Pat Benatar

Pat Benatar

Pat Benatar (born Patricia Mae Andrzejewski on January 10, 1953) is a four-time Grammy Award-winning American singer best known for her mezzo-soprano vocal range on hit songs such as "Love Is a Battlefield", "Hit Me with Your Best Shot", and "Heartbreaker". Benatar is one of the top-selling female artists of all-time, and one of the 1980s Top Platinum Album Recipients, according to the Recording Industry Association of America with 12.5 million certified units, including two RIAA-certified Multi-Platinum albums, five RIAA-certified Platinum albums, three RIAA-certified Gold albums, plus 19 Top 40 singles to her credit.

Biography

Born Patricia (Patti) Mae on January 10, 1953 in Greenpoint, New York, to Andrew and Mildred Andrzejewski, the family moved from Brooklyn to N Hamilton Ave, Lindenhurst, Long Island when she was 3 years old. "I have wonderful childhood memories of picking berries in the "woods" by our house, driving to the "docks" on the South Bay to get freshly harvested clams," she said.

The daughter of a sheet-metal worker and a beautician who once sang with the New York City Opera, Benatar became interested in theater and began voice lessons, singing at Daniel Street Elementary School her first solo, a song called “It Must Be Spring,” at age eight. She said, "As a kid, I sang at any choir, any denomination, anywhere I could." At Lindenhurst Senior High School (1967 - 1971), Benatar participated in musical theater, playing Queen Guinevere in the school production of Camelot, marching in the homecoming parade, singing at the annual Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony, and performing a solo of "The Christmas Song" on a holiday recording of the Lindenhurst High School Choir her senior year.

Benatar was cut off from the rock scene in nearby Manhattan though because her parents were "ridiculously strict - I was allowed to go to symphonies, opera and theater but I couldn't go to clubs," and her musical training was strictly classical and theatrical. She said, "I was singing Puccini and 'West Side Story' but I spent every afternoon after school with my little transistor radio listening to the Rolling Stones..."

Training as a coloratura and accepted to The Juilliard School, Benatar surprised family, friends and teachers by deciding a classical career was not for her and pursued health education at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. At 19, after one year at Stony Brook, she dropped out to marry her high school sweetheart Dennis Benatar, an army draftee who trained at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and then served with the Army Security Agency at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, before being stationed at Fort Lee (near Petersburg), Virginia. Specialist (E-4) Dennis Benatar was stationed in Richmond, Virginia, for three years, where Pat worked as a bank teller.

In 1973, Benatar quit her job as a bank teller to pursue a singing career after being inspired by a Liza Minnelli concert she saw in Richmond. She got a job as a singing waitress at a flapper-esque nightclub named The Roaring Twenties and got a gig singing in lounge band Coxon's Army, a regular at Sam Miller's basement club. The band garnered enough attention to be the subject of a never-aired PBS special, and the band's bassist Roger Capps also would go on to be the original bass player for the Pat Benatar Band. The period also yielded Benatar's first and only single until her eventual 1979 debut on Chrysalis Records: "Day Gig," 1974, Trace Records, written and produced by Coxon's Army band leader Phil Coxon and locally released in Richmond.

Benatar's big break came in 1975 at an amateur night at the renowned comedy club Catch a Rising Star in New York. Her rousing rendition of Judy Garland's Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody earned her a call back by club owner Rick Newman, who would become her manager. Benatar said,

"I came in from Virginia one night. I had straight red hair and I wore a dress. I sang a Judy Garland song and I don’t know what happened, I never sang in New York before in my life, even though I grew up there, everybody just went crazy. I didn’t do anything spectacular. I don’t know what happened, it was just one of those magical things. [Rick Newman] came right in and said, ‘Let’s talk about you playing here some more.’"

Mr. Newman said, "It was 2:45 in the morning. We had 30 performers and she was about #27. I was on the other side of the room drinking with some friends--then I suddenly heard this voice!"

The couple headed back to New York following Dennis' discharge from the army, and Benatar went on to be a regular member there for close to three years, until signing a record contract.

Catch A Rising Star was not the only break Benatar got in 1975. She landed the part of Zephyr in Harry Chapin's futuristic rock musical "The Zinger." Benatar's first foray into rock. The production, which debuted on March 19, 1976, at the Performing Arts Foundation's (PAF) Playhouse in Huntington Station, Long Island, ran for a month and also featured Beverly D'Angelo and Christine Lahti. Benatar said,

"I was 22 by the time I started to sing rock, so at first I was very conscious of technique and I was overly technical. That proved to be inhibiting so it was a disadvantage until I began to sing intuitively. That’s the only way to sing rock – from your gut level feelings. It’s the instinct that the best singers have."

Halloween 1977 proved a pivotal night in Benatar's early, spandexed stage persona. Rather than change out of the vampire costume she had worn to a Greenwich Village cafe party that evening, she went on-stage wearing black tights, black eyeliner and a short black top. Despite performing her usual array of songs, she received a standing ovation. Benatar said,

"The crowd was always polite, but this time they went out of their minds. It was the same songs, sung the same way, and I thought, 'Oh my god...it's these clothes and this makeup!'"

In between appearances at Catch A Rising Star and recording commercial jingles for Pepsi Cola and a number of regional concerns, Pat Benatar headlined New York City’s famous Tramps nightclub March 29 - April 1, 1978, where her performance impressed representatives from several record companies. She was signed to Chrysalis Records by founder Terry Ellis the following week. Benatar said,

"There was a long period of three years, when I spent my time taking demo tapes around and being rejected by one record company after another. Then just two days after the debut concert with the band, we were signed to a record contract..."

