor at, you guessed it, Berklee School of Music. Original drummer, Paul Geary’s management took off in the early 2000s when one of his first signings, Godsmack became superstars. Other bands he would be involved in the management of include: Smashing Pumpkins, Alter Bridge, Creed, Scorpions, Fuel, Steel Panther, Jason Bonham, Billy Ray Cyrus, Hoobastank, Joe Perry ("The Joe Perry Project"), and eventually Extreme.
While it sounds like it could be the end of the story, of course, we know that it isn’t! In 2004, the band began doing “one-off” reunion shows, including one in Azores, Portugal that had Paul Geary back on drums, but bassist Carl Restivo played bass rather than Pat Badger. The same lineup would also play a show in Boston, as well as “a few shows in Japan.” Later in 2006, the classic original line-up did a “3 Show Tour” in the New England region.In 2007, Nuno, Pat, and Gary reunited and Kevin Figueiredo (henceforth known as “K-Fig, “ the nickname his bandmates use) became Extreme’s new drummer. (Geary remained connected to the band in a management capacity.) Incidentally, K-Fig was a student of previous Extreme drummer Mike Mangini. The band announced a tour with King’s X, and a new album to be released in 2008, titled “Saudades De Rock,” which roughly translated from Portuguese means “Nostalgic Yearnings of Rock.” This is the Extreme album that I know the least about, and honestly wasn’t even aware that they had reunited and released an album at the time. Since I began streaming and building a large streaming library however, I have “liked” most of the tracks. The one I know most is the song “King of the Ladies.” Apparently the album did see some chart activity, it reached only #78 on the Billboard 200, but reached #12 on the Hard Rock albums chart, #9 on the US independent albums chart, #12 on the UK independent albums chart, and #12 in Japan. The band would tour between 2008-09. Thew would release a DVD in 2010 titled “Take Us Alive.”
Following that time period, in 2010, Nuno was hired to play guitar for pop star Rhianna. This delayed work on a planned follow up album. In the interim, while Nuno continued to tour with Rhianna, Gary Cherone had a band called “Hurtsmile” and released an album with them in 2011 and another one in 2014. Despite rumors for a 20th anniversary of “Pornograffitti” tour in 2012 (although it would have been the 22nd anniversary), one never materialized. Another tour in 2013, with Richie Kotzen in Australia was canceled due to Nuno’s schedule with Rhianna. They did play one show in Singapore that year, however. Finally in 2015, rumblings of activity from Extreme began to emerge. First, Gary stated in an interview with DJ and TV host Eddie Trunk, in May of that year that they had begun writing and demoing songs for a new album. That same month, Extreme played a 25th anniversary “Pornograffitti” show at the Hard Hock in Vegas, performing the entire album for the first time ever. The show would be released as a live album and video in 2016, titled “Pornograffitti Live 25-Metal Meltdown” (The “Metal Meltdown” part sounds so cheesy, I wished they’d left it out.). In September of 2016, Nuno stated in an interview that they had 17 songs for a new album, with basic tracks completed and some overdubs remaining. He predicted a 2017 release date, which obviously didn’t happen. What did happen in 2017, is that they played on the KISS Kruise and invited Paul Geary onstage to play Hole Hearted with the band. In 2018, Extreme toured Australia with Mr. Big. They played some festival dates in various countries in 2019. No updates on the album came until 2022 , when Cherone confirmed to Eddie Trunk that the album was still coming and called the material “Some of the best stuff Nuno and I have written.”
Finally, in February of 2023, after a series of teasers on YouTube, the song “Rise” was released. Nuno played a game changing guitar solo in the song and attention began to be paid. (See my review of the album, linked in the comments for more detail, linked in the comments.) More singles would be released in the coming months, and “Six,” would be released on June 9, 2023. I LOVE this album! It is my second favorite, after “III Sides to Every Story,” and ahead of “Pornograffitti.” Other standout songs include “#REBEL,""Banshee,""The Mask, ”the tearjerker “Hurricane,” and, my favorite, the upbeat, 12-String acoustic based song “Other Side of the Rainbow.” The band is still releasing videos from the album well into 2024, with “Beautiful Girls,” (not to be confused with the Van Halen song of the same name) and “Save Me,” (not to be confused with the Queen song of the same name) being very recently released. My wife and I were lucky enough to see Extreme, with Living Colour this past March in Memphis. The show was amazing! They played and sang great! Let’s hope it doesn’t take them another 15 years to release the next album!
(BTW, photo credit...is me.)
From Comments:
Links for listening, and a review…
From “Extreme”:
“Play With Me”
From “Extreme II: Pornofraffitti”
“Get the Funk Out”
“More than Words”
“Hole Hearted”
From “III Sides to Every Story”
“Rest in Peace”
“Cupid’s Dead.”
“Stop the World”
From “Waiting For the Punchline>”
“There Is No God”
“Hip Today”
“Midnight Express”
From “Saudades De Rock”
“King of the Ladies”
From “Six”
“The Mask”
“The Other Side of the Rainbow>”
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