When any band comes back from hiatus they tend to sound fresh, relaxed and maybe a bit different.  Extreme have always been known as a band that isn't afraid to let its audiences know what its influences are, and after spinning the new album ‘Saudades de Rock' a couple of times it should become clearer to the discerning listener exactly who those influences are.    Initially I'd booked an interview just as they were nearing the end of their US tour, but unfortunately some confusion in the arrangements resulted in me missing the time slot.  Thanks to Paul Geary's assistant Deborah Hunter, this was rearranged for one week later, and once we'd negotiated the conference call connections, I was put through to Nuno. 

I began by apologising for the confusion the previous week, but he reassured me that it was nothing to worry about.  Apparently they'd tried to do as much publicity as they could on the road, but it had been a less than successful mission.  "Sometimes the schedules conflicted with the stage times," he explained, "then when we'd go outside to the bus there would be a lot of people hanging around.  We didn't want to be mean, so we'd stay and sign autographs, and by the time we'd finished we'd have missed some of the calls ourselves."   My guilt eased, I breathed a sigh of relief and settled down to the job in hand.

It's great to see that Extreme are back and with an astonishingly good album to boot.  It sounds like something of a departure from your previous material, but before we get down to the nuts and bolts, I'd like to ask you about the reformation of the band.  You disbanded for eight years, then you got back together briefly only to go on hiatus again a couple of times.  What was it that made you all decide the timing was right to officially reform and create a new album?

Well, the shows that we did on our own, just one off shows here and there weren't really attempts at reunions.  They were situations that would come up where we were all in the same situation at the same time, or benefit concerts.  They were good to do, because they all worked out pretty well, they were for the most part sold out, the crowds were great, the band was good and we did our thing.  For some reason, though, we'd go back to our hotel and I'd still be in a bit of a depression about it because a reunion was still quite a confusing prospect.  We never wanted to do the nostalgia tour where we'd just live off our past glories.  We didn't want to tour for the wrong reasons.  We would never survive that kind of tour because there would always be something missing, and that was the new material.  We needed new blood, so to speak, to get us back out there and to make it viable for us to be there.  We knew that in the future if we ever did anything we'd have to get into a room and make sure the chemistry was still there and that we still had something to offer.  The good news is that when we did get together we came up with about 23 songs in 2 weeks and we were really excited about that.

You've worked with Kevin Figueiredo previously in Population 1 and the Satellite Party.  What led you to offer him the drum seat in Extreme on a permanent basis?

From the day that I worked with Kevin on the Population 1 record I knew that I would never play with another drummer.  When you find somebody that has that feel and intensity you just don't let that go.  When you see him live you'll get what I'm talking about.  He just lifts the band to another level.  Granted, we did talk about Paul Geary and the possibility of it being the original cast, but we knew that Paul was fully into management at this point and that he wasn't going to be able to do it. 

I couldn't help noticing that Kevin's drumming style is strongly reminiscent of John Bonham.  Is this something he does naturally, or is it borne out of the sound you wanted to create for this album? 

If you'd mentioned that to Kevin he would have kissed and hugged you.  John Bonham is his maker.  He's not his influence, he just IS.  For Kevin, Bonzo is The Only One, and that is very prevalent on the record.  It's perfect for Extreme, too, because as far as rock bands go Led Zeppelin were my favourite of all time; then you've got the other side which is the pop stuff like the Beatles, of course, but that's why playing with Kevin fits like a glove.  It's perfect for us. 

Now to the album itself.  The opening track ‘Star' is classic Extreme from the nineties with a strong Queen influence on the chorus.  The rest of the album is a chocolate box of influences that will keep the avid listener guessing.  What was your overall ambition for the album, musically speaking?

Without a doubt I think ‘Star' was definitely the most Queen we've ever sounded.  For fear of dropping a name, I had to actually send an email to Brian May before he heard it to apologise.  I didn't tell him that it sounded like Queen, I just said he should be aware that we actually considered calling this song ‘Tie Your Mother-in-Law Down' (laughs).  We didn't do it on purpose, but there's no denying it; when you do a swing song with a riff like that, you've got to tip your hat to ‘Tie Your Mother Down' and Queen.  Like you said, though, from track to track you'll see that we've worn our influences on our sleeves - as a badge of honour, mind you.  We're not trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes.  It has always been pretty obvious who our influences are.  We've always had that balance of Beatles and Zeppelin, Aerosmith and Van Halen and you'll hear that throughout the record.  

On ‘Learn to Love' Gary sounds remarkably like Paul Rodgers ...

