Extreme’s first three albums were all about evolution.
The self-titled debut introduced the world to the searing licks of soon-to-be guitar hero Nuno Bettencourt. Singles “Kid Ego” and “Mutha (Don’t Wanna Go to School Today)” got buzz in the hard-rock world, and Bettencourt’s Mozart-inspired licks from “Play with Me” would later be featured in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Despite that, Extreme couldn’t distinguish themselves enough from other similar bands of the time to break through into the mainstream.
The follow-up, Extreme II: Pornograffitti saw the band cut loose in a new direction and deliver a scorching funk-rock masterpiece. The ridiculous fretwork on the album cemented Bettencourt’s position in the guitar community, but it still took a little while – and the requisite ballad “More Than Words” – for the general public to catch on.
The third album became pretty highly anticipated, at least among the crowd I was part of. What would they do next?
For III Sides to Every Story, Extreme dug into their influences and roots to produce a high-concept three-part album that may have been just a little too much of a leap for a lot of fans. It was a divisive record. Some fans consider it the band’s best work, as do members of Extreme. Others were left scratching their heads a little. At the time, I was fairly firmly in that second camp, and to be honest, I haven’t really revisited it since.
As the title indicates, the album had three “sides” – Yours, Mine and the Truth. The Yours side, which encompassed the first six tunes on the album, was not too unfamiliar for fans. There were certainly some shifts in those songs. Musically, they were a bit more restrained and perhaps more mature than the wild abandon of Pornograffitti. The band incorporated a few new elements, like some rap stylings from vocalist Gary Cherone and guest vocalist John Preziosa Jr. on “Cupid’s Dead.”
It wasn’t the first time Extreme had used rap (“When I’m President” from Pornograffitti), but the first time they’d done it in a more serious manner.
The biggest change on the first side, though, was in the lyrical content of the songs. It marked a radical shift from the sex and rock ‘n’ roll lyrics of Extreme’s first two albums, as they tackled serious political issues, notably war (“Rest in Peace,” “Warheads”) and racism (“Color Me Blind,” “Peacemaker Die”). It closes with a recording of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Weightier subject matter, and arguably a bit preachy in places, but still rocking.
In the end, those first six songs are different, but not too different. That’s when things start to get strange.
Opening up the Mine side, is the piano-and-orchestral piece “Seven Sundays.” Somewhere between Queen and the Beatles, it’s a hard left turn from the first six songs on the album. Cherone adds a great vocal on the tune, but it’s a bit jarring. That’s followed by something a little more in the Extreme wheelhouse with “Tragic Comic,” a jangly Beatles-influenced acoustic number driven by a big bass line from Pat Badger.
As I revisit Side 2 for the first time in 25 or so years, I realize that it’s not as far afield as the 20-year-old me thought. Beyond “Seven Sundays,” it’s still a rock record, though a bit more symphonic and introspective than we had come to expect from Extreme. There’s a lot of piano and orchestration in place of loud guitars and a very heavy influence from Queen ballads, which I honestly appreciate more now than then. This side was also originally six songs, though the final tune, “Don’t Leave Me Alone,” was cut from the compact-disc version due to time constraints and is now something of a rarity.
Then we come to the third side, a concept titled “Everything Under the Sun” in three parts. It cranks up the symphonic sounds from the second side, and brings in some alternative and progressive-rock influences that we’d not heard from Extreme before. There’s still a nice grinding riff from Nuno Bettencourt on “Am I Ever Gonna Change,” but for fans of a band that told us to “Get the Funk Out” and gave us the tale of Suzi who wanted her all-day sucker a couple of years earlier, it’s still a drastic shift. Maybe they should have eased us into it a little more, or maybe that’s what the three sides were intended to do.
From the perspective of a couple of extra decades of exploring music, I can now appreciate what Extreme did on III Sides to Every Story. In particular, I hear the Queen and Beatles influences now that I didn’t as a kid who just heard one of my favorite bands going soft. I’m willing to admit that my assessment of “this sucks” at the time was completely wrong and from an artistic standpoint, this is actually a very solid album that sees Extreme evolving from loud songs about sex to a much more thoughtful and mature form of musical expression.
But …
I really like the loud songs about sex. I appreciate this album more from the perspective of an adult fan – and I agree that, artistically, III Sides to Every Story is probably very underrated. For my personal listening, however, I’m still mostly stuck on Side 1.
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