Description
“”Just Take My Heart”” (Martin/Pessis) – 4:21
“”To Be With You”” (Martin/Grahame) – 3:27
Eric Martin -“ vocals
Paul Gilbert -“ guitars
Billy Sheehan -“ bass guitar
Pat Torpey -“ drums
Singles – Billboard (North America)
Year Single Chart Position
1991 “”To Be with You”” Mainstream Rock Tracks 19
The Billboard Hot 100 1
1992 “”Just Take My Heart”” Mainstream Rock Tracks 18
The Billboard Hot 100 16
“”To Be with You”” Adult Contemporary 11
“We didn’t find out until later that they didn’t like the record, they didn’t like our songs and they didn’t like band,” he says. “They had all but given up on us. We battled them from the beginning over it.”
Having accrued an audience largely through showcases for pyrotechnic shredding such as Addicted To That Rush and Daddy, Brother, Lover, Little Boy (The Electric Drill Song), To Be With You was an anomaly for Mr. Big, their lighters-aloft soft rock/power ballad occupying a similar position in their catalogue to More Than Words in Extreme’s.
The song’s principal writer, frontman Eric Martin, came across the song on an old cassette.
“He didn’t really give it much mind – he was kind of: ‘Meh, this old thing,’” Sheehan remembers. Martin wrote it while still in his mid-teens, trying to impress his sister’s friends.
“I was sixteen/seventeen years old, and I was sitting in our front yard under an old oak tree, playing the guitar – it was my first gig,” he recalls, laughing.
More specifically, he had in mind Patricia Reynolds, a local girl he had fallen head over heels for, even though she was too busy with other boys to notice. To her, Martin was just the cheeky kid next door.
“She called me an imp of Satan. I was her confidant and knight in shining armour. A shoulder to cry on. I was totally enamoured with this woman.”
Inspired, Martin recorded an acoustic demo of To Be With You, which was “very Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young”.
Years later, after he had established himself on the hard rock circuit and signed a publishing deal with Columbia Records, he was put together with a songwriter, David Grahame. It was then that the song took on its final, spartan, singalong shape, a deliberate evocation of John Lennon’s Give Peace A Chance.
Martin was living in San Francisco while the rest of the band were in LA, and he would drive back and forth, occasionally sofa-surfing at Mr. Big guitarist Paul Gilbert’s home in Hollywood. One day, he told the guitarist about his song, adding the magic word: “It’s kind of like The Beatles.” Gilbert added the “really pretty solo” and fell under the song’s thrall, as did the rest of the band.
“Paul, Pat [Torpey, drums] and I heard it and went: ‘Wow, we’ve got to do that song!’” Sheehan says. “Eric was kind of surprised that we liked it. But we immediately pushed for it to be on Lean Into It. ”
“There was all this meat, and then we had Yesterday,” Martin ventures, drawing comparisons with the Paul McCartney/ Beatles standard. “I’m not saying To Be With You is like Yesterday, but it was kind of like our Yesterday.”
“We didn’t expect much from it,” Sheehan adds. “We didn’t think: ‘Oh, man, this is gonna be a hit!’ We had no clue. It was just a sweet little song.”
Mr. Big’s members had spent years toiling away: Gilbert with Racer X, Sheehan with Talas and David Lee Roth’s band, Martin solo. Now, thanks to radio stations – “and people calling the stations to say they liked it,” Sheehan says – and with a little help from MTV (the video for the track was by Nancy Bennett, director of Led Zeppelin tribute Encomium), the band had their “very own, one hundred per cent organic” hit.
The track began with some earnestly strummed, rasping entreaties (‘Hold on, little girl‘), proceeded with unison harmonies and handclaps, and built towards a good old campfire singalong, a veritable Hey Jude for the hair-metal generation. Rousing stuff.
After two further hits – another balled, Just Take My Heart, and a cover of Cat Stevens’s Wild World – in ’92 and ’93 respectively, Mr. Big lived up to their name and became big in Japan, South America and south-east Asia, to name just few places. “As soon as we go past our borders, all hell breaks loose,” Sheehan jokes.
Mr. Big are still out there touring and recording, and they acknowledge that to a large degree it was To Be With You that put them on the map – and, for more than a quarter of a century, has kept them there.
