Nuno Bettencourt

Nuno Duarte Gil Mendes Bettencourt (born September 20, 1966) is a Portuguese-American guitarist. He became known as the lead guitarist of the Boston rock band Extreme. Bettencourt has recorded a solo album and has founded rock bands including Mourning Widows, DramaGods, and Satellite Party.

Rolling Stone ranked him no. 197 of the 250 greatest guitarists of all time in 2023.

Bettencourt was born on September 20, 1966, in Praia da Vitória, Terceira, Azores, Portugal, the youngest of 10 siblings. He is the younger brother of Luis Gil Bettencourt. The family moved to the United States when he was four, and he grew up in Hudson, Massachusetts.

After playing in the Boston-based hair metal act Sinful, Bettencourt rose to fame as a guitarist for the Boston-area group Extreme, which he joined in 1985. The band released its debut record, Extreme, in 1989. The final track on the album, "Play with Me", was used as the "mall chase" song in the film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.

In 1990, Extreme released its next album, Pornograffitti, which included the hits "More Than Words" and "Hole Hearted". The acoustic ballad "More Than Words" entered the Hot 100 on March 23, 1991, at No. 81. It later became a huge smash, hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States. "Hole Hearted" was also successful, rising to No. 4 on the same popular music chart. Pornograffitti garnered admiration for Bettencourt from rock guitar enthusiasts. He was voted "Best New Talent" in a 1991 readers' poll by Guitar World magazine, and that magazine later named him "Most Valuable Player" of 1991. Queen guitarist Brian May has called Bettencourt's solo from the song "Get the Funk Out" "a landmark in rock history that I think should have its own little medal struck and awarded to Nuno Bettencourt and Extreme."

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.