BLAST MAGAZINE: Before we start, I would like to offer my condolences to you and the rest of Mr. big on the passing of Pat.
BILLY SHEEHAN: Thank you very much.

BLAST MAGAZINE: When did you figure out you a unique bass technique?
BILLY SHEEHAN: It was a gradual process that evolved though the years. I started about twelve or thirteen.  I got that from Billy Gibbons in 1974. Me and my friends had never seen that before. I’ve tried other things bass players may not have tried. I was also influenced by The Beatles.

BLAST MAGAZINE: Who and how was Talas formed?
BILLY SHEEHAN: It was formed by me and a guy from Buffalo in 1972. There were actually eight different versions, different guys that started out as a bar band. Talas would do as many as twenty gigs in a month and I think it groomed me into a performer. Talas adapted to play many different genres.

BLAST MAGAZINE: Talas opening for Van Halen in 1980 had to be a huge exposure for Talas.
BILLY SHEEHAN: Quite a bit. Van Halen was huge, we were so happy to get the opportunity to open up for them. We would play to eight to ten thousand people each night, some sold out shows. We had no record album, so no one could buy a record of ours, so it was futile but it was a great experience and we loved it.

BLAST MAGAZINE: How did the David Lee Roth gig come about?
BILLY SHEEHAN: Dave saw me on that tour and when he left Van Halen to start a band, he called me first and we put a band together after that.

BLAST MAGAZINE: Was David Lee Roth had to work with?
BILLY SHEEHAN: I had a great time, when management is involved it can make things more difficult for everybody. I loved working with Dave and have a great deal of respect for him. I love all the guys in Van Halen. Dave is my hero; he is a genius.

BLAST MAGAZINE: Why do you feel Talas never took off?
BILLY SHEEHAN: Well there are a lot of bands that happens to. For a lot of bands, it just doesn’t happen. There are a million reasons why. Break ups within the band. People would come out and say they loved us and want to sign us and then we would never hear from them again, John Kalodner a famous producer for the band Aerosmith told us we were the best live band in America jumping up and down on the side of the stage told us that he was going to sign us for sure, but then we never heard from him again.  We put on a private showcase for Clive Davis and he expressed interest in signing the band but nothing happened.

BLAST MAGAZINE: When you do solos, do you improvise or do you know exactly how you will be playing it?
BILLY SHEEHAN: I have no idea. For me from night to night things sound a little bit different. It depends on the room; they can be different so I’m not sure how my hands are going to respond on the bass. Sometimes it’s really hard to play this one thing but this other thing is easy. You just don’t know till you get out there and start it and you realize that this isn’t working  so you go to plan B or C, D, E, F, G or all the way to Z. Usually there are do overs but sometimes they are in different order, but mostly its improvised.

BLAST MAGAZINE: How was Mr. Big formed?
BILLY SHEEHAN:  When I left David Lee Roth, I had recently come off of two platinum records and a huge tour and I wanted to put a band together that was more like how I had things in Talas. A band of guys where everyone was the same and equals. All I had to do was to track down the players. I already knew Paul, and I already knew Pat and I found the singer Eric and put it together any with amazing luck we happened upon an amazing manager who was really responsible for our success in many ways.

BLAST MAGAZINE: The freshman release is one of my all-time favorite releases. In your opinion why do you think it did not fare well state side?
BILLY SHEEHAN: Well, thank you very much. We really wanted our band to be a real band, so many bands would make a record and if it didn’t go platinum then they would break up and start all over again. we wanted to make sure what we could sing and play live as good as in a studio. No, our first record I loved and was heartbroken when it didn’t do as well as it should have done, but it came out in a very crowded field. I dare say a lot of bands followed the que by leaving a big band and getting three or four other guys and starting a band like Mr. Big did. There are a bunch of guys that did exactly that so the studios were kind of crowded, a lot of bands came out at that time, but most of them faded away and we came out with a second record which by luck was a very strong record so it made the band to do much better and of course “To Be with You” was on that record and we had a number one single with that and that put us in another category again. We kind of had to hold on to things to try to get up the next record and we did and we were fortunate enough to have some good tours and when the second record came out it was defiantly a step up.

BLAST MAGAZINE: ‘Lean into it’ was a more commercial release. As songwriters was this something as a band you set out to do?
BILLY SHEEHAN: We came up with a collection of songs, they sounded good to us, we liked them.

BLAST MAGAZINE: And the hit on that album almost didn’t make it.
BILLY SHEEHAN: Yeah, we kind of put it on there as an afterthought. It was like the last song on the record. As the credits are rolling, people are getting up out of their seats and headed to the parking lots, we didn’t really think of it as a hit. But it was a sweet, charming song though, about a guy and a girl, so we put it on, if we had known what a hit it was, we would have released it first. It was a huge hit; in fourteen countries it was number one including the U.S.A so it was pretty awesome.

