Extreme guitarist, Nuno Bettencourt, shared a video on his official Instagram page where he’s apologizing to Richard Fortus, after his comment on Guns N’ Roses’ Slash, who said that Slash wouldn’t be able to handle the musical diversity of a Rihanna concert.
After his comment on Slash, his Guns N’ Roses bandmate, Richard Fortus, who also performed with Rihanna, commented back to Bettencourt’s comment.
In the video (watch full video below), Bettencourt said:
“It’s Nuno here. Just a quick, quick message. Listen, this little what people are saying there was a spat between Richard Fortus and I and comments that I made and the post that he made and the s*it that I said about playing Rihanna, it’s ridiculous. I’m not that guy. I don’t want to be that guy. I’m not interested in this s*it. It actually makes me sick. Last straw, I just got home and I see f**kin (Justin) Hawkins is f**kin doing a whole post on it, an episode (on his YouTube channel), and deciphering who said what. This is ridiculous. Bottom line is this is on me. I need to keep my f**king mouth shut.
“I got asked a question about Rihanna, and my answer was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. I’ll take full responsibility for it about playing it and how hard it was and how difficult it is for people to play different feels. I tried to make a point, and it kind of backfired on me.
“I do a lot of press, and every once in a while you say stupid sh*t. You get asked a stupid question. So now I’m gonna stick to Extreme, stick to what I know, stick to what I do on guitar and what I do for Extreme. That way nobody can f*ck with me and be offended and (make) comments. Don’t ask me about anybody else. Don’t ask me about f**king Rihanna. Don’t ask me about Slash or Guns or Richard Fortus, who I owe an apology to.
“Richard, sorry, brother. This is ridiculous. You had a complete right to defend your bro. And even if it was in the lightest way or whatever it was, you are correct. I don’t like hurting people. I don’t like talking bad about anybody. And this is all coming from me, from a ridiculous Planet Rock interview, which is when somebody asked me about Rihanna, like I said, I need to shut the f*ck up, you know, talking about how difficult it was. I have my own reasons of why I said what I said in the sense of what it meant to me with playing all the different feels, but obviously it came across very arrogant, it came across very offensive. People love this s*it and they’re feeding off of it and all it does is create bad vibes for everybody in our community, in the guitarist community, when at the end of the day, really, I have much respect for everybody.
”Everybody’s got a lane and everybody’s got a place to do what they do. Whether I had heard Richard play before, which I hadn’t, it doesn’t give me the right to make that comment that I hadn’t heard a note he played in my lifetime, even though it was true. But it was [me] being pissed off and I think it was just me pissed off in general that I even started this bullsh*t. So, apologies again to Richard. He’s obviously a great guitar player. He’s playing with Guns. He’s gotta be amazing. And, anybody else out there that loves this kind of juicy s*it, go f*ck yourselves and mind your own f**king business and I’ll mind my own f**king business and keep that s*it to myself, whatever it is that I feel about how difficult anything is. But, like I said, man, anybody who knows me in the guitar community, all I do is have much respect for everybody that I play with and I stepped out of my lane on this one, for real. And this isn’t no ridiculous apology in the sense that I’m backtracking for anything. I actually went back and read what I actually answered, and it was pretty f**king stupid, and I made it way too self-important for that gig. It was really dumb of me to even mention that stuff or especially Slash. I mean, I don’t even know why even Slash came out of my mouth during that other than I was just using it as an example of us rock guitar players playing some different feels.” […]
