By Martin Popoff
"It comes out August 21st on Favored Nations, Steve Vai's label. It's out already in Japan. Japan gets records first for a couple of reasons. First of all they financed the record so they have the rights to it first. It's also an import/export thing. They need to get the record first, otherwise for their domestic market it's kind of complicated. Tower Records and Virgin Megastores will import the domestic version because it's cheaper than the domestic Japanese version and undersell the Japanese label's version. But it's done great in Japan already. We're releasing another single in August from it. We did a video for it in Japan. As well, I'm going to do a record in August with Terry Bozzio, a bass and drum experimental record. The new Mr. Big record is done. I'm not sure what the plan is for that in the USA, or anywhere outside of Japan. The new Niacin record is done, called Time Crunch, and that's a real hot record."
"I kind of stuck with one of my favorite eras of music," explains Billy, delving further into Compression, "which is early Bowie, and a little bit of progressive stuff. Nowhere in the lyrics you'll find the words 'hurt' or 'love', which I thought was important. So there are no love songs per se on the record. Vocally, I sung every song on the record. I played guitar and programmed drums and of course played bass on everything, except for two tracks that Terry Bozzio did. And on one track, Steve Vai did a solo. Everything else I did. Because a lot of times guys do a solo record with 50 different people and it's not really a solo record."
And Mr. Big?
BILLY SHEEHAN - America's Mad Bassist... Everywhere! Page 3