Musical entertainment comes from an admittedly excellent covers band, pumping out soul and R&B to the delight of the swaying masses, but two hours earlier, the small stage was occupied by a slight figure almost dwarfed by the Washburn acoustic he was holding. Nuno Bettencourt proceeded to play two songs to a less-than hysterical response, before angrily storming off, mumbling to the crowd: "I don’t want to interrupt your food."

Doh! Not the best reintroduction for the former Extreme mainman to the wonders of playing in Blighty, and it was with some trepidation that I hooked up with him the following day for a chat.

" Oh God. I really shouldn’t have done it," Nuno sounds embarrassed before explaining himself.

"I’ve always got to be the asshole who never does those things, but they told me about this big boat party and I figured, well why not? And it turned out to be precisely why I don’t do ‘em; everyone’s turned up for a big meal and who wants to hear a guitar? I stopped playing weddings years ago, y’know."

A former member of the Boston band Extreme, Nuno enjoyed a couple of years of mega-stardom thanks largely to 1990’s ‘Pornograffitti’. He quickly became renowned as a guitarist/songwriter/producer of considerable merit, not to mention for having the coolest hair in the rock business.

These days, the hair has gone ("every interview he’s done recently has been about that," warned Nuno’s PA earlier) and he’s kicking back, working on several projects and seeing where he’ll be going next.

As well as helping Washburn staff celebrate their anniversary, Nuno was in town to play live at the Mad About Music Show, and I asked what kind of material he’d be playing.

"We’ve been working on seven or eight new tracks, so that’s what we’re gonna start with. I don’t think anyone will recognise them; it’ll be a bit of a live rehearsal really.

"We shouldn’t even be here now; I’m supposed to be recording and putting this band together," he adds, rather resignedly.

Extreme’s career spun out over four albums, and the two that followed ‘Porno…’, ‘III Side To Every Story’ and ‘Waiting For The Punchline’ were more ambitious and yet sold badly, and the end was insight almost before it had begun.

"We had a different bass player when we first started up, but it was pretty much me and Gary (Cherone, vocals) from the start and you can probably base the success of it on More Than Words if you like.

"Regardless of what the rest of the album was like, a hit’s a hit and how albums get out there."

"It’s more like, thank God it was there really, because the other option was not having any success at all," he says matter of factly.

"It turned a lot of people on to the rest of the record, it got us to play for more people and so on. Besides all that, it was a song that I wrote and I think it was a good one."

The first single from ‘Porno…’ turned out to be the funk-meets-metal masterpiece Decadence Dance, but the story behind the marketing of the famed acoustic ballad is an interesting one.

"We tried More Than Words before that and I don’t think anyone thought that single was gonna do anything. It was more or less my idea to put that out because I always loved that song and I felt that it would actually do something."

At this point, he’s unable to keep a hint of scorn out of his voice…

"No one wanted to ‘cos they didn’t think it would do anything at all, so they tested it in Denver, Colorado and I think it did well," he ends with a proud smile.

Nuno has a reputation for talking in monosyllables and appearing unhappy, but he’s just a person not afraid to speak his mind. The guitarist is perfectly aware of where he is and why he’s there; I mention that I’d first seen Extreme at Birmingham’s NEC around 1991 and his eyes light up at the memory.

"Birmingham was one of the first times that we ever headlined an arena. I just didn’t buy it; I still felt as though we were simply opening for somebody. I just couldn’t fathom the idea that all those people were here to see us, really," he says.

This leads him onto stardom and if you have to reach that status, you may find this hard to believe.

"As far as nerves go, it’s harder to play to 20 people, it always is. It’s more difficult being at rehearsal having three people show up than it is when a huge crowd does. When you’re playing to a huge audience, you lose the definition of everybody and it just becomes ‘a lot of people’.

"Even when we were playing some of those Wembley shows it was the same; you definitely get more into what you’re doing yourself with the bigger crowds because it’s very hard to lock in to any sort of individual. If you play a club, they’re right in front of you; you’re basically under a magnifying glass."

"I left the band," Nuno explains. "I figured that they’d probably continue, but during that, Van Halen were looking for a singer and their manager was also managing us."

"The only problem I ha with leaving was worrying about what Gary was gonna do, cos we were always real close. It was the one thing I felt really bad about, but luckily he got that gig and that’s cool."

"When a band starts out, it’s one thing, and then when you start making money it’s a completely different matter", he continues. "People actually believe they are important just because they made all the money. I was really glad to know that I was still as miserable as I was before I made any money," he ends.

It’s good to hear that some rock stars are not just in the business simply for the cash.

There’s a new Nuno release arriving soon; will it be in the same vein as his 1997 debut solo album ‘Schizophonic’?

"The whole ‘Schizophonic’ thing was obviously a solo record and that’s something I’m not a big fan of. A lot of the songs were written because I hadn’t put a band together and were a bit one-dimensional. Now it’s going to be more homing in on what I enjoy playing most; the funkier stuff."

Following our recent Interviews with Sammy Hagar and Eddie Van Halen, I couldn’t resist asking Nuno what he thought of ‘3’, the first VH album with his old partner Gary.

"Well, I think they needed a bit more time together; to me it’s kind of a bad managerial move. One of the things they should have done is let them play together for a year, so they could get to know each other a little bit, and see how things grow. Instead it was a case of rushing them into the studio, and throwing some songs together.

"I think the album’s good, but I think it would have been a lot better if they waited a little bit. It’s not as consistent as I’m sure Gary and everybody else would have wanted."

Nuno is an established Washburn user, and the new P4 is his squeeze of the moment.

"Yeah, I had a hand in designing it! I faxed them drawings and ideas and they put me in. They’re pretty much stock, the ones I play, and I really like them too; they’re great guitars. They’re very Les Pauly of course but at the same time very different in the way they play and feel.

"I never really got into the custom shop thing, y’know? They build you a nice one and then sell crap to the rest of the public; that’s one of the things I never wanted to do."

In the good old days, Nuno used a rack full of ADA, Roland and Furman gear, but now it’s back to a simple head-meets-cab.