On August 23, 2024, Mr. Big played what was supposed to be their last concert ever. A festival in Romania. At the end of the night, Billy Sheehan posted a photo and wrote: “The last MR. BIG show. What a great run we’ve had since 1988. We made great memories and millions of friends all around the world.”
That was supposed to be it. The period at the end of the sentence. Thirty-six years of Mr. Big, done.

And then India happened.

February 14, 2025. Bloomverse Festival, Meghalaya. February 16, Bloomverse Express, Bengaluru. Two of the last Mr. Big shows ever played, anywhere on the planet, were in India. Fifteen years after their previous visit. On Valentine’s Day and the day after. In the northeast. Because some bands find their way back to the places that matter most right at the end.
To understand why this mattered, you have to understand what Mr. Big actually was.

They were an American hard rock supergroup formed in Los Angeles in 1988. Eric Martin on vocals, Paul Gilbert on guitar, Billy Sheehan on bass and Pat Torpey on drums. Every single one of them was already a name before the band existed. Billy Sheehan was called the Eddie Van Halen of bass. Paul Gilbert was the guitar world’s most talked about young shredder, coming off Racer X. Eric Martin had been courted by Toto and Van Halen. Pat Torpey had played with Robert Plant. Four musicians at the absolute top of their game, deciding to make a band together. Honestly, it should not have worked that well. It worked perfectly.
In 1992, their single To Be With You hit number one in fifteen countries. On an acoustic guitar. Sung as a gentle, aching ballad. From a band capable of the most technically demanding hard rock being made at the time. That contrast, between the ferocity they could produce and the vulnerability they chose to put front and centre, was exactly what made Mr. Big different. They were not showing off. They were connecting.

India connected with that immediately. To Be With You on late night radio. Green-Tinted Sixties Mind on guitar tabs downloaded from dial-up internet in the early 2000s. Daddy, Brother, Lover, Little Boy, the one with the actual electric drill, the one every guitarist tried to learn and nobody quite could. Mr. Big were not a band you listened to passively. They were a band that made you pick up an instrument and try to catch up.

Then in 2014, drummer Pat Torpey was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He continued recording and performing, as always, to the best of his ability, right up until his passing on February 7, 2018. His death changed everything. Eric Martin said it felt uncomfortable to keep going without Pat Torpey. The band entered a long period of uncertainty. Eventually, with Nick D’Virgilio on drums, they decided to do one last thing properly. A farewell tour. The Big Finish. Playing Lean Into It in full every night. Running over the finish line rather than crawling over it.
They played Japan. Southeast Asia. Europe. North America. South America. Everywhere that had loved them for thirty years. And then, after what they had announced as the final show, they came to India. Two more nights. A Bloomverse Festival headline in Meghalaya and a Bloomverse Express show in Bengaluru. Because India had been waiting fifteen years and they were not going to let that go.

The Meghalaya show on Valentine’s Day ran from 8pm to 10pm. Two hours of Mr. Big. The setlist moved through Green-Tinted Sixties Mind, Daddy, Brother, Lover, Little Boy, Wild World, a run of deep cuts and classics, and somewhere in there, To Be With You. The song that hit number one in fifteen countries in 1992, played live in Meghalaya in 2025 to a crowd that had grown up with it. There is something about hearing a song like that live, from the people who made it, for possibly the last time, that is genuinely hard to put into words. You either know that feeling or you do not.

Bengaluru got their own night two days later. And then it was done. Mr. Big had said their proper goodbye. India was among the last places on earth that heard them play.
Billy Sheehan said after it all ended: “My unlimited love and respect to all who listened, watched, purchased records, tickets and t-shirts. Without you we would have been nothing. Fact.”

India was part of that. Always.

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Myfandom brought the official Mr. Big India merch to life for both shows, giving fans a piece of that farewell to carry home. Always Official. Only on MYFANDOM.