BLAST MAGAZINE: After the third release what prompted Gilbert to leave the band?
BILLY SHEEHAN:  Well we had been out pounding it pretty hard and the record company put pressure on you to do a song like ‘To Be with You.’ Well, we didn’t have a song like that and so when we first presented the record, they wanted more, so we went back to the studio for something else and I forgot how it came up but we starting fooling around with Cat Stevens ‘Wild World’ and just liked the song and changed the key for Eric’s voice so it was a little bit better key for him and tightened it up, so they accepted that and put the record out, but they were no cooperative at all, and then we went out and toured and toured and toured for just forever. Then the next record “Hey Man” we just toured incessantly and after a while we were just burnt and deep friend and we needed to just take a break, so Paul felt like he didn’t want to continue with the band anymore so he left.

BLAST MAGAZINE: The next two releases did not fare well, what would you say contributed this to?
BILLY SHEEHAN: ‘Hey Man’ was released around the same time  Nirvana hit and the whole grunge thing was happening and the record was straight up rock, but fortunately for us we had played all over the world, so outside the U.S.A. the grunge thing didn’t really happen. We went down to Brazil and it was jammed packed, we went to Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and all over Europe and we did great but still in America it went soft but we were still doing well. We decided to replace Paul with Ritchie Kotzen and he was great, different and fantastic talent.

BLAST MAGAZINE: what prompted the Mr. big Split in 2002?
BILLY SHEEHAN: America was falling apart for straight up rock bands so we did two albums with Ritchie but our hearts just weren’t in it anymore so we stopped, then we got back together with the original line up in 2009.

BLAST MAGAZINE: In 2000 you released the first of four solo CD’s. What prompted you to decide to do the vocals yourself, as opposed to hiring a vocalist? What made you decide to release some solo material?
BILLY SHEEHAN: well, I got a lower voice, my range is down low so my singing so when I sing along with a regular guitar it always kind of pushes my voice into a low range so somebody got me a baritone guitar so it matched my voiced perfectly so when I got it home I started playing and writing and singing along and I thought I could probably sing a record so on that first record its all baritone guitar, its all tuned down lower than a regular guitar, it has a longer neck, almost like a bass guitar. I got together with Steve Vai came over and made  a solo, Terry Bozzio came over and did two tracks with me and I had never thought about doing a solo record before and it was kind of interesting to have everything to be my decision. It was nice to hear people enjoyed it.

BLAST MAGAZINE: Tell me a little bit about the Sons of Apollo?
BILLY SHEEHAN: Mike and I played in a bunch of different things together. He and Dereck wanted to do a project, we did it a little bit prior to sons of Apollo with Tony McAlpine. They said they wanted to continue but they wanted to get a singer. Tony is a spectacular musician but I think they wanted a guy who was more in the rock world and tony is a little more fusion. So they thought about getting Ron Bumblefoot from Guns and Roses, I think he was in that band for about eight years he was in that band, and of course Jeff Scott Soto. So we got together and it seemed to work out well. I knew Jeff, because we did Talas, Yngwie tour in 1985. I knew Jeff from then because he use to sing with Yngwie and I was in L.A. quite a bit and I knew Ron a little bit and when we jammed he always knew all the Talas songs. As a matter of fact, when Talas played last March, Ron joined us on all our shows, he played like four or five Talas songs with us. Then Derek and I had worked on a solo project and again with mike and we put some songs together in a studio and really played, this stuff was for real as opposed to piecing it together. The tour was tough because it’s hard starting a band, but we played great.

BLAST MAGAZINE: Do you have any plans to do a second album?
BILLY SHEEHAN: We hate to tell people that we are making a record because nobody realizes that it’s months and months till it’s done. It won’t be available until the beginning of next year.

BLAST MAGAZINE: Over all the years, I’m not going to ask you to pick your favorite, which guitarist have you had to most fun with playing live with or in the studio?
BILLY SHEEHAN: Your right, it’s tough to pick because each thing has its own time frame. When I was with Dave and he and I were in the studio, I had just came from my little band in Buffalo NY and then suddenly we had paparazzi waiting outside the studio, you know its just a huge jump in excitement and in life in general, it was pretty amazing, there was no denying that it was incredible. With Mr. Big and having a number one single, man, it changes your life like nothing else, you can’t imagine your life when you have a hit record, it feels really good.

BLAST MAGAZINE: Bill, I have finished my questions, I sure do appreciate it, this one that’s been knocked off my bucket list of people I want to interview. I have always been a huge fan. Every time I listen to anything of yours, I hear stuff I didn’t hear before and as I said previously I sure do hate it about Pat, it’s a tragedy and I just want to tell you that musically your one of my heroes.
BILLY SHEEHAN: Well I appreciate it Darrell, thanks a million bro.