“I WAS LIKE, ‘I GOTTA GET BACK TO MY ROCK,’ YOU KNOW? GOTTA ROCK!’

As he recounts, “I got the call from a great guitar player in New York named Tony Bruno. He was MD-ing [musical directing] for Rihanna, and they were looking for a guitarist to do a run with her. He got in touch and he goes, ‘Dude, I know you’re gonna say no because you don’t do this stuff, but we need somebody. We’re on the 31st guy now, and this is getting tough.”

Bettencourt continues, “I remember thinking, ‘Why is this so difficult?’ But when he sent me the tunes I understood. Because it was like, I have to be able to play reggae. There’s trap. There’s straight-up hip-hop with 808s. There’s pop. There’s club tracks. And playing in that pocket, you know, everybody thinks it’s simple, but it’s not. It’s a feel thing, and it’s not easy.”

Despite the various styles on tap, the good news was that Bettencourt was also told, “‘You can be you and you can do you,’ ” he says. “Which was a nice thing to hear. Because I was like, ‘Why do you need me? There’s no guitar.’ And Tony goes, ‘Exactly. She wants to rock out the show.’ ”

And rock out Bettencourt did, serving as guitarist and at times band leader for Rihanna on multiple outings, including 2010’s Last Girl on Earth tour, 2011’s Loud tour and 2013’s Diamonds tour. “All the funk shit and everything we were doing, it was crazy,” Bettencourt says. “And then I’m playing with some of the greatest musicians I’ve ever played with. These were player’s players — our drummer did a Stevie Wonder tour, for fuck’s sake. It was like having the R&B version of Neil Peart next to me. The fusion and the jazz and all the jams that were going on, it was beyond belief.”

Bettencourt points to one Rihanna song, “Where Have You Been,” as a standout. “That’s a synth riff on the album version,” he says. “But onstage we were replacing it with a live band and crazy playing. It was all fast funk, really clean. You had to wear five hats to be able to do that. So it felt like I had been training my whole life for that gig — growing up with the Beatles, then Al Di Meola, then loving Bob Marley, then digging Parliament, then doing all the funk stuff in Extreme, it was insane. It kept me busy for sure.”

And while it’s clear that Nuno has a true appreciation for Rihanna’s music, the question remains: Is Rihanna an Extreme fan?

“You know,” Bettencourt says, “I think she was blown away by stuff like ‘Get the Funk Out,’ just because of the funk element and the horns and all that. That might’ve been one of the songs that got her to go, ‘Okay, let’s hit the dude up.’ And she obviously knew ‘More Than Words.’ ”

In fact, Bettencourt continues about the hit acoustic ballad, “There was one point where we were almost doing it live. Because we did ‘Redemption Song’ by Bob Marley, and I would sit onstage with her and play it on acoustic. And she would threaten, ‘Come on, let’s kick into that!’ It would’ve been amazing to do ‘More Than Words’ with her, sitting side by side. But it never happened.”

If that duet were to come about, it likely wouldn’t be any time soon. What Bettencourt initially thought would be a three-month stint with Rihanna wound up being three tours over the course of several years. But as much as he loved playing with the pop singer, he eventually had to bow out. “It was fun and I learned a lot,” he says. “Then they had the Anti tour coming up [in 2016] and they asked me to do it, but I felt it was time to go.”

Bettencourt laughs. “I was like, ‘I gotta get back to my rock,’ you know? ‘I gotta rock!’ ” of, “All right, dude, you’re influenced by Edward, but you put that fucking thing on there, it’s a wrap. It’s over!” [Laughs] So I really avoided it. But after he passed, I pulled one out and used it on probably three or four solos on the record.

“THERE IS NO HEIR TO THE THRONE OF VAN HALEN”

Which ones in particular?

It’s definitely on “Rise.” Like I said, I was cutting that one on the day that Edward came over. But later on, I extended the front of it. And with that beginning part, where the band stops and I do the fast picking up the neck, I was like, “You know what? Fuck it. This is as ‘Eruption’ as you can get, I’m doing it.” So if there’s

a tip-of-the-hat moment on the album, it’s when that solo comes in with the Phase 90. It does almost nothing to the notes, but you hear what it does to the pick. It just adds this crazy attack. The rest of the solo is me just doing me, but that beginning part, that’s me saying, “Thank you. I hope you’re watching from up there and listening.”

Otherwise, I might have kicked on the Phase 90 for the end of “#Rebel,” and it’s definitely on the solo in “Other Side of the Rainbow.”

