It's been thirteen long years and a few bad decisions since Extreme brought us their fabulous funk-rock and had us all singing along to some of the catchiest songs of the ‘80's, but now, out of the remains of Satellite Party, Nuno is back to tell me how the band are back and better than ever!

I'm very excited about the new album. I've listened to it several times online and I love it, but before I make a complete idiot of myself, how do you pronounce the title?

Actually, it's pronounced ‘saw-dodge' (Saudades de Rock)

Okay, but what does it mean?

I have no idea! (laughs) Actually, it's a word from my homeland, Portugal, and it was always a very meaningful word from the island that I come from and it always meant something that you lost or that you were longing for that has been away for a while and may never return, or it may return. It's like something that you really need in your life and it was obviously something we used to use to refer to people, loved ones and the like. When we were getting into the room for the first time and doing this record, it gave us that realization of how much we missed it and rock and roll in general and the feeling we used to get from fans through email and sites and people thankfully wanting us to do something for years. There's been fans from Brazil who have used that word and we thought it was very proper for the return.

It seems very fitting when you find out what it means. That really sums up your reunion, doesn't it? Following the band's split, you all headed off and did different things. Why did you decide to get back together at this particular time?

You know what, it was never supposed to be a reunion, that word was never supposed to happen in the traditional sense where it's like "hey guys, let's get back together and do a tour". It wasn't that obvious and calculated, it was more of, I wasn't sure if we were ever going to do it again. As opposed to the band splitting up and all hating each other, it was a bit stranger than that. I think it was more of - well, I left the band before Gary went off and did the Van Halen thing because I just wasn't feeling like it was real anymore. It was a bit like we were punching the clock and I never wanted to do anything that was like that. I wanted to make sure that whenever we did anything that it was special to us at least and hopefully special to other people. I always stayed in contact with the guys and it was never like a bad relationship but … we'd always toyed with the idea of possibly doing something but I said to Gary that the music would dictate it. I never wanted to do a bad nostalgia album. I always thought that people can see through that and fans can see through that.

There are a lot of bands who have done it recently too!

Yeah! We got in this room, we played together for a few days and I said that if it feels right, if we have something to say, something to offer that's new, that'll move us into the now and feel like we belong out there and we're not ripping people off – not that it wouldn't be good for them to come and hear the old records, but for us it would be a little bit pretentious because we were never like that and within a two week period we came out with twenty four songs!

Wow!

It scared the hell out of us.

But that's great. So many bands are getting back together these days and living off past glories rather than bringing out new material, whereas you've done all that (made the album, sorted some tour dates) and then you announce you're coming back. I think that's a far more honest way of doing it.

That was the condition. We always felt that the music is always bigger than the band and it always becomes the soundtrack of your life, it's not yours anymore. To go back on the road and just play those soundtrack songs from that period (‘More Than Words', ‘Get The Funk Out', etc.) – I'll never forget in the beginning of this whole thing getting started, our first drummer Paul (Geary), who's still working with us in a managerial capacity, said "Hey, wouldn't it be fun to just do two or three dates in Asia and we'll just hang out" and we thought yeah, it'd be fun and we did that and it was great because you would think yeah, all the shows are sold out, the fans sang every song, it was like we never got off the bicycle. There we were, but for some reason, when I got back to the hotel after the first show, which couldn't have been any more perfect, I went into this depression. I realised that I couldn't do it. I just could not walk out there and do the next two shows because I felt like this sort of performing monkey. It was weird – the decade didn't match.

Did you feel like you were in a tribute band?

A perfect example! It felt like we were a tribute band, just doing all these covers. I was scared that I didn't grow, that it was 1991 all over again, that we'd never moved on and nothing had happened in between. It just wasn't a good feeling. Not that I hated playing those songs – it was nice, but there's a lot of baggage that goes with those songs. We always said after that, that there was no way I could do this unless at some point we really feel like we can get into a room and see what happens.

What happened with Satellite Party? You seemed quite happy doing that?

