How did Nuno Bettencourt inadvertently end up writing a song with Paul McCartney?
Let’s be real here. Glam rock is not a genre that “needs its flowers” or deserves some sort of reappraisal. The vast, vast majority of it was intensely corporate radio filler with all the edge, artistry and spirit of a pizza box. This wouldn’t be such a problem if the bands involved weren’t trying to act like they had all those things. I mean, W.A.S.P’s frontman is literally called ‘Lawless’, and now their shows are glorified Trump rallies. It’s fitting, just not the way he undoubtedly thinks it is.
The one thing the genre undeniably had was some intensely gifted guitarists. Seriously, even beyond the obvious names of Slash and Eddie Van Halen, who were destined for rock history whenever they surfaced, the likes of Ritchie Sambora, Mick Mars and Vito Bratta were legit, to say the very least. One of the most accomplished of the lot was Extreme’s Portuguese whizz-kid Nuno Bettencourt, who joined the Boston metallers in 1985 when he was 19 years old.
While Extreme formed in the heyday of the genre, they were actually late bloomers. Their self-titled debut album came out in 1989, and ‘More Than Words’, their only real hit, came in 1991. The sharp among you would have already cottoned on to this, but the early ’90s was a really terrible time to be in a glam metal band. Once the opening chords of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ hit the airwaves, the days of Extreme and their ilk were numbered. Bettencourt, though, was talented enough to forge a way out for himself.
He’d already been tapped up to play on records by the likes of Janet Jackson and Dweezil Zappa by the time Extreme folded, and over the next two decades, his reputation as a session player would only grow. Understandable when you work on three straight Rihanna albums and Brian May himself calls your guitar playing “a landmark in rock history”. For Bettencourt himself, his crowning moment would come at the 2015 Grammy Awards.
Possibly due to his work with Rihanna, he was called on to perform for her performance of ‘Fourfiveseconds’ at that year’s ‘biggest night in music’. A track which also features one Sir Paul McCartney, who’d also be joining them on stage. Bettencourt was preparing for their rehearsal by playing some song ideas into his iPhone when the man who wrote ‘Yesterday’ strolled up to him. Bettencourt recalls what happened next in an interview with Rick Beato.
Remembering, “I just hear his voice, ‘What’s that you’re playing? Oh, I like that; it sounds expensive!’ He goes, ‘What do you got for the chorus?’ – and I’m like, ‘Don’t tell me I’m writing a fucking song right now with Paul McCartney, please don’t tell me that’s happening!’ And I [thought], ‘You know what? Fuck this,’ and I go, ‘What would you do for the chorus?’ And he just starts singing [in] Paul McCartney falsetto.”
Thus, the two of them jammed on Bettencourt’s riff for a few holy moments. Before it got interrupted by the third artist involved with ‘Fourfiveseconds’, a man with the proven ability to ruin anything great, up to and including his reputation, Kanye West. That said, any musician would give a lot more for a quick session writing with Macca himself, and even if he came up among some dodgy groups with his talent, Nuno Bettencourt truly deserved it.
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