Nuno Duarte Gil Mendes Bettencourt (born September 20, 1966) is a Portuguese-American guitarist and singer-songwriter well known as the lead guitarist of the Boston hard rock band Extreme. He has since recorded a solo project called Schizophonic. He has also been involved with bands Mourning Widows, Population 1, DramaGods, The Satellite Party (headed by Jane’s Addiction’s frontman Perry Farrell), and then reunited with Extreme to record new music and tour.
Bettencourt draws from an eclectic variety of styles and influences. However, his most prominent work has been in the realm of rock and heavy metal guitar despite his most popular commercial hits being acoustic songs. Bettencourt’s technical guitar playing is influenced by many different guitar players that have rubbed off on guitarist such as Eddie Van Halen, Al Di Meola and Jimmy Page; while his solos and sense of melody are influenced by Brian May of Queen. He is particularly adept at arpeggios articulated via string-skipping tapping. One of the strongest elements in Nuno’s playing is his sense of rhythm, whom often uses a very loose wrist technique to execute fast triplet picking licks to create a funky sound to his rhythm playing and also his use of poly-rhythms to blur bar lines and create a unique sound.
Nuno Bettencourt was born on September 20, 1966 in Praia da Vitória, Terceira, Azores, Portugal, to Ezequiel Mendes Bettencourt and wife Aureolina da Cunha Gil de Ávila. Bettencourt’s family, parents and two brothers Luís and Roberto Carlos, moved to Hudson, Massachusetts when he was four. Initially, Bettencourt had little interest in music, he preferred to spend his time playing hockey and soccer. However, his first instrument was the drums; he played them exclusively until his brother, Luis, began to teach him how to play guitar. While Bettencourt slowly adopt the instrument under his brother’s tutelage, his skills quickly developed when he began teaching himself, and he has mentioned in many interviews that he would skip many school days to practice upwards of 7 hours a day. In his sophomore and junior years of high school, Bettencourt dropped out of sports so he could focus on playing guitar. He would eventually drop out of high school for the same reason.
Unable to make a dent in the music world with his Boston-based hair-metal act Sinful, Bettencourt rose to international prominence as a guitar player after he joined the Boston-area group Extreme in 1985. Signing to A&M Records shortly after Bettencourt joined the group, the band released its debut record, Extreme, in 1989. Extreme released 5 albums since then.
After Extreme, Bettencourt worked with numerous projects, including his solo albums. He has been featured in the movie Smart People, which he is credited in the cover of the movie album. He was also featured in the song “Best Night Ever”, by Marshall, on the TV show “How I Met Your Mother”.
Bettencourt formed the recording entity Population 1 (later renamed to DramaGods) and released the self-titled and self-produced 2002 release, Population 1, on Universal/Japan and YBM/Korea. In support of the Population 1 (which featured him playing all instruments on most tracks), release in Japan and Korea, Bettencourt assembled a band with Joe Pessia on bass, Steve Ferlazzo on keyboards and back-up vocals, and Kevin Figueiredo on drums and back-up vocals. Steve Ferlazzo was also featured in Cherone’s next band carnation effort after Van Halen’s breakup,(Along with Pat Badger and Mike Mangini from Extreme)Tribe of Judah. DramaGod’s is currently seeking a record label.
In December 1990, Washburn Guitars unveiled the Washburn N4 Nuno Bettencourt Signature Series – a series of Bettencourt-designed guitars which endures today.
The Nuno Bettencourt models were flag-shipped by the American hand-made Washburn N4. The Washburn N4 guitar is a small reverse headstock super-strat which features the unique Stephen’s Extended Cutaway neck joint for easy access to the higher frets. It also contains Bill Lawrence and Seymour Duncan pickups, and a Floyd Rose licensed tremolo. The production budget model of this guitar which is built in China is known as the N2 and features a standard bolt-on neck. The N3 was a short run Korean reproduction of the Washburn N4 using Washburn stock pickups. The original N2 and N3 guitars were prototype guitars built for Nuno. The N2 lacking the Stephen’s Extended Cutaway and the N3 using a Bill Lawrence L500-R in the neck rather than the Seymour Duncan 59. Other models include The N5 and N6. Nuno has also endorsed several Washburn acoustic models. As well as a line of ‘set-neck’ electric guitars Including the P- Series which was released in various models with a more retro, deep cutaway style.