Nuno Bettencourt Shares The Story How Extreme Upset Brian May

When They Played At The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert

In an interview with Kylie Olsson, Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt talked about The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert that took place on April 20, 1992 at Wembley Stadium in London. The event featured some of the biggest names in music like Metallica, Def Leppard, Guns N’ Roses, Robert Plant, David Bowie, George Michael, Elton John, and many more.

Extreme played a medley of Queen songs that included “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “I Want To Break Free”, “Fat Bottomed Girls”, “We Will Rock You”, and “Stone Cold Crazy” before wrapping up their set with their classic hit “More Than Words”.

As it turned out, Queen guitarist Brian May was far from happy with their decision to perform a couple of Queen tracks. Bettencourt said, “Yeah, we did a medley, got in trouble, we got in trouble for doing it because we were supposed to, you know… Brian asked us to play, to be Extreme.”

“So we were just like, ‘This is amazing,’ and what do we do as Queen fans? And me and Gary [Cherone] have this idea,” he recalled. “I’m like, ‘F**k doing our own show, let’s pay a real tribute. We’re real Queen fans, let’s do what we want to do for Freddie, and let’s put this little medley together.'”

They were feeling pretty good about it but then, May wasn’t impressed.

Bettencourt explained, “He was upset that we weren’t doing us, that we were doing Queen.”

In the end, May just let them do what they wanted to do. Still, as Bettencourt looked back at that moment, he doesn’t regret performing the Queen medley because according to him, “It was what those fans wanted to hear, I believe.”