For long-haired masters of rock, the key to world domination lies in a two-step process. First step: RAWK. Seems pretty obvious. Second step: break out the acoustics and rock ’em slowly. Do you know where the real money resides? In the bank account of the heart, baby.

In metal and hard rock, image is everything — tough, loud, ready to party — and sometimes it’s difficult to relinquish that image at the risk of relinquishing audience. But fortune favors the bold…..and also the bad boys with the hearts of gold.

Mr. Big formed in Los Angeles in the late 80’s when bassist extraordinaire Billy Sheehan — most recently thumping away for David Lee Roth’s band — decided to take advantage of America’s current love affair with hair metal and began looking for cohorts. He remembered singer Eric Martin from a song he wailed on a soundtrack a few years before. Guitar shredder Paul Gilbert had already made a name for himself around the L.A. scene. And Pat Torpey had drummed for both Ted Nugent and Belinda Carlisle — so that was suitably weird. Together, the foursome took their name from an old song by Free and dubbed themselves Mr. Big.

The band wanted to set themselves up as a bluesy Van Halen, so Martin was reluctant to present the song he’d had running around in his head since he was 15, a ballad about an older girl he had a crush on in high school. The two used to hang out together in his car while she read poetry to him, and gave each other matching mood rings (green for happy and blue for sad), but although she had a string of unsuccessful boyfriends and yearned for true love, she kept young Eric at friend’s length.

After completing the song, Martin didn’t even offer it up for the band’s debut album. It only came to light when he and Gilbert were sharing possibilities for the second album, and Gilbert, a huge fan of The Beatles and The Beach Boys, thought it was a lovely acoustic ballad, subsequently playing the demo for the rest of the band without Martin’s knowledge. When Mr. Big convened in full to start rehearsing for their sophomore album, they played through a number of tracks before the guys asked Martin about that folky acoustic song. He thought they were kidding. They were not. After recording the whole album they pressed him once again — he finally relented, and “To Be With You” was the last track laid down in the studio (and also buried at the back of the album).

Mr. Big may have liked the song, but they and Atlantic Records were still trying to maintain the hard rock image, so no one thought to release “To Be With You” as a single. A radio DJ in Nebraska begged to differ. He played the song until it topped the request lists in Lincoln and Omaha — and Atlantic took notice. Officially released in the fall of 1991, “To Be With You” reached #1 by mid-winter of 1992, the last big hit of the hard rock and hair metal boom. The rest of the decade would see the top of the charts dominated by pure pop and R&B, while rock moved in new directions.

So come on, baby, come on over … with Mr. Big.