You know, that was probably one of the hardest but most important projects I've ever worked on because it was probably one of the worst times of my life. It was a really bad experience for me. Like I said, I never do anything that I don't love to do and I'm a bad business man in that way. Whenever offers came in for Extreme, we had offers over ten years to go out and tour over the summer and make a lot of money and I always said no and everybody hated me for it, including my own family probably (laughs). Financially, it's always good to make money I guess, but I'm terrible doing those things for money. So the Satellite Party project was something that, when I was approached to do it and work with Perry Farrell, it seemed like a great idea – it was like, wow! Two guys from different worlds almost and we got together and initially it was just for the music and there was no deal and you're in the studio with people like Flea, John Frusciante and Fergie and you'd think this is cool and this is fun. Then, before you know it, you get a record deal which is okay, with Sony/BMG and all that, and next thing you know Perry unfortunately just changed his mind. Right before the record came out he decided that this was going to be about him and his wife. Without even telling us, we look on itunes and the cover that we did with the whole band is now just a picture of him and his wife on the cover! The one thing I don't want to do is dish up too much dirt because you can read between the lines as to what it became, but I don't have a problem with that. He kind of went on a mission to make his wife the star as opposed to this initial beautiful idea that we had to start with. I did Europe, I did as much as I could like that. I was very unhappy, very miserable but I hung in there as much as possible. All of a sudden there was this woman on stage with us who'd never sang before in her life ...

And of course you, having a talented wife, can see the flaw in that?

Well yeah, all of us, the rest of the musicians were upset, but I was the only one that was saying anything to Perry and we were getting into fights and to be honest with you, the direction of what she was wearing and what was going on – we'd be playing these amazing festivals and I'd be playing this guitar solo and somebody that was wearing almost – not to be rude, but stripper clothes, would walk by me and start doing a dance and I'd be looking at people in the crowd and they were pulling out dollar bills and I just said I can't do this any more.

No, that's not good!

So, I decided that I didn't want to be a part of this bad ‘Sonny & Cher' thing that's going on. I felt like I was a musician who was playing for something that was nothing to do with what Satellite Party, the initial idea. You know what? When I say it's been the most important thing – because sometimes you need to go through an experience like that to realise that maybe Extreme wasn't so bad! (laughs)

Yeah, to see that the grass isn't greener after all?

Maybe the fact that we broke up because, I don't know, maybe someone walked into the dressing room and opened a curtain where I was and that wasn't a good enough reason.

That's called ‘becoming a grown-up' (laughs)

Yeah, exactly. We're maturing a bit and at the time … I mean nobody teaches you how to deal with success, how to deal with that much work and that much touring. I think our manager and our accountants made us work so much. We were loving it, but it was eleven years straight on the road and I think it burned us out. I chalk up Satellite Party as a huge, important experience of what I don't want to be around, what I don't want to do, the people I don't want to be around, including everybody that was involved in that project from a managerial point of view and a business sense where they were the most awful people I was ever around. They were very pretentious and very ‘LA'. All I can say is, it was my first ‘LA' experience where everybody tells you everything you want to hear but they don't really follow through and they're almost using you in a way and that was a big learning experience for me and I thought I was a bit smarter than that and I was very vulnerable in that way that I thought I was working with a great artist and it turned out to be a very bad situation. The good news is, when you're a kid and you're doing what you did with Extreme, it's kind of like being at home. You get spoiled at home and you want to travel and see the world. You want to leave and everybody goes "You're leaving? What are you doing?" and then you go and see the world and you have some good experiences and you have some bad experiences.

... and you come back and they still love you?

Yeah, they still love you and you start to think that maybe the most special thing I have was at home the whole time! Maybe that's what was mine, maybe that's what I had control of. Yes, it's hard sometimes, but that's what Extreme was, it was like being home.

You mentioned that Paul is still with you in a managerial capacity. That means you have a new drummer now?

