Bass legend Billy Sheehan (Sons Of Apollo, The Winery Dogs, Mr. Big, Talas) recentyl spoke with Mike Brooks for Music radar. Following is an excerpt from the interview.

“I love to play; it’s my favourite thing in life,” says Sheehan. “People send me their YouTube clips and I tell them they have to play with people on stage, in front of an audience. You don’t need to be all that ready to play live, but get in a band and get to work! To play live is the greatest joy there is and any musician worth their salt will tell you the same. Working in the studio is one thing, but capturing that live in front of an audience is another level of difficulty.”

Although he’s now 65 and has been a professional musician for 40 years and more, Sheehan still sees room for improvement in his own playing.

“I work hard at getting better, although that doesn’t mean playing faster or using more notes. I’m working at it all the time; even when I get home and I get ideas, I record selfie videos and explain into the video what I’m playing and how I’m playing it.”

Mr Big fans will be heartened to know that the classic band, now comprising Sheehan with guitarist Paul Gilbert and singer Eric Martin, hasn’t performed its last show yet, as their summer 2018 performances showed.

“We honoured the bookings we had. We might go out and do something in 2019; we’re talking about it,” says Sheehan. “It’s a cliché, I know, but when we play, people fly in from all over the world to see us. It’s an amazing family of people, and they would love to see us play again. We may go out and say a proper goodbye and hold ourselves to it. Mr Big was the four of us but Paul, Eric and I are closer now than we’ve ever been, having weathered the storm that happened with Pat.”

Read the complete interview here.

Mr. Big frontman Eric Martin guested on the Friday NI Rocks Show in October 2018 and discussed the status of Mr. Big in the wake of drummer Pat Torpey's death. Check it out here.

On the future of Mr. Big

Martin: "I’m the one getting everyone together for conference calls and e-mails and what we want to do. I really want to do it and I want to spend more than six days on it like we did with the Defying Gravity album. I want to be a little more prepared. I want to do a new record and I also want to have a couple of different drummers on it – one’s that Pat really liked; maybe Mike Portnoy, Gregg Bissonette, Ray Luzier from Korn, I really like his playing. Just get some great drummers to do something to honour Pat Torpey. We don’t know if we’re going to do an album or an EP; it kinda depends on the songs. If we only have six songs then there’s your EP, but if we have more we’ll cut an album. We only have a little bit of a window of opportunity because Paul is on the road pretty much the rest of the year and then we might have an opportunity in February to cut something. But we are going to do a tour in June and July and then come home for a couple of weeks and then try to do it as much as we can for about three or four months. But yeah, that’s the last hurrah, that’s it. It just feels a little uncomfortable to keep going without Pat Torpey."

Pat Torpey passed away on February 7th, 2018 at the age of 64 from complications of Parkinson’s disease.