Aside from his solo work and Extreme, Nuno Bettencourt has lent his talents to a menagerie of artists, including Janet Jackson, Rihanna, Julian Lennon, and Dweezil Zappa. Despite his impressive list of collaborators, Bettencourt has revealed that he never sacrificed his tone or playing style to land a gig.
“The tone doesn't change at all,” he tells Positive Grid. “I've never done anything where somebody says ‘You can't use your rig, or you can't be you.’
“That was the cool thing about doing the Rihanna stuff. When they [Rihanna’s team] reached out to me, I said, ‘Why would you want to use me? Like, I do what I do,’ and they go, ‘No, man, we want what you do,’ so I get to be myself. So it's the same rig, same everything.”
Bettencourt goes on to say that he doesn't put much emphasis on pedals and amps, as what truly counts are the hours he's put into his craft, expressed through his hands.
“I think your hands tell the story of who you are, at your DNA. Of course, an amp matters for sure, but pretty much, you should be able to plug in just about anything and still be you. And I think that's why I don't use anything in front of it.”
The Extreme guitarist had previously talked about the challenges he encountered playing with a versatile pop star like Rihanna, saying that most of the “guitar players who I admire could not in their lifetime play that gig”.
“When somebody like Rihanna reaches out to you to perform everybody thinks, ‘Oh, that’s cute. It’s a pop artist, whatever,” Bettencourt said.
“Let me tell you something, what I had to do night after night – put on a reggae hat (for one song) with a reggae feel, and go into R&B, then go into some punk rock and pop rock that she did, and then club tracks. All sorts of (things), all those different feels.”
Bettencourt was recently involved in the launch of the Positive Grid Spark 2, which our reviewer Matt McCracken dubbed “without a doubt the best practice amp I’ve ever played”.
For more information on the Spark 2, head to Positive Grid.