Yes, Kevin Figueiredo – K-Fig! (laughs). It's interesting, one of the things I should have mentioned when we were talking about the importance of this new record and why it sounds the way it does and why it has the passion it might have. The important thing is, the love is there and it's real and a lot of that had to do with Kevin. Getting into a room with Kevin, he just gave us that new spark you need sometimes. It might actually have been more scary for us to go in with the original lineup, I don't know. Maybe that would've been too nostalgic, but all I do know is that Kevin added that spark that really just kicked us in the ass and it's great.

Do you think that it's his influence that's added to the Led Zeppelin vibe that seems to run through the album?

You can definitely tell from his ‘ingredient' that there's definitely a Zeppelin influence there, a definite Bonham base there.

Absolutely! Although you can certainly tell that it's Extreme too – it has all the trademarks of an Extreme album, there's just something else in there.

Yeah, and I think also, Extreme always had a Zeppelin influence and a Queen influence and a Beatles influence and all those other bands that we grew up with. We've always worn them on our sleeves and woven them into the music. I mean we don't sit there and calculate it, but when we get into a room and jam, that's what happens. You can't write a riff without owing Jimmy Paige 50c! It's impossible! The first thing I said to Jimmy Paige when I met him in the ‘90's was "thanks for using up every riff in the universe and leaving the rest of us the scraps!"

Well, I did an interview recently with Geoff Tate and he came out with one of my favourite quotes, which was "none of us is unique, but we are all uniquely derivative", I thought that summed it up exactly – music is made by taking the influences which have shaped each musician and it comes out to sound a little like this, a little like that. It's inevitable.

Yeah, and hopefully it culminates to sound like Extreme, but with a rock ‘n' roll vibe. Okay, maybe the funkiness is what separates them from everyone else, but we always had that, but in this case yes, Kevin added that element, but I think the way we recorded the record – which was no production – sometimes you're a victim of your decade. What you hear on this record is probably what Extreme sound like live, but back in 1989-90 when producers were coming in there were a lot of samples coming in on the drums and they wanted to make everything sound huge and more guitars, layers of guitars! You tend to lose your fingerprint. I think in this case we didn't want it to sound like a vintage record, didn't want it to sound like a ‘70's record – we just didn't want it to sound like anything! We said let's just put up the mics. That's probably why it might sound like a 70's record. That's probably what all the others lack. When Yes went in and did a record in the 70's they didn't sound like Zeppelin, they just sounded like Yes! They just put up mics and they recorded. Same thing with the Beatles and the early Van Halen records. We just wanted to go into a nice studio and capture us playing live as much as possible. So, whatever cracks, scrapes or cuts you hear in there – a Jimmy Paige scrape or an Al DiMeola scrape that seems to be coming out, it's not watered down by production.

The last tour date on your site at the moment is in Italy. Any plans after that?

I was finishing up mixing the record – they're all waiting on me and it nearly killed me because the record was so simple in the realms of production, it was almost harder to wrap my head around that! What we did was, we just did a bunch of takes to try and make it sound live, we took the best of those, did just a little bit of post-production and that was it. We did a lot of good stuff and it was really hard to sift through to see which takes were the best. Because they were waiting for me to finish, we didn't know when the record was going to come out so we started to book Europe, but we had to freeze! We had this one date in Milan that we couldn't not do, so we're going out there in September to do this one off show, but as far as the UK and Europe in general, I've seen the dates already and they're 80-90% confirmed for the UK in November and Europe just before that.

Well, before you go, I have to tell you, Phil and I came to see you in 1990, the night we got engaged!

The night you got engaged? Wow! And are you still married?

Yes, we are!

Well, hopefully we helped out with that! (laughs)

I don't think you did actually – I seem to remember Phil ended up in a fight with somebody at the show!

That's what we do though – we get the passion out there in one way or another! A little bit of alcohol to add to it, but still! (laughs)

Well, a new album, a world tour – Extreme 2008 look great, they sound great and they're ready to come back and blow us all away. I, for one, couldn't ask for more.