Interview: Eric Martin of Mr. Big

Photo by Stephen van Baalen

In 1991, Californian hard rock band Mr. Big released their second album, Lean Into It, which earned them international stardom when the single “To Be with You” reached the top spot on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, and the song was also a hit in more than a dozen other countries. The band has retained a devoted following ever since – but now the members have decided to wind things down, starting with a farewell tour throughout the past year. As parting gifts to fans, Mr. Big released a final studio album, Ten, in July, and a live album, The BIG Finish Live, earlier this month (the latter was recorded at the legendary Budokan arena in Tokyo). Calling from his Northern California home recently, vocalist Eric Martin tells The Big Takeover what it’s been like for him to close this chapter of his career.

How does it feel to be in “finale time” with Mr. Big?

ERIC MARTIN: I told my manager, “I don’t like this ‘finale’ thing.” I came up with “big finish” [instead]. First of all, I don’t like any of it, anyway. Even though I said, “Yeah, let’s end it, let’s call it ‘The Big Finish,’ let’s be done with it,’ I don’t want to be done with it. I’m bummed, because we sounded great on the road [during this past year]. We were tight. We were getting along. We toured longer than we had since 1989. I love being onstage with Mr. Big, and I love playing the music. I’ll still play Mr. Big’s music, but not like this. I won’t be playing Mr. Big music with [bassist] Billy Sheehan and [guitarist] Paul Gilbert anymore, and that’s difficult for me right now.

At least you got to put out one final studio album in July…

ERIC MARTIN: I mean, people liked it, [but] they’d say, “It’s not hard rock heavy like the other albums.” And so here’s my explanation. I wrote the record with Paul, and I said a couple times, “Hey man, I don’t hear anything heavy.” I just felt it that we weren’t copycatting any of the older records. If you want to hear the harder rock and roll stuff, then listen to those older albums. But this one is going to be written from scratch, and it’s going to be right from the heart and the head, and this is the way it’s going to be. Paul was totally into different tones of his guitar, more twangy ’60s/’70s kind of stuff, playing a lot of slide guitar, coming up with this great material. It wasn’t as hard and heavy as the other records, but it became apparent to me that that’s not the direction we were going in. We’re not borrowing from the past.

How did you decide to do one last studio album with this band?

ERIC MARTIN: When we all made the decision to end it, we concentrated on just the [farewell] tour. And then I was like, “We’ve got to make another album.” Nobody else wanted to. Yours truly did. I’ve always been the cheerleader of the band, trying to keep everything together. But anyway, we did that album Defying Gravity [2017], and I didn’t like the record. I didn’t like the process of making it. I didn’t like the music because it was kind of force fed on me a little bit. So I didn’t want Defying Gravity to be to the last album. I definitely needed a new album.

And you also have this new live album, too…

ERIC MARTIN: I didn’t know we were going to make a live album. I knew a couple weeks ahead of time that we were going to be filming this thing for a DVD. We were tight. It sounded pretty damn good from my perspective. But [it’s] still the songs from the past, a lot of them, so I wanted to have something new to say to the fans. That’s why I was happy to have that Ten album.

How did you know you should be a professional singer in the first place?

ERIC MARTIN: I don’t know if I wanted to be, or if I was trying to make my father happy. Because I wasn’t a great drummer. My dad was a popular drummer in Cincinnati, Ohio. He played with a bunch of national acts that were coming to town, and he was a great drummer. He got married to my mother, and I was the first born. He joined the army – he was a lifer in the army; when he retired he was a colonel. But he wanted to keep that drumming and the musician stuff alive. I mean, we had music in our house all the time. We’d listen to all these musicals like South Pacific and Hair. My mother and I and my brother and sisters would sing around the house. That’s how I became a singer. I remember my mother saying, “You have a very good voice.” I wasn’t a very good drummer, but my dad really was into me playing drums, and I played a few gigs when I was younger. I had a band; we were called the Red Sun, or something like that. The singer didn’t show up to rehearsal. And we were trying to learn this song “Get Ready” by The Temptations, but Rare Earth, this band from the ’70s, covered it and had a hit with it. And we just started to play this song, and I sang it, and played drums at the same time – badly. And they were like, “Dude, you’re a way better singer than you are a drummer.” So I think that’s what it was.

What was the moment when you realized it was going to become your career?

ERIC MARTIN: So we lived in Germany and Italy – that’s where my dad was stationed – and [then] we moved to Sacramento. I started playing in a bunch of bands, and I answered an ad in a music newspaper that said, “Looking for a male singer for a band called Kid Courage in San Francisco.” This was 1978. So my girlfriend, who was breaking up with me anyway, drove me to San Francisco. I was in this band, and we played a bunch of gigs. We opened for AC/DC. It was two shows at the Old Waldorf. That’s when I kind of knew, “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

How did you know you’d hit on a good situation when you came to be in Mr. Big?

ERIC MARTIN: When I joined Mr. Big, it was just me and Billy. He said, “Hey, I want to start a band with you,” I’m like, “Cool, who [else] do you have?” And he goes, “No, it’s just us, that’s it.” And it was him and I writing a bunch of songs that were OK. And then we got Paul Gilbert and our drummer Pat Torpey. That was ’88. We wrote our first record in eight days. Swear to God. In eight days, we wrote all the songs that made it on the first album, and then we got a record deal on Atlantic Records. I was like, “Holy crap, this is Aretha Franklin’s label!” I just knew that I was in a really good rock and roll band. It was 1989 when we put out our [self-titled] first album, and then in 1991, our second Lean Into It, and “To Be with You” came shortly after that. We were popping champagne when it was like 100 on the charts. We were like, “We made it!” Then when it became number one…I mean, I remember that there was three weeks at number one. And it didn’t even sink in until it was over. I was in shock.

As you wrap things up with this band, what do you think about the legacy that you’ve created with it?

ERIC MARTIN: Well, I definitely didn’t waste my time! It was never a dull moment. It was great, great times. And then there was some bad shakeups, [but] it never came to blows. There was fighting, but nobody got punched. That was good. We created some great music, and I will miss those days of writing with Paul Gilbert. Him and I really had a connection. We had our Lennon and McCartney moments, and I will miss that big time. It’s been amazing.