Back in 2016, bassist Billy Sheehan reconvened with longtime Mr. Big sidekicks Eric Martin (vocals), Paul Gilbert (guitar), and Pat Torpey (drums, with help from stand-in Matt Starr) – to record the band's ninth studio album, Defying Gravity.
Known for such songs as Daddy, Brother, Lover, Little Boy, Green Tinted Sixties Mind, Just Take My Heart, Wild World, Addicted to That Rush, and the international smash To Be With You, the group tracked the new album's 11 songs during an intensive creative burst at California's Ocean Studios.
“We all had a spot open up in our schedules that gave us six days to record with Kevin Elson, our producer from the early days, so we jumped on it,” Billy Sheehan explained in the September 2017 issue of Bass Player.
“Prior to that, we had a couple of songwriting get-togethers – a couple of us, not the whole band – and by the time we got into the studio, we had about four songs completed and another six that were partial, and a few other pieces, too.
“There was a good kind of high pressure that lit a fire under us, and it really made us dig deep and think on our feet. We recorded as a group; that's pretty much how we did our early records, so it's natural for us to work in that fashion.”
Characteristically, the album brims with memorable hooks, radio-friendly choruses, and top-drawer axe-work from Sheehan and Gilbert, while straddling a wide range of genres. “I like it like that. Some classic records are all over the map stylistically: heavy, quiet, melodic – all kinds of things.”
Tracks include such rock stompers as Everybody Needs a Little Trouble, for which Sheehan employed a Hipshot XTender to nail earth-shaking low C#s; acoustic-flavored outings such as I'm in Love Again and Nothing Bad (About Feeling Good); a blues-drenched shuffle, Be Kind; and songs featuring explosive unison guitar/basslines, such as Open Your Eyes and the autobiographical 1992.
“We've known each other for a long time now, so the unison work is usually pretty quick and automatic. I'm used to Paul's note choices, which are ever-evolving and ever-changing, and he's kind of used to mine, too.”
Mean to Me (inspired, according to Gilbert, by the groove of Christina Aguilera's What a Girl Wants) is one of the album's standout rockers, with a blazing main riff and scintillating solo section, during which the guitar and bass trade blistering licks.
In the studio, Sheehan used his Yamaha Attitude III strung with signature Rotosound round-wounds (.043, 065, 080, 110). “The neck-position pickup went to the low amp, while the P-Bass pickup went to the high amp, with clean and distortion mixed together.”
“We also took a separate direct from that P-Bass pickup. I do that often – just have a separate regular, straight-up bass tone on a separate track. If I need it for anything, it's there.”
Following the gritty unison slide of the pickup bar, the song kicks into gear with Sheehan and Gilbert sharing duties for the track's primary motif: a descending two-bar-long 32nd-based figure that underpins the intro and chorus sections.
“Paul came in with the song; it was a pretty wild sound with those 32nd-notes. That's kind of my specialty, doing those fast clusters of notes, so I didn't think it would be a problem. But the pattern of the cluster was such that I had to actually pluck with four fingers (pinkie, ring, middle, index) instead of three, to get that burst of four really solidly.”
The chord sequence from the intro continues into the verse, with sledgehammer accents and strongly syncopated downbeats.
As the guitar rolls out the song's first sustained chords through the verse's second half, Sheehan helps build steam toward the chorus with increasing use of repeated 16ths; dig his hip E major pentatonic fill at 00:37.
The chorus kicks in at 00:46, using the same material as the intro, which leads in turn to a second verse and chorus.
At 02:16, Sheehan conjures a cascading fountain of sound using a tapped, 4th-based pattern, which he deftly traverses down the neck. Following Gilbert's two-bar response, Sheehan unleashes another flurry of tapped 32nds which, like the first, draws primarily on notes from the C# natural minor scale.
“I think I got that section by about the third take. I was in the zone, and it was going pretty good. In earlier takes I was hitting the notes I was going for, but they weren't notes I was happy with. I wanted to change the musical structure, so I went back and reconfigured that pattern to make it musically more to my liking.”
Sheehan taps with his left index and middle fingers, but the index and ring fingers of his right. “It may not be normal for everyone to do it that way, but as long as you get the notes, you're doing it right.”
Gilbert's second response leads into a nine-bar guitar solo, during which Sheehan outlines the chords from the intro/chorus. A final chorus and a hard-hitting two-bar outro bring the song to a close.
“Just take it slow and figure it out. I believe there's nothing I do that someone else can't do. It might take you a while, but you can do it."
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