Touring with REO, Benatar brings 'The Holy 14'

Friday, Sept. 3, 2010

Click here to enlarge this photo Submitted photo Pat Benatar, who won four straight Grammy Awards from 1980 to 1983 for Best Female Rock Performance, will appear Sept. 3 at Calvert Marine Museum. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

On Aug. 1, 1980, the day MTV's first broadcast came through a few thousand televisions in some nook of northern New Jersey, the premiere music video, appropriately, was The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." The second, set in some grungy warehouse in some hyper-urban, way post-industrial world, was Pat Benatar's "You Better Run."

There's not a whole lot to this punkish guitar-fueled video. Go to YouTube and watch the camera zoom in and out on a frontwoman flaunting her sex appeal but guarding it just the same. The look (dark leather pants; short hair; intense make up) cops men's styles. But the final draft is the then-latest picture of a new femininity that's tough and cool.

If you want to take this further (and see some craaazy fashion), watch the video for "Love is a Battlefield," which became popular a couple years later. You want Benatar's love? Good luck, pal.

This picture did not show up out of nowhere. There was Debbie Harry, better known as Blondie, a group whose commercial success in the 1970s flamed out in the next decade. There was Joan Jett, who founded The Runaways in the '70s and, unlike Harry, was even more successful as a solo artist and with the Blackhearts in the next decade.

But neither Harry nor Jett dominated the charts quite like Benatar, who emerged from New York's club scene, was signed by the highly demanding Chrysalis Records in the late '70s and kicked off the '80s by earning four Grammy awards for Best Female Rock Performance in as many years.

Artificially, she delivered a new era of fashion: leotards, spandex tights, cat suits. Less artificially, she proved that, in a male-dominated industry, a woman, too, could fill arenas and could make records that go all sorts of platinum and, the sticking point, make a record company a ton of money.

"And women?" Benatar writes in her new memoir, "Between a Heart and a Rock Place," released in June. "They weren't equals, they weren't rock stars, they weren't players. Women were girlfriends or groupies."

Today, the women dominating the pop charts — even if they are not rock stars, which Benatar most certainly was — have Benatar to thank. Hard as it is to see the similarities, Benatar has said she's a big fan of Lady Gaga and Beyoncé and Katy Perry. In the 1990s, she told Rolling Stone magazine, "For every day since I was old enough to think, I've considered myself a feminist ... I see women everywhere doing their thing and throwing themselves into situations headfirst, and not taking [expletive] from anyone. It's empowering to watch and to know that, perhaps in some way, I made the hard path they have to walk just a little bit easier."

Female performers of the now engage audiences via an assortment of characters, alter egos. Beyoncé has Sasha Fierce. Nicki Minaj has Roman Zolanski. Lady Gaga, well, she sells out stadiums while donning sunglasses made of cigarettes.

Benatar, really, had one character, though she did not name her alter ego or even say it existed. Who was it? Picture Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant.

"This character that was my persona onstage was something that I created, something that I think that I was feeling; I think that a lot of American women were feeling," she said in a recent interview about her book. "We were the daughters of the women's movement; we were going to be the young ones that were going to put this into practice.

"Being able to display your sexuality openly is a form of power. The unfortunate thing that happened was when I got tired of it."

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Born January 10, 1953, Patricia Mae Andrzejewski, the daughter of working class parents, grew up in Lindenhurst, Long Island. Her mother had sung for the New York City Opera but quit when her daughter was born. Later, when interviewers would ask Benatar where her confidence stemmed from, she would usually credit an upbringing spent doing mostly "boy things."

Shielded by her parents from rock clubs, in her youth, Benatar received classical vocal training and considered attending Juilliard School of Music. Instead, she pursued a degree in health education at the State University of New York and later married her high school sweetheart, Dennis Benatar, who was in the military. The couple moved to Virginia. Pat, meanwhile, knew the marriage was doomed from the start: It was never something she actually wanted. After the divorce, she returned to New York.

At a comedy club, Catch a Rising Star, Benatar's rendition of Judy Garland's "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody" grabbed the attention of Rick Newman, who became her manager. She remained a regular at Catch a Rising Star until she signed a contract with Chrysalis. Her first foray into rock, meantime, was through a part in Harry Chapin's futuristic musical, "The Zinger." She was 22, had not sung rock tunes and sounded too much like Julie Andrews, but she learned how to let go of technique and just sing.

