The Examiner.com recently caught up with MR. BIG bassist Billy Sheehan. An excerpt from the first part of the interview is available below.

Q: How would you describe Mr. Big’s writing process this time around for the new album?

Sheehan: "It was purposely done very similar to our early records. We did what we did in the early days, where we all worked together in a room, musician to musician, and did things as a collaborative effort with everybody’s input. We purposely set it up in the beginning to do the process the same way we did back when we first started. And I think that was really, in hindsight, a good decision; now it’s the band, it’s not any one individual at all...it actually is observed by others to be the case, so that’s a wonderful triumph."

Q: Did everyone come up with these new songs from scratch?

Sheehan: "'American Beauty' was actually a song that we had at the very first writing sessions; much different than it turned out now, of course; we had the groove and the idea, but the lyrics we had way back when, we never liked, and it just never worked. It was a such shame, so we actually sat down with the song, and I forget which one of us just yelled out—we needed something that went [hums a phrase]—that rhythm. I forgot who said it, but somebody went, 'American Beauty!' and we went, “Oh, perfect!” And then the song builds itself from there, and it came into a song about kind of a hooker with a heart of gold, you know? It’s funny how songs build themselves when you want them to."

Q: Were there any other songs besides “American Beauty” that had already been worked on prior to the new album?

Sheehan: "I don’t believe so. I might be wrong on this, but for the most part it was all stuff that was brand new. Paul [Gilbert], Pat [Torpey] and myself got together in a room and just came up with ideas, ideas, ideas, and put them all in an iTunes playlist, and there was 128—not all complete songs, but 128 pieces. So we boiled that down and went through a selection process and deleted the ones that didn’t go anywhere and tried to improve on some, and that’s how we ended up with the songs we have on the record. I think there’s two songs for bonus tracks in Japan and everywhere else, so that’s what we ended up with. We had a lot of stuff, and Eric [Martin] would come down and throw some ideas at us. And he had some songs of his, too, that we started to pull apart and put our own thing on, so most everything is brand new."

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(Photo by William Hames)