Justin Hawkins has recently shared his wish to mend fences with Nuno Bettencourt after a video he made about the spat between the Extreme guitarist and Richard Fortus over Rihanna performances.
Hawkins, who is taking a break in March to plan for his YouTube show’s new tour, hinted at the possibility of including Bettencourt in the project, suggesting an effort to fix their strained relationship:
“Perhaps I’ll make amends to [Laughs] Nuno, who weirdly seemed pissed off with me because I was sort of like excited about the ‘spat’ between him and Richard Fortus.”
The disagreement originally came to light last year when Bettencourt made a comment about not seeing Fortus’s bandmate, Slash, playing a clean intro to Rihanna’s ‘Rude Boy,’ which sparked a bit of a public dispute.
The Guitarist Didn’t Like The Vocalist’s Reaction
The Darkness singer’s decision to discuss this incident on YouTube did not sit well with Bettencourt, leading to a rift between the two. Hawkins explained:
“I thought it was exciting at the time because, you know, two rock people arguing in the public domain gets people talking about rock, and I thought that’s really good for rock, isn’t it? But, yeah, I don’t think Nuno appreciated me stoking the flames of that.”
In an attempt to smooth things over, Bettencourt publicly apologized to Fortus in a video on social media but also made a pointed remark about Justin Hawkins’s YouTube review. The singer reflected on this by saying:
“And he called me Hawkins. He just referred to me as Hawkins… I mean, it’s good to be abbreviated in that way but there are other Hawkinses around. But I am the Hawkins, apparently, which is really cool.”
Is The Tension Easing Off?
The initial dispute between Nuno Bettencourt and Richard Fortus eventually cooled down after Bettencourt invited Fortus to grab a beer, which was accepted. In addition to that, he showed no signs of ill will towards Hawkins during an interview with CT Examiner in January 2024, hinting at a possible easing of tensions.
Talking about the Darkness frontman’s positive reviews of his solo in Extreme’s ‘Rise,’ the guitarist said:
“Of course, it’s exciting when your peers or your heroes are hitting you up and texting you or people like Rick Beato who everyone admires and respects. Even Justin Hawkins who has a great podcast that he does on YouTube, he’s very intelligent, he’s smart, he’s funny and I’ve always admired him as well.”
Check out Justin Hawkins’ recent video below.