Halloween, 1977: Benatar wore a vampire costume based on a character in a B movie to a party in Greenwich Village. Rather than change before her gig that evening, she kept her black eyeliner and took the stage in her costume, which consisted of black tights and a short black top. Until then, she writes in her book, she had never received such a hearty response from an audience.

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In "Between a Heart and a Rock Place," Benatar defines feminism as "freedom with no restrictions." In other words, her outfits were for her. When she wanted to change … by then it was a marketing tool. As for the "suits and bean counters," as she calls them, they were not exactly interested in coming up with a new hook.

Even so, Benatar had her ways of shaking it up. In the video for 1982's "Shadows of the Night," we find the rocker hunting down Nazis.

By 1985's "We Belong," we see her look, and sound, has softened: a white suit, '80s pop. We've gone from a world on the brink to a dreamy world eternally full of waterfalls and a children's choir. During the filming of the video, Benatar was pregnant with her first child, Haley Giraldo, and the suits were not particularly interested in letting the public know this. Haley's father, Neil "Spyder" Giraldo, was (and remains) the band's guitarist. Of course, the suits were also not much interested in letting the public know that the two were married.

This is some of what is shared in "Between a Heart and a Rock Place," a rocker's memoir that comes without a confessional chapter devoted to hard living and wild times. What is chronicled here is a life that was great fun, Benatar writes, but also incredibly difficult. There was the sexism within the music industry. There was the record company that made her feel like an "indentured servant." (Chrysalis' contract required a new album every 9 months for. After 7 years and as many records, Benatar hired new lawyers who were able to dissolve it.)

Benatar at least acknowledges that there were worse positions to be in. She also writes that, in some respects, the pressure was exactly what she needed.

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The year the video for "You Better Run" aired, Pat Benatar told a writer that her relationship with Giraldo was over and that she could not see herself "doing this" when she was 45.

Now in the thick of her 13th straight summer tour, Benatar is 57. Although they did break up for a year, she and Giraldo have been married for 29 years. They have two daughters.

Benatar obviously does not have to hide these things anymore, and in many ways her memoir is a tribute to her husband and longtime musical collaborator. He was instrumental, as it happens, in creating Benatar's sound.

The couple met when producer Mike Chapman brought Giraldo onboard for Benatar's recording project, "In the Heat of the Night." Nowadays, when they tour, both Benatar's and Giraldo's names are on the bill.

Meanwhile, a profile in June's People Magazine begins with an image of the rock goddess telling her husband how to blot out a green tea spill with a paper towel. "This is the best part," she tells the magazine. "No matter what I'm doing, someone's going, ‘Mom!"

In the various profiles of Benatar since her book release, we're presented again and again with this portrait of a rocker-slash-suburban mom. Upon meeting Benatar at a book signing, a New York Times reporter described the "warring facets" of her look. Her clothes: a suit coat, striped pants, a ruffled blouse. The tattoo on her wrist: a Maori heart.

"Half of me is that — a kind of Erma Bombeck soccer mom," Benatar explained. "Women have to wear a lot of hats."

When Benatar arrives at Calvert Marine Museum tonight with REO Speedwagon, it will be part of her first tour with the '80s legends since 1995. (The bill lists the groups as co-headliners.)

Reviews of Benatar's shows note that her voice remains very strong and that she shares a lot of anecdotes between tunes. "Not partying may have made me boring by rock star standards," she writes in her book, "but at least I can still sing."

Although she has not released a new album since 2003, fans mostly want to hear what she calls "The Holy 14" — classics like "Heartbreaker" and "Hit Me With Your Best Shot."

Of the latter hit, she might even admit to you tonight that she gets a bit tired of it. So, if you're going, warm up your voice: The frontwoman might ask for your help during the part she hates to sing.

Calvert Marine Museum will host a concert featuring REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar and Tyler Bryant at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 3. Bryant, a guitar prodigy, will open the show.. Tickets are $50 and $40. Call 800-787-9454.