ERIC MARTIN Is Open To Playing More MR. BIG Shows: 'I Never Say No'

In a new interview with Brazilian music journalist Igor Miranda, MR. BIG frontman Eric Martin spoke about the possibility of the group performing live again, more than a year after he and his bandmates played the final show of their "The BIG Finale!" tour. Asked if it's true that he was the one member of MR. BIG who was opposed to the idea of the band calling it quits, Eric said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, I went with the flow. Our management kept saying that Paul [Gilbert, MR. BIG guitarist] wants to focus on his family and solo stuff. And I just kind of felt like it was starting to be, like, 'Okay, come on, man. We've been doing it for a really long time, and it's maybe time that we just hang up the hat and shoes,' or whatever they say. And it had been years of, like, 'Hey, I think this is the year that we should retire.' And I kept saying it for, like, four years. I was, like, 'No, man, no. I don't wanna quit. I don't wanna quit anything.' I've never quit MR. BIG — ever. I never got fired or quit or anything. And I just said, 'No, I don't wanna do it.' And I just kind of felt like the vibe. And also with Pat [Torpey, late MR. BIG drummer] being gone, and it was just Billy [Sheehan, MR. BIG bassist] and me and Paul, and then we were having these great drummers and everything, but — I don't know — it just didn't feel like the same MR. BIG anymore. And that being said, I think it was because the extensive touring, it got to me. I didn't like it. Health-wise, I wasn't as strong as I wanted to be. And I still wanted to play different shows. I still wanted to play that. And I could just sense that our manager, who also manages Paul Gilbert, just kind of felt, like — it's funny that I'm saying this, but I really felt that Paul didn't wanna do it. He just got burnt out on it. And that's true.'

Eric continued: "Hey, look, it's a lot of planning going into MR. BIG stuff, and that whole 'BIG Finish' tour, that was like a two-year vibe right there. We went to America, South America and Asia twice. And I loved it, but then I just went with the flow. I didn't wanna call it quits, but I didn't also wanna tour forever, and I didn't like that."

Circling back to the likelihood of MR. BIG playing live again, Eric said: "If the management called me up tomorrow or a year from now and said, 'Hey, what do you think about playing a festival?' or, 'What do you think about doing this?', I'd go, 'Yes, absolutely.' I am the first guy on the e-mail call list because the management always knows that I'm gonna say 'yes', 'cause as you can tell from all the shit that I've done for years and years years, even after MR. BIG and before MR. BIG, I never say no. I like the work. I just don't like back to back to back to back to back. I don't like that. And I just wanna say: I love those guys… And I'm happy for these guys… At least we went out gracefully and not controversial and fighting and stupid shit."

MR. BIG played the final show of its "The BIG Finale!" tour on February 25, 2025 at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, Japan. Earlier that same month, the band played three other shows: on February 14, 2025 at the Bloomverse Festival in Meghālaya, India, on February 16, 2025 at the Bloomverse Express in Bengaluru, India, and on February 22, 2025 at the Osaka Music Hall in Osaka, Japan.

In an October 2024 interview with Ruben Mosqueda of We Go To 11, Sheehan was asked if the band's "The BIG Finish" farewell tour was just the end of extensive touring for him and his bandmates, with plans to make special appearances from time to time, or if MR. BIG was going to become a studio-only project going forward. Billy responded: "The end is the end. It's finished. If some extenuating circumstances come up, we might do a show or two, maybe, but touring and recording… We kind of wanted to put a period at the end of the sentence. And as I've said many times, we wanted to run over the finish line, not crawl over it. And for us, a fully functional band is on tour playing live and doing the thing and writing recording, and then go out on after the record and do another tour, to do that, we've done that for 34 years, and it's been an amazing run. We have friends all over planet earth. It's fantastic. And it's probably our greatest asset, personally, for me, the amazing people that we've touched around the world. But we decided to really, 'Let's do it the right way,' and not to have some continual farewell thing that goes on for an eternity."

He continued: "We had a great time. And our last shows in Europe, we did a bunch of shows in Germany. Amazing. We have a lot of friends in Germany. We had big hits in Germany as well. And all over Europe and England. We got to play Ireland — Belfast and Dublin. And I'm an Irishman, so that was very nice. We played Liverpool, the Holy Ground. It was quite amazing. I had to put one little BEATLES melody in my solo at the end. Pretty cool. So it was a nice way to go out. I'm glad we did it. We did it with as much class as we're capable of. We did the final tour, and I'm very, very pleased about it."

In August 2024, Eric told Roppongi Rocks's Stefan Nilsson that there was no chance of him and his MR. BIG bandmates going back on their word that they would not tour ever again. "We're not the kind of band — when we say that we're gonna quit and it's over and we're not touring anymore… We may do a one-off here and there every couple of years or whatever, but we're not going to be like the MÖTLEY CRÜEs and the KISSes," he explained." And no offense to them, because the crowds keep coming to see 'em, but we're not gonna do it. We just maybe have too much pride in it."

MR. BIG's tenth studio album, "Ten", was released on July 12, 2024 via Frontiers Music Srl. The LP featured 11 new original tracks written by Martin and Gilbert, along with André Pessis and Tony Fanucchi. "Ten" was produced by Jay Ruston and MR. BIG.

When MR. BIG announced "The BIG Finish" tour in 2023, the bandmembers said that it was "time to mark the end of this chapter of their legacy" after drummer Pat Torpey lost his battle with Parkinson's disease in 2018. The first leg kicked off in Japan and Southeast Asia in July and August 2023, where the band performed for hundreds of thousands of loyal fans at 11 sold-out shows including Budokan in Tokyo, Japan.

MR. BIG's last-ever live album release was "The BIG Finish Live", which came out on September 6, 2024 via the Evolution Music Group.

"The BIG Finish Live" was a brand-new live album and concert film of MR. BIG's "The BIG Finish" farewell tour, where the band played their million-selling "Lean Into It" album in its entirety, plus additional MR. BIG classics.