EXTREME / ex-VAN HALEN frontman GARY CHERONE will support the man he replaced, SAMMY HAGAR, with his new outfit HURTSMILE this Saturday, June 4th in Tucson, AZ at at
Hurtsmile will also perform on June 3rd in Tempe, AZ at Club Red.
Following is an excerpt from BW&BK scribe Carl Begai's recent interview with Cherone:
Cherone’s high profile stint with Van
“Obviously there’s more to the record than the few demos from 2007, but the majority of people liked Hurtsmile and a lot of them said what you did, that Tribe Of Judah had a few too many bells and whistles going with their rock n’ roll.”
Tribe Of Judah’s sole album, Exit Elvis, proved to be much too cold and impersonal for fans that had quite literally grown up with Cherone playing the role of flamboyant rock star. It was as if the life had been sucked out of his music.
“Looking back on it, I agree,” says Cherone. “If you put Tribe Of Judah in context of me coming out of Van Halen, the last thing I wanted to do was put together a four piece rock band. I was open to working with some new people and trying to do what I do on a different template. But, you are what you are and it was more of an experiment. This is what I grew up on, and my favourite bands are three and four piece rock bands.”
Hurtsmile is quite literally a homegrown affair for Cherone, as it features his younger brother Mark as the band’s guitarist. He considers is a long overdue musical partnership.
“We all grew up in Boston in the clubs, and my brother is a few years younger than me so he started a little later than I did,” Cherone says of their roots. “Back in the day we were playing the same clubs, though, and the singer in Mark’s band was Nuno’s brother Paul. We were a very tight knit group. Mark and I have always been close. He’s a great guitar player and a great songwriter, and I knew that someday the schedules would permit us to work together. When we started Hurtsmile in 2007 I wasn’t bummed that Extreme was getting back together, but I was bummed for my brother because I’d been looking forward to doing some music with him.”
Comparisons to Extreme were guaranteed the moment Cherone put his voice to tape. Fans will find they’re able to take comparisons further with regards to his brother’s guitar work, which has a definite Bettencourt flavour. Cherone is quick to point out, however, that working with a different guitarist brought out different qualities in his own songwriting.
“When Mark was growing up there was no one in Boston that wasn’t influenced by Nuno. Mark was a little younger and Nuno was so prolific – he was on another planet back then (laughs) – and they were and are very close. Not that Nuno tutored Mark, but Mark learned a lot from being around him. For me, it wasn’t until Mark moved to L.A. and got away from Extreme that he kind of found himself. They both have the same heroes, but Mark reminds me more of an Angus Young whereas Nuno’s playing is more Van Halen influenced. That does bring out different melodies and attitudes from me. The first song we worked on was ‘Just War’ and he’d written the verse and the chorus, and I put my chorus melodies over his verse and the verse melodies on his chorus (laughs). He thought it was great and just wanted more of that”
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