With his solo in the new Extreme song Rise, Nuno Bettencourt has animated the entire guitar community. “F*cking hell, that’s a ridiculous solo!” gasped Justin Hawkins of The Darkness on his YouTube channel. Rick Beato’s video breakdown of the solo rapidly garnered 1.5 million viewers.
DragonForce’s Herman Li and a host of YouTube faces produced reaction videos proving Beato’s point that this is “the solo everyone is talking about”.
As Nuno tells TG: “When Rise came out, we thought, ‘OK, decent song, decent guitar solo’, but the reaction that it got was something else. When Rick Beato posted his video breaking down the solo, and he’s saying that Steve Lukather’s calling, and his brother is calling and Phil X is calling saying, ‘Have you heard the Nuno solo?’, it was really surreal for me. It’s that scenario that you fantasise about as a kid. He’s saying things like, ‘Other than Eddie, he’s the guy!’ You’re like ‘OK, hold on a second!’ I had people I admire texting me, like Phil Collen from Def Leppard, Brian May reaching out and talking about it. You have to take a step back and go ‘What’s actually happening here?’”
Since the guitar Internet has blown up with people talking about it, Nuno has been trying to rationalise the response. He has some bold ideas about what it is – and isn’t – about. “Mateus Asato hit me up like, ‘What the f*ck did you just do?’ and I’m thinking ‘What do you mean what did I just do? You do this in your f*cking sleep!’” he laughs. “I realised that it’s not about being able to do it. Anybody can play the solo. I’m not even joking. You break that thing down and there’s not much going on technically, really.”
“ANYBODY CAN PLAY THAT SOLO. I’M NOT EVEN JOKING”
If that’s Nuno’s idea of what anybody can play, we would suggest he holds off giving beginner guitar lessons for now, but his ideas about why has struck such a chord are more convincing. “I believe the difference is that I never played the end of thesolo slow. I didn’t calculate
