The guitarist that Queen’s Brian May said is very underrated

The guitarist Brian May helped to form Queen alongside Roger Taylor and Freddie Mercury back in 1970 and was a fundamental part of the band’s sound and songwriting. Besides his incredible technique, the “Red Special”, a guitar designed with his late father when he was a kid and the fact that he uses a coin instead of a pick to play, gave the final touch to make him one of the most influential and unique guitar players of his generation.

In the music business for more than five decades, Brian had the chance to see the evolution of Rock and Roll music. Many fantastic guitarists appeared over the years and there is one that he said is “very underrated”.

The guitarist that Queen’s Brian May said is very underrated

The guitarist that Brian May called very underrated is Extreme‘s Nuno Bettencourt, both are good friends and May praised him many times. In 2020, the Queen member was elected by the readers of Total Guitar magazine the best guitar player of all time. Although he was happy about that, he mentioned many other musicians who he thought were also amazing. One of them of course was Nuno.

“Oh, now there’s an awesome player. Incredible. Nuno is outrageous! We’ve played together a lot and we’ve hung out together a lot. I think one of the most memorable nights was when Extreme played the Freddie Tribute (concert at Wembley Stadium in 1992). I didn’t really know what was gonna happen. They kept it a secret. I thought they were going to come on and play a lot of their hits, but they came on and did an entire Queen extravaganza.”

“And I watched it with my jaw dropped open. It was incredible, the depth they’d gone into to play it so beautifully and perfectly but also with their own interpretation so that was an amazing moment. I remember talking to Nuno afterwards and I said, ‘I had no idea you were going to do that’ and he went, ‘No, you didn’t, did you?’ Amazing! But his soloing? Beyond belief! I feel rather sad that they didn’t continue on as a band (They split in 1996 but are reunited since 2007). They didn’t really achieve their potential in the world. It’s very odd.”

He continued:

“They had that massive hit with ‘More Than Words’ and then I think unfortunately it was difficult for their audience to appreciate what they really were as a band. It was one of those strange moments where you get a hit but it doesn’t define you in the way you want to be defined. That’s the way I see it. Because they’re a magnificent group. Nuno’s really very underrated I would say. He’s one of the greats. One of the greatest living guitarists, I would say,” Brian May said.

As Brian said, Extreme played at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992. The Queen guitarist even collaborated with them on their cover of Queen’s “Love of My Life.”

He said that “Get The Funk Out” guitar solo is “the epitome of what a solo should be”

In a recorded interview (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage) Brian May praised the guitar solo of the song “Get The Funk Out”, from Extreme’s 1990 album “Extreme II: Pornograffitti”. He explained how the guitar solo is amazingly constructed and that he could never learn that solo.

“If that doesn’t bring tears to your eyes as a guitarist. I don’t know where things are. And there’s more, you know. That to me is the epitome of what a solo should be on record. Of course it’s preconceived, it’s built, it’s constructed. But within that is this incredible kind of spontaneity that’s there. It sounds like it’s coming straight out of inside him, and it is, you know. Those things don’t happen very often.”

“On pure technical ability alone, that’s colossal. I could never do that. No way in a month of Sundays could I learn that solo. It’s Nuno’s own thing. So it’s a stupendous thing, it’s a landmark. That’s a landmark in rock history,” Brian May said.

Nuno was born in Praia da Vitória, Portugal back in 1966. He started his musical career in 1985, the same year Extreme was formed.