Rest In Peace

The first single from Extreme's third album is the surprisingly political "Rest in Peace." It proclaims a sentiment rarely heard outside the country genre: war is sometimes necessary. The song was written around the time of the first Gulf War when the United States invaded Iraq in 1991 as part of Operation Desert Storm. Gary Cherone and Nuno Bettencourt of Extreme got the idea for the song after seeing footage of protesters holding signs that said, "Make Love, Not War." In our interview with Bettencourt, he said: "We thought that war is not that simple. Nobody wants war until somebody is invading their country."

Bettencourt's guitar riff on this track was inspired by Jimi Hendrix, one of his favorite guitarists. Nuno says he wasn't very subtle in his Hendrix homage.

Extreme scored their biggest hits with "More Than Words" and "Hole Hearted" from their previous album, Pornograffitti. "Rest in Peace" sounded nothing nothing like those acoustic numbers, and made little impact on the American charts. Their next single, "Stop the World," only made #96, and after one more album, the band split up. The returned in 2008 with Saudades de Rock. Both Bettencourt and Cherone have had rather interesting gigs outside of the band: Cherone was lead singer in Van Halen from 1996-1999, and Bettencourt joined Rihanna's live band in 2009.