Metal Shrine recently conducted an interview with MR. BIG frontman Eric Martin. In the interview Martin talks about the new album, being back together again, working with Producer Kevin Shirley, his audition for VAN HALEN, meeting deceased AC/DC lead singer Bon Scott, having Elvis Costello yelling "Piss off!" to him, his brief stint with TOTO, and more. Read excerpts from the interview below:

Metal Shrine: What´s it like being back together? What has changed since you broke up?

Eric Martin: “Nobody´s throwing chairs, no blood is being spilled, no mood swings, nobody´s on the rag, nobody´s pointing fingers, nobody´s putting their heart on their sleeves and the fans can all see it. None of that shit´s there anymore! There was a guy from Sweden I was just talking to about an hour ago and after I talked to him about the whole record, he goes, 'Well, have you talked about your problems that you had in the band or did you sweep it under the rug?' and I just said, 'Hey man, after 13 or 14 years, I´m not gonna rehash!' you know. When the band broke up a long time ago, I had like major problems. It was like a domino effect. The band breaks up, wife leaves me, parents pass away a couple of years later, I don´t have a career, I don´t have anything and yeah, I pointed fingers and I blamed everybody else and I didn´t blame myself. I went to a couple of… well, my first therapist, let´s call him a bartender, and then I went to a couple of others and then years go by. That´s what happened, man. After five years go by, you kind of lose the taste for hate, you know. Then ten years go by and you´re like 'What the fuck was all the fuss about?' Then here it is 12 or 13 years later and you finally get the courage up to call your bass player, who you all these years thought hated you and you call him up and he goes, 'Hey, man! I´ve been thinking about you!'

There´s no need to be therapy sessioned anymore. I think we all had lost a little respect for each other. It wasn't about how cool we jelled together as musicians and on stage. When the audience saw this amazing spark on stage, that´s how we felt too and we lost it. We lost it because of all the other bullshit. The management problems, song writing publishing problems, the 'I don´t like the way you grind your teeth on the fork when you eat because I´m with 24 fucking hours a day...' problems."

Metal Shrine: It sounds like a marriage! The same kind of problems!

Eric Martin: “Exactly! Here´s 13, 14 years later and you would think would you get a new girl, but there had to be some kind of spark at the beginning. I don´t wanna keep going on this marriage analogy, but you´re right. I could go on forever and pain this fucking amazing picture and write a whole song for you. I contacted Billy and it was a total olive branch in a way. I contacted him and said 'Hey, I´ve been missing you too and wondering what you´ve been up to.' Long story short, my son was interested in playing the bass and he was five and he´s gonna be six in a minute, tomorrow actually. He wanted to play the bass guitar and he saw this funky old bass that I had on the wall collecting dust and he goes 'I´d like to have a little bass for me daddy!' and I said 'We´ll see what we can do!' and I called up Billy and asked him if Yamaha made such a thing. He said 'No, we don´t!' and he goes 'On my travels I´ll look into it!' and that was it. It was an email and a phone call and it was more like 'I don´t want nothing from you Billy, I just wanna reach out and say I´m here and I´m not afraid to talk to you anymore. I just wanna be your friend! I don´t really care about the music!' Really, I didn´t. I just had this thing going in the back of my head, 'Fuck man, I had a lot of friends, except Billy Sheehan! I wanna try and get him back in my life!'

So for their last birthday, I have twins, and Dylan wanted to play the bass and it didn´t come for his birthday, he didn´t find anything. Then a couple of days before Christmas, this huge box comes and it´s a bass guitar. A little custom made thing. He didn´t do it through Yamaha, he did it himself. He got a bass, tore the guts out of it, made it all sound different, left handed and all that and then it came with an instructional video. So at Christmas time, my son´s plunking away on the bass and I´m hearing Billy Sheehan´s voice describe the fundamentals on how you play bass guitar. My wife and I were opening our gifts and I hear Billy Sheehan in the room, like he´s in the fucking room! Anyway, I emailed him and told him how funny that was and we got to talk and talked once a week or something and he said, and this is totally ironic too because I had seen Pat Torpey last December before that, two years ago, and he was playing drums behind Richie Kotzen and I was on tour as well in Italy and we had found ourselves playing the same festival and we got to talk. I said 'It would be great to get the band back together!'

Long story short, Billy says 'I´m gonna go see Paul at the House of Blues, so maybe I´ll talk to him a little bit and pick his brain.' So he goes to see Paul Gilbert and opening the show is Richie Kotzen (laughs) with Pat Torpey. It´s like one gigantic soap opera! There were like a 1000 to 1100 people at the House Of Blues and Paul´s doing really good and at the end Paul goes 'I´d like to invite a few friends up!' and there´s Billy, Pat and then Richie came up too and they play ‘30 Days In The Hole’, which is a song that we covered at one time. The crowd… and it didn´t say it in the newspapers the next day, but this is how it felt in the headlines 'Crowd goes wild! Mr. Big back! Where´s Eric?' you know. Paul, when he was playing up on stage with everybody, he kind of looked over and he imagined me singing instead of Richie and the next day he kind of called us all and said 'Let´s get back together!' We had a conference call and then we all got together and we had dinner at Paul´s house. Me and Pat met like in this parking lot when we were walking up to Paul´s house and Billy and Paul are there and we open the door and I look at the guys and I look at Pat and go 'Fuck, did we shrink?' We had a nice laugh and I didn´t feel intimidated anymore and I felt awesome. A couple of days later we were writing songs… no wait, we rehearsed and started jamming on some stuff, but nothing went on the new album, we were just jamming. Then we came up with this idea of 'Let´s do a tour!' and that´s all! In the back of my mind I went 'God, I´m not gonna be satisfied with a tour and a t-shirt! I wanna make an album!' Paul was like 'Let´s make this fun and let´s not have a reason to fucking beat each other up!' and I went 'Hear, hear! I´m all about that!' as cliché as it may sound. I kept my Mr. Big mouth shut and nobody else picked up a chair and everything was good.”

Read the entire interview here.

Mr. Big's new album, What If… will be released in a special edition CD + DVD in digipak, regular CD, vinyl and digital download and in a limited edition luxury box including the CD, DVD, LP and exclusive memorabilia.

What If… tracklisting:

'Undertow'

'American Beauty'

'Stranger In My Life'

'Nobody Takes The Blame'

'Still Ain’t Enough For Me'

'Once Upon A Time'

'As Far As I Can See'

'All The Way Up'

'I Won’t Get In My Way'

'Around The World'

'I Get The Feeling'

'Unforgiven' (exclusive bonus track for Europe / North America – not on vinyl edition)

The DVD will include the videoclips of 'Undertow' and 'All The Way Up' plus a documentary “Making of” the album including interviews and exclusive behind the scenes features of the four members.