{"id":17221,"date":"2011-03-04T11:36:20","date_gmt":"2011-03-04T15:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=17221"},"modified":"2011-03-04T12:18:02","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T16:18:02","slug":"justins-japan-qa-with-billy-sheehan-of-mr-big","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/04\/justins-japan-qa-with-billy-sheehan-of-mr-big\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin’s Japan: Q&A with Billy Sheehan of Mr. Big"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Billy Sheehan of platinum-selling rock group Mr. Big. (William Hames)<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

By<\/strong><\/em> JQ magazine<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u2019s\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Justin Tedaldi<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0(CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02)\u00a0for Examiner.com.\u00a0Visit his\u00a0\u00a0page <\/strong><\/em>here<\/a><\/strong><\/em> to subscribe for free alerts\u00a0on newly published stories.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Considered by many to be the Eddie Van Halen of bass, <\/em>Billy Sheehan<\/em><\/a> launched his recording career in the late \u201970s with the Buffalo-based rock trio Talas, then joined original Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth\u2019s band in the mid-\u201980s for two platinum-selling albums. After parting with Diamond Dave, Sheehan formed <\/em>Mr. Big<\/em><\/a> in 1988. Best known for its hit ballad \u201c<\/em>To Be with You<\/em><\/a>\u201d\u2014which went to number one in 15 countries including the U.S. in 1992\u2014Mr. Big called it quits a decade later, but in 2009 the original lineup reformed for a massive tour of Asia and Europe.<\/em><\/p>\n

In February, the band released <\/em>What If\u2026, the first album in 15 years from the reunited rockers, which instantly went gold in Japan upon release. I spoke with Billy about the new album, his long relationship with Japan, and Mr. Big\u2019s future touring plans.<\/em><\/p>\n

What are some of your favorite \u201cculture shock\u201d memories from Japan?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see. Well, I toured with a Japanese band called\u00a0B\u2019z<\/a> [in 2002], and they\u2019re a huge band. One of their singles released that I played on [1999\u2019s \u201cGiri Giri Chop<\/a>,\u201d with Pat Torpey] sold, I think, three or four million units in a day<\/em>; they\u2019ve sold more records in Japan than Madonna has sold. Amazing statistics; wonderful bunch of guys, too. But we\u2019ve played in little, tiny places where very few Western bands have ever performed. We did a thing on this little island where at the hotel there weren\u2019t even Western numbers on the doors, so I had to remember the character of the kanji on the door to try to remember which door was mine, and that was an interesting moment for me.<\/p>\n

It must have been a thrilling experience to go on tour with them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We played all over. In Mr. Big, that\u2019s one thing we\u2019ve done, as well. Most bands [play] Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, and that\u2019s it. But we\u2019ve done Sendai, Kagoshima, Niigata, Sapporo, Fukuoka; all kinds of little places, a lot of places where many bands don\u2019t get to. In Sendai, the first time we played there, we found out that they were having a petition to have Mr. Big play there. It had\u00a0 30,000 signatures on it, and the place we were playing could only hold about 5,000 people, so we asked, what happened to the other 25,000 people that signed the thing? It was pretty fun; a sweet, sweet beautiful little city, great spot. We were very lucky to see a side of Japan that not a lot of Westerners see. It\u2019s a very inspirational experience.<\/p>\n

In your opinion, how do you think Japan has changed from the time you first went there up until now? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I know the economy\u2019s been in trouble for a while, so now we\u2019re starting to see things like discount stores and prices that aren\u2019t set anymore; that\u2019s a new thing for them, to go into a store and not pay absolute full retail for something, which they did for a long, long time. Now, they\u2019re actually looking for bargains. That\u2019s an interesting cultural change that not a lot of Japanese folks are used to. Also, the idea that once you work for a company, you are there for a lifetime of work; it\u2019s not as secure anymore. So, I do believe there is a little bit of concern and worry amongst the average folks now that things are changing, and it\u2019s sad to see. It\u2019ll be interesting to see how things play out in the end.<\/p>\n

When you played the Mr. Big reunion shows in Japan in 2009, did you notice any shift in the people who were coming to the shows?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We were very, very surprised at how many young kids were in the audience. We had a few gray heads of hair out there, too, of course, but there was amazingly a very large amount of very young kids, because I guess like any band, when you\u2019re fortunate enough to get to some plateau of success, things start to kind of become timeless, as with this whole Beatles fans thing\u2014I\u2019m not comparing ourselves to them, of course, but same principle. So, we\u2019re pleasantly surprised to see a lot of very young people whose parents probably turned them on to it, or their older brothers or sisters. So, that was a great thing.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re spanning generations now over there.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, I think there\u2019s probably three generations easily being represented in the audience. We\u2019re so thankful.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve been known to get extra work and gigs in Japan over the years, like the B\u2019z tour, Hard Rock Cafe radio spots, bass clinics, and other appearances. Do these usually come to you by reputation, or do you have to actively campaign for them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Generally, they come to me, which I\u2019m humbled by. It\u2019s awful nice of them to consider me for their endorsement things and what have you. Fortunately, the press in Japan is thorough and omnipresent, so we really get a lot of coverage, and if we get fortunate enough to have a reputation that precedes us, that\u2019s pretty cool. And it\u2019s been an incredibly lucrative thing, to be frank\u2014we\u2019ve made a lot of money from Japan. And when we played there, we realized that. So, we played, and I came off the stage and practically collapsed from exhaustion a couple of times, because we push hard in our appreciation for what we have now as a result of the fans there. We don\u2019t forget it for a minute. That\u2019s pretty awesome.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/em><\/a> for the complete interview.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Billy Sheehan of platinum-selling rock group Mr. Big. (William Hames) By JQ magazine\u2019s\u00a0Justin Tedaldi\u00a0(CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02)\u00a0for Examiner.com.\u00a0Visit his\u00a0\u00a0page here to subscribe for free alerts\u00a0on newly published stories.\u00a0\u00a0 Considered by many to be the Eddie Van Halen of bass, Billy Sheehan launched his recording career in the late \u201970s with the Buffalo-based rock trio Talas, then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,340,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articlejournalism","category-justins-japan","category-music"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-4tL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17221"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17227,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17221\/revisions\/17227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}