After 35 years of globe-spanning tours, musical milestones, and heartfelt performances, Mr. Big has played its final show. The band’s swan song came on February 25 at Tokyo’s iconic Nippon Budokan — a fitting venue for a band that found its most loyal audience in Japan.
Although the group initially planned to end The Big Finish farewell tour in Romania in August 2024, an unexpected wave of international interest extended the run.
“Yeah, actually, the last show was supposed to be August 2024 in Romania,” said frontman Eric Martin in a recent interview with Finland’s Chaoszine. “Then the Japanese asked for two shows in Osaka and Tokyo. And out of the blue, India asked, and we played a couple of shows there — huge festivals, and we were headliners.”
That late-stage pivot led to a mini-run that included high-profile stops at India’s Bloomverse Festival and Bloomverse Express, before returning to Japan for what became an emotionally charged finale. The Tokyo crowd didn’t just fill the Budokan — they overflowed it.
“It was more sold out than I’ve ever seen it. Usually, it’s around 12,000 or 13,000 people, but this time they sold the back too, so it was like 14,000, maybe 15,000. It was mega,” Martin recalled.
For a band that has long credited its Japanese fans for helping launch and sustain their career, this final sendoff held particular weight. “The Japanese were the ones who basically opened the door for Mr. Big in the first place, and they’re the greatest audience. No offense to everyone else, but they’re the greatest audience ever.”
Martin spoke reverently about the unique energy of Japanese concertgoers: “If you’ve ever played Japan, you’re missing out if you don’t. Crowds elsewhere — Finland, South America, America, Europe — they’re different. In Japan, though… They just stop, and they wait for you to talk. At first, you think, ‘I don’t know if they’re into it,’ but there are 15,000 people silently hanging on your every word.”
For the final performances, the full lineup — Eric Martin, Billy Sheehan, Paul Gilbert, and Nick D’Virgilio — came together one last time. “It was the perfect way to end it,” Martin reflected. “Granted, but it kills me that we had to end it. We should have, could have, would have kept going. But that’s the way it is. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
Still, the door may not be entirely closed. “Look, I’m not gonna… This is the truth: I’ve heard Billy Sheehan — though I don’t listen to his interviews that much — say, ‘Never say never’ and ‘Who knows?’ Maybe after The Winery Dogs reunion tour, when they do their farewell concert someday, if we’re still alive and kicking, maybe we’ll do another Mr. Big tour. I hope you guys still want us back, yeah.”
However, Sheehan’s own comments in an October 2024 interview with We Go To 11 suggested the band was ready to call it a definitive end: “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.”
He elaborated on the choice to conclude their legacy with a sense of dignity and closure. “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 going out on after the record and doing another tour… We’ve done that for 34 years, and it’s been an amazing run.”
Their final European leg included shows in Germany, the UK, and Ireland—each with its own personal significance. “We’ve got to play in 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.”
As for what comes next, it’s anyone’s guess. But for now, Mr. Big exits not with a fade-out, but with the kind of powerful crescendo they always promised. “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.”