“I’ve had thirty or forty instances of people writing to me, telling me they were extremely sick, even cases of suicidal thoughts, and they managed to turn it around because of that song,” Sheehan says. “It’s quite awesome.”
As for Martin, he’s just glad it earned him some kudos at last.
“I was just ‘the singer dude’,” he says, wryly. “I’d be hanging by the bus and all the fans would come up to me and go: ‘You’re the singer dude – go get Billy, go get Paul,’ right? They knew Pat Torpey cos he played with The Knack. People would knock me over to get to the guys, and I was always a little intimidated. With To Be With You I got some confidence. Finally I was in the league of gentlemen.”
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“To Be with You” is a song by the American hard rock band Mr. Big. It is the 11th and final track from the 1991 album Lean into It. The song charted in over 20 countries, many of them at number one, such as on the United States Billboard Hot 100. It also reached a peak of number three in the UK.
The song was written and composed by Eric Martin during his teen years. Raoul contributed to its melodic arrangements later on. Writing credit is also given to David Grahame, a songwriter working for the label at the time (though exactly what contributions each of the three men made to the song is unclear).
In his solo career, Mr. Big guitarist Paul Gilbert performed the song live using the riff from the Van Halen song “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love”.
While in Pauls apartment at Yucca Street in L.A., Eric and Paul were laying out their compositions. Eric had a ballad called “To Be With You”. Paul had his psychedelic rock song called “Green Tinted Sixties Mind”. Both felt the two songs were strong enough to be included in their upcoming album, despite it being purely rock; and true enough, these songs remained throughout the course of their career as a group and as solo artists.
“To Be With You” is about a man who has his eye on a woman who has recently experienced a broken heart from a previous relationship.
Music Video:
The video features the band performing in a room. The video changes from black & white to color around the halfway mark.
In popular culture:
The song was made available to download on February 14, 2012 for play in Rock Band 3 Basic and PRO mode utilizing real guitar / bass guitar, and MIDI compatible electronic drum kits / keyboards plus vocal harmonies.
Cover versions:
Irish pop group Westlife performed the song during the acoustic session of their 2003 Greatest Hits Tour, and it was subsequently included on their Turnaround album later that year.
Australian male vocal group Human Nature included a cover of the song in their 2004 Walk the Tightrope studio album. Their interpretation was somewhat more pop/R&B than the original.
Old Man Gloom performed an acoustic cover of the song titled under the guise of “Gratuitous Bonus Track Made By Sensible Musicians Doing Questionable Things” on their 2003 EP Christmas Eve I and II + 6.
Andrew Spencer has also made dance remixes of the song in late 2007, early 2008. The pop-punk band Allister and Japanese “bilingual melodic punk band” Nicotine have also recorded covers of the song.
The song is also featured in the first act of Rock of Ages.
American musician David Cook and his band The Anthemic first covered this song in concert at the Orlando Food and Wine Festival on March 31, 2012.
The song was covered by Adhir Kalyan in the episode The Five Things in the sitcom Rules of Engagement to attempt to seduce a woman, but was picked as a prank by David Spade.
The song was sampled and remixed by Styles & Complete, the song is a Dubstep (genre) remix.
Charts Peak positions
Chart (1992) Peak position
Australia (ARIA) 1
Austria (Ö3 Austria Top 40) 1
Canada (RPM) 1
Europe (Eurochart Hot 100) 1
Finland (Suomen virallinen lista) 6
France (SNEP) 10
Germany (Media Control AG) 1
Ireland (IRMA) 2
Netherlands (Dutch Top 40) 1
New Zealand (RIANZ) 1
Norway (VG-lista) 1
Sweden (Sverigetopplistan) 1
Switzerland (Schweizer Hitparade) 1
UK Singles Chart 3
U.S. Billboard Hot 100 1
U.S. Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks 11
U.S. Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks 19
End of year chart (1992) Position
Australian Singles Chart 4
Austrian Singles Chart 5
Dutch Top 40 7
Swiss Singles Chart 3
U.S. Billboard Hot 100 1
End of decade charts
Chart (19901999) Position
U.S. Billboard Hot 100 90
Country Certification Date Sales certified
Germany Gold 1992 250,000
Netherlands Gold 1992 40,000
U.S. Gold February 12, 1992 500,000
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