Nuno Bettencourt

“The touring part is really mixed. You love to play and you can't wait to go, but you don't want to leave.”

“In the U.K., we always had a special relationship with the audiences because it wasn't 'More Than Words' that broke us: it was 'Get The Funk Out' that broke first. That was what we had always dreamed of.”

“We had a nightmare on our first album, and went through two producers. I decided, on the second album, to take the money that we were supposed to use for pre-production, and we went into a studio and cut the album with no producer. We finished the whole thing without telling the record company.”

“You believe that you're going to be forever young.”

“We can play all we want, but if nobody's there, if nobody feels anything with what we're playing, then what's the purpose?”

“Everybody used to be busy writing songs - great songs - that became hits. Now everybody's writing hits. Everybody's desperately writing a hit because they know they can't survive if they don't have a hit. Where in the past, we were writing a song like 'More Than Words' on a porch, not really believing it was gonna be a hit.”

“As for the first guitar I actually bought, I believe it was a Cherry Red Kramer! I think I bought it because Eddie Van Halen played Kramer, and I remember it had a Rockinger tremolo on it.”

“I always imagine later on these songs I could've played with a band, but it never worked out that way.”

“Who needs fan mail when you have the Internet?”

“I'm sad for younger bands that don't have a home that they know they can go to, like the twenty-five labels that used to be around that they know they can hang their hat and know that they'll give 'em three, four, five albums to develop.”

“We were never the cool band to like. They tried to put us into a hair-metal thing, but we weren't really Warrant or Poison. We were always outside the box. I think we had a little niche that nobody had - maybe the funkiness had something to do with it.”

“A band is like a marriage - you don't know why it works, but when it does, everything feels right.”

“While you're learning guitar, figure out the drums, too. Not only does it help you have great timing, but it helps you understand how a band works.”

“You've got to love someone enough to hate them.”

“Even if we had the No. 1 video on MTV, and we had money and everything else, I think we'd always have more to do. I don't ever want to wake up in the morning and say, 'What are we gonna do today?' I'm afraid of that. I don't ever want to wake up and feel like we've conquered.”

“You don't really write a hit song - you write a great song, and then, if the public decides it's a hit, they take over from there. The song becomes its own monster.”

“I think I'm a music fan before anything else.”

“It's just a bunch of songs. I'm not trying to cure any major disease.”

“Live are a really good band. I like Stone Temple Pilots, Radiohead I love. Even Oasis.”

“My current project is my band, Population 1. We are writing, rehearsing and playing in Los Angeles.”