It’s so heavy on there that a lot of people have asked me, “Are you using a wah pedal?” And I’m like, “No, it’s the Phase 90.”

And I assume the primary electric on the record is your signature Washburn N4.

It’s the N4 that I’m playing now, which is the one known as the 4N, because I flipped the name on the body. A while back I retired my original N4 because it became such a valuable guitar emotionally to me. And it was almost stolen three times. So I was like, “Okay, I’m walking around with this guitar, I’m checking it on a plane… I’m putting it out there.” I played it on every tour. And it wasn’t the financial thing, but I started seeing that it meant something to other people because it was number 0001. I started getting offers on it from collectors for a lot of money. So I said, “Let me put this in a vault somewhere for now…” I only wanted to do that if I could find another one of the early ones built around the same time, where I could pick it up and close my eyes and go, “Okay, that’s it.” And I did that.

How did you manage that?

While we were on tour and doing meet-andgreets, kids would come in with an N4 and they’d go, “Sign my guitar.” And you could see it was dusty, that they didn’t play it anymore. So I’d be like, “What year is this?” And some of ’em already had my signature on it, and when I’d sign a guitar I’d always put the year, so it’d say, like, “Nuno ’91,” “Nuno ’92,” “Nuno ’93,” whatever. So I’d go, “Hey, would you be interested in swapping a guitar with me?” Or I’d buy it from them. And I wound up with three that were super-close to the original. I bought one in Scotland, I bought one in China, and the one I’m playing now is from the Netherlands. I got it from a friend and it was like, “Whoa.” It was just the closest thing. So it’s been the workhorse for a good many years now. I used it through the whole album, except for one song, “X Out,” where I played the N7, the seven-string version, for the first time in my life. I believe that guitar is also on “Save Me,” which is very Alice in Chains, by the way. And then on one song, “Other Side of the Rainbow,” I used my Nele, which is the Tele version of the N4.

What did you use for the acoustic tracks?

I got this great guitar from Washburn, a WD10S, as a throw-around. It’s one of their cheaper models, probably $300, but it’s one of my favorites. It plays like butter and it sounds amazing. I wrote and recorded “Hurricane” on that. Then I have a jumbo Washburn [WJ45SCE] that I had fitted with True Temperament frets, and that’s what I used on all the other acoustic stuff. It sounds so great. It used to drive me crazy how, when you’re playing acoustic and you play a D chord and then all these different chords, the intonation would be off. But I use the guitar on “Small

Town Beautiful” and “Here’s to the Losers,” and you can hear just how perfectly intonated it is.

Another guitar we have to talk about is the one that made an appearance at Super Bowl LVII earlier this year — the red N4 you played onstage with Rihanna during the halftime show.

That guitar was actually wrapped! It was a brand-new N4 that Washburn had sent me, and it was still in the case. I was in Phoenix [for the Super Bowl], and I was told, “You didn’t get the email? All the instruments have to be red.” So they had to have a courier Uber the guitar to a place that wrapped all the instruments. And the way they did it, it was so pristine. They did that shit like they do on a car. They even put the N4 on it in black. It’s still in the Rihanna locker somewhere. I gotta go get it.

So there’s probably not going to be a red N4?

I don’t know, man. It was pretty fucking cool. [Laughs] I’m trying to decide whether or not to keep it as it is. I mean, it’s the guitar used at the Super Bowl!

So you’ve performed at the Super Bowl, released a new Extreme album, turned the guitar universe upside down… not a bad 2023 so far. What’s next?

I would love to not wait so long to do another Extreme album. Because I knew this album specifically was going to maybe excite fans and guitarists with what it is, but I also thought, “Wow, I didn’t do any funk on this album…”

“Thicker Than Blood” has maybe a little bit of that vibe.

Exactly. That’s maybe the closest to an older one of our songs. But it’s still more electronic and more like Nine Inch Nails than like classic Extreme. But I have this crazy idea, and I told Gary, I said, “Man, the next album, I want it to be funky. Like, so funky. Every song has to be funky.” I’m talking horns, and not like Pornograffitti, where we did two or three songs with horns. Just full-blown, if-LennyKravitz-was-gonna-do-an Extreme-album type of thing. And it wasn’t on purpose that we didn’t go there this time. It was just that, for whatever reason, the things that we’re digging right now weren’t that.

Well, you have a studio at home. What are you waiting for?

[takes out phone and begins scrolling through voice memos] Oh, the ideas are there…

Point taken. So it won’t be another 15 years before we hear from Extreme again, is what you’re saying.

No. Definitely not. Hopefully it’ll be more like 15 months!