THE SIZE OF IT
“Every record we made came with pressure from the record company, and it always felt like we were chasing our tails to deliver a hit single. Then from out of nowhere we did that with To Be With You… and things only got worse. The success of that song came as a gigantic blessing, but it was also a curse, because each time they said: ‘We want that next To Be With You, and we just couldn’t do it.”
Talking to Classic Rock, Mr. Big’s chatterbox frontman Eric Martin is mentally reeling back the three decades since his group’s second album, Lean Into It. The early 90s was a memorable era for hard rock, and with the right look, some decent stylists and the patronage of MTV even an average band was capable of shifting a million copies of a record, sometimes even two or three.
Mr. Big’s self-titled debut, released in 1989, had ticked most but not all of those boxes. As well as having Journey’s producer Kevin Elson working with them, the quartet – completed by former Racer X guitar shredder Paul Gilbert, ex-David Lee Roth/Talas bassist Billy Sheehan, and drummer Pat had peaked at No.46 in the USA, selling a creditable quarter of a million.