Wow, that's good!  Yesterday a good friend of ours, a singer that I admire in Australia, described ‘Learn to Love' as "rock and roll the way it used to taste"  and now you've mentioned Paul Rodgers it really hits home.  It's just guitar driven blues driven rock and roll.  The biggest asset on this record is that we definitely showed the DNA of the band and what we were really influenced by when we were growing up.  We didn't try to do that, or try to avoid it, it's just the way it came out. 

You've given us another classic Extreme ballad with ‘Interface' which has more of the beautiful harmonies reminiscent of "that" hit.  I can hear the Beatles influence strongly on this one.  Is it destined to be a single?   

You know, ten or fifteen years ago I could talk about singles.  It used to be mapped out, there would be a plan of what would be the single from an album, but radio is such a bizarre animal now, and we don't even know if they'd play Extreme or whether they'd even consider that Extreme exists!  Radio seems to be on its own mission these days.  Our goal is to try to put out singles, but bands always have to prove that they have something to offer especially with the nostalgia thing going on.  We don't want to do it for nostalgia reasons, but it's not for us to say.  It's for everybody else to listen to the record and hopefully connect with it and maybe it'll get played on the radio.  I think ‘Interface' would be a great single in terms of a cross over track.  Lyrically I think it really connects with people and has all the Extreme elements in it, but in a different way because the whole band is jamming it out as opposed to being done acoustically.  It would have been very easy to do an acoustic version, but we wanted to do it this way.

Regarding the magic between you and Gary, how does the writing side work in Extreme?  Do you write as a team, or do you bring your individual ideas together?

Most of the time I bring stuff to Gary.  I pretty much give him the music and melody, and in the case of this album we sat down and wrote lyrics together on some of the stuff.  Sometimes he had some lyrics that he had done himself and sometimes I had some lyrics.  There wasn't any rhyme or reason this time around and we had many different approaches to the writing.  Sometimes we did the songs as a band when we rehearsed.  Most of the songs were very current and  new, and there were one or two songs from maybe six or seven years ago that we wrote when we used to just hook up at one of our homes and write just for fun. 

What input do the others have on the writing process?

Sometimes it's just a matter of their existence.  If you're jamming with the band, it's not necessarily that they've handed you a riff straight up.  For example, Kevin might throw down a great groove during a session, so he's contributed to the writing process and he's part of the whole thing. 

I understand you did all the recording, producing and mixing yourself, but you weren't so keen on computer trickery which seems heroic in this day and age.  Why are you not so much in favour of it, when a lot of the tools can allegedly make your job a lot easier?

It's not so much that I'm in favour or not in favour of computers because computers are part of our lives no matter what we do.  I just wanted to go live as much as possible and capture the human aspect of the band.  I wanted to record that stuff in two or three live takes and take the best bits to make sure we didn't lose the electricity and vibe that we had in the studio.   

How easy was it to co-ordinate everyone to get into the studio at the same time?

(laughs) It was easy.  Everybody was itching to get in.  They were waiting for my call, so they were ready, there's no doubt. 

I understand the meaning of "Saudades" is "a sorrowful yearning for something that has passed".  What does the title of the album mean to you personally? 

There are a lot of different aspects to Saudades.  It's basically a longing for something; a passion for something you're not sure is ever going to come back.  For me it was a perfect title for this record and for us coming back.  We were never quite sure when we got together whether we'd recapture the chemistry.  It was a very important word in my language when I was growing up.  It's only used in the heaviest of occasions, especially in reference to someone that you really admired or someone that you loved.  It's quite interesting that there is no literal translation for that word in another language. 

I note that the album closer ‘Peace' is also Saudade in brackets - without the "s".  Does it mean something different in that context? 

Well, we just threw it on there to reference the title, because the song is basically called ‘Peace', but peace is also one of those things that we long for; something that we're always striving towards and wishing for. 

What have been the early reactions to the album so far?

Shockingly enough, obviously we're very proud of the record and excited about it, but in a very strange and bizarre way we have yet to hear a bad response.  People seem to have been connecting with it.  People who weren't Extreme fans in the past have said the record has turned them on to us, or that they like it much more than the early stuff.  Fans from the past have really embraced it.  In general the press who maybe didn't have any stock in Extreme have been giving us props for this record.  It's been a very enjoyable situation all the way around.  At the very least people who might not dig Extreme or maybe we aren't their cup of tea are saying the record has a lot of depth, and we didn't just go and make a joke record to enable us to tour.  I believe it is a record for the time right now, and you don't hear these types of records any more.  I don't mean in the nostalgic sense of metal or rock or whatever that is, I just mean something that people have actually put effort into and put their heart and soul into.  It has the old school elements in it as well; it has a kind of "fuck you we're going to do what we love to do" attitude to it.

You're kicking off the European leg of the ‘Take Us Alive' tour on the 29^th October in Lisbon.  Even though you haven't lived in Portugal for a long time, do you still see this as something of a homecoming show?

I visit Portugal quite frequently, actually.  I'm there every year in some way or another, if not a couple of times a year.  I'm still connected to Portugal.  I don't pretend to have grown up there, and consider myself an immigrant in America, but it's my birthplace and I stay connected to my roots.  It's very exciting to open in Lisbon on the European tour.  It's going to be a lot of fun. 

Small venues are fine with us.  Unfortunately the agents and promoters don't have so much faith in us right now because we've been gone for a while and we need to reintroduce ourselves and get re-acquainted.  When we first got the European tour schedule Dublin and Belfast weren't on it, and I was the one who really bitched about it.  I called them up on my cell phone and said they would have to put those gigs on because I have some great memories of playing there.  The Belfast crowds are so crazy and so passionate, I'll never forget playing there.  It was insane.  I remember thinking the floor was going to cave in.  Unfortunately there are a lot of cities and countries that we're not hitting on this run.  Like I said, a lot of people on the business side are very fearful for some reason of getting us into some places, but there'll be time.  We're going to come around again next year and hopefully do some of the festivals and do the places that we don't get to this time round.  We'll make it to everybody sooner or later next year.

 What do you particularly like about Europe and the UK?

Hopefully this won't piss off too many of the American fans, but we've always been at home in the UK and Europe.  That's no lie.  We've always played bigger venues there, we've always had a bigger fan base, more passionate fans and fans who really connected with us.  Extreme was always a little quirky, a little outside the box, and sometimes we had more depth that the American people wanted to give us credit for, or even bother with.  The reason we've always had a deeper connection in Europe and the UK is because we broke there first with ‘Get the Funk Out' way before ‘More Than Words'.  There was never that misconception about us that there was in America.   The European fans knew what we were about, and we certainly knew what they were about and that's why we feel so at home there.    

Are you still using the Washburn guitar?  What model are you up to now?

(Laughs). Yes I am.  Believe it or not I'm still using the N4, the same one that I've been using for twenty years.  That's my main guitar for 80% of the set.   I use a couple of others, like the N5 and N6 but it's mostly the N4. 

When Extreme disbanded, albeit amicably, you all went your separate ways and did various things.  Are you all still involved in side projects, or is Extreme the sole focus of everyone's energies now?

We realise that in order to do this right, we have to really stay focussed so we don't get distracted.  It took a long time for us to get back to doing this.  This time we're going to try to make it enjoyable for ourselves, do it without stress and really take in all the stuff that we might have missed last time.  We were doing so many things before that I think we started taking each gig for granted, thinking that they would always be there, and then one gig began to seem just like the next.  We didn't take in the smells and the flavours of any of the countries that we visited, which is natural if you're always sticking to a schedule and don't take any breaks.  We're going to try to make sure that we do this right so we can hang out for quite a bit of time instead of just wanting to go home because it's too overwhelming.    

I gather we won't see a follow up to Schizophonic, then?

(Laughs) No, I've got no plans.

On the subject of that album, a question I always wanted to ask you is - why was there no soloing on it? 

Well, there was a bit of soloing on it, but one of the main reasons it is so limited is because nine times out of ten when I demo a song, whether it's for Extreme or anybody else, or even me, I usually keep it very bare bones.  I do demos by putting the song idea down and rarely demo solos.  I like to do solos when I record the record to make sure I get one shot at that vibe.   Anyway, the label heard the Schizophonic demos, loved them and wanted to use them on the record.  I think they had a good vibe and everything, and we just used what we had and went for it.  I didn't really think twice about the solos.  So that's the story - those songs were 90% demos and I don't do big solo sections on demos that I set up. 

Finally, if you had to sum up each of your band mates in one word, what would it be?

For Gary, I'd have to say passionate, or attack.  Gary's always ready to attack.  For Pat, it would be solid.  The best supporting actor always goes to Pat with his vocals - his "pipes" I would say.  He's very solid in the bass and you can always count on Pat.  As for Kevin, he is engulfing.  He engulfs the whole band and takes it with him. 

And how about yourself? 

Myself, hmmm.  I don't know.  I'm going to have to let you decide on that one (laughs). 

(I've thought about this and the only possible word I can come up with is modest.)

Well, I'm going to let you go because you have a busy schedule, but thank you so much again for taking the time to do this interview.  I'll see you in London.  

I really appreciate it.  It's nice to do good interviews once in a while (laughs).  Make sure you say hello in London. 

Yeah, I want to see Kevin's face when I tell him I think he's the new John Bonham.  

(Laughs) He'd love that. 

 - Dawn Irwin

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written by pmsbull, September 06, 2008

This tour should rock !
Gonna try to make Newcastle.

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