Record company executives did not share Benatar's ambition to write and sing original rock material at first. They wanted to promote her as a balladeer, claiming that suited women better. It was the beginning of an often contentious relationship with her record label over material.

Recorded in June and July 1979, Pat Benatar debuted the week of August 27, 1979 with the release of I Need A Lover from the album In the Heat of the Night. She said, "My album was the last of a bunch by female singers to come out so I was told not to expect much, even though Mike Chapman was producing."

Pat Benatar won an unprecedented four consecutive Grammy Awards for Best Female Rock Performance from 1980 to 1983 for Crimes of Passion, "Fire and Ice," "Shadows of the Night," and "Love Is a Battlefield." Of the ten Grammy Award ceremonies in the 1980s, Benatar was nominated for Best Female Rock Performance eight times, including for "Invincible" in 1985, "Sex as a Weapon" in 1986, "All Fired Up" in 1988 and in 1989 for "Let's Stay Together." Benatar also earned Grammy Award nominations in 1985 for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female with "We Belong" and in 1986 for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Duo or Group as a member of Artists United Against Apartheid for their single "Sun City". Benatar is also the winner of three American Music Awards: Favorite Female Pop/Rock Vocalist of 1981 and 1983, and Favorite Female Pop/Rock Video Artist of 1985. Benatar was twice named Rolling Stone magazine's Favorite Female Vocalist, and Billboard magazine ranks her as the most successful female rock vocalist of all time based on overall record sales and the number of hit songs and their charted positions.

Pat Benatar was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame at the Second Induction Award Ceremony and Fundraising Gala held October 30, 2008. In her acceptance letter, she said, “My upbringing, and the values and ideals I learned back in my hometown kept me grounded. I never forget that a small town girl from Lindenhurst, LI actually got the chance to live her dreams.” She added, “Long Island girls ROCK!

She divorced Dennis in 1979, and later married band leader/lead guitarist Neil "Spyder" Giraldo on February 20, 1982. They have two daughters: Haley Egeana born February 16, 1985, and Hana Juliana born March 12, 1994.

Discography

Main article: Pat Benatar discography

In the Heat of the Night

"I Need a Lover" was the first single to be released on August 27, 1979. However both it and the next single, "If You Think You Know How to Love Me" (October 1979), were unsuccessful. Benatar's third single "Heartbreaker" was released in early December of 1979 and became an immediate hit, climbing to #23 in the U.S. Benatar said "That was written by these two English guys, Gill and Wade, and it had all these little English colloquialisms that Americans would never say. So the publisher gave it to me to clean up, and I had to figure out all these lyrics. It was making me crazy. But I loved the song from the first time I heard it, so I rewrote the lyrics and we did the song as it appears here. It's one of my favorites." A fourth single "We Live for Love," which was written by her husband Neil Giraldo, was released in February 1980, and reached US #27. Although Giraldo claims that it was written about her, Benatar has playfully accused him during interviews of having written the song long before they met, obviously about another woman.

Benatar's debut album In the Heat of the Night was released in October 1979, and reached #12. It established Benatar as a new force in rock. Producer Mike Chapman, who had worked with Blondie and The Knack, broke his vow not to take on any new artists when he heard Benatar's demo tape. Chapman personally produced three tracks on the album, while his long-time engineer and now independent producer, Peter Coleman (who also supervised Nick Gilder) oversaw the rest. In addition, Chapman and his partner, Nicky Chinn, wrote three original songs for the LP, in addition to a rearranged version of a song they wrote for The Sweet, "No You Don't". The album also featured two songs written by Roger Capps and Benatar, as well as "I Need a Lover" written by John Mellencamp, "Don't Let It Show" written by Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson, and the single "We Live for Love" by lead guitarist Neil Giraldo.

The album would be Benatar's first RIAA certified platinum album.

Crimes of Passion

In August 1980, Benatar released her second and most popular LP, Crimes of Passion, featuring her signature song "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" along with the controversial song Hell is for Children, which was inspired by reading a series of articles in the New York Times about child abuse in America. "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" (U.S. #9) was her first single to break the U.S. Top 10 and eventually sold more than 1 million copies (at that time, gold status) in the United States alone. The album peaked at U.S. #2 in January 1981 for 6 consecutive weeks (behind Yoko Ono and John Lennon's Double Fantasy) and sold over 5 million copies, and a month later, Benatar won her first Grammy Award for "Best Female Rock Vocal Performance" of 1980. Other singles released from Crimes of Passion were "Treat Me Right" (US #18) and the Rascal's cover, "You Better Run" (US #42), which gained some later notoriety when it was the second music video ever played on MTV, after the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star". The album also featured a changed-tempo cover of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights. Produced by Keith Olsen, Crimes of Passion remained on the US album charts for 93 weeks, eventually becoming her second consecutive platinum certification by the RIAA. In October 1980, Benatar (along with future husband Neil Giraldo) graced the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

Precious Time

In August 1981, Benatar hit #1 on the Billboard U.S. Top 200 LP chart with her third LP, "Precious Time". It was also her first to chart in the UK, reaching #30. The album's lead single, "Fire and Ice", was another big hit (US #17, AUS #30) and would win Benatar her second Grammy Award, this time for "Best Female Rock Vocal Performance" of 1981 and her third consecutive RIAA certified platinum album. Two more singles, "Promises in the Dark" (US #38) and "Take It Any Way You Want It" are also released.

Get Nervous

A hit single, "Shadows of the Night", (US #13, AUS #19) heralded a new LP, Get Nervous, released in late 1982. The album was another smash, reaching US #4, her fourth consecutive RIAA platinum certification, and the single would garner Benatar yet another Grammy, again for "Best Female Rock Vocal Performance" of 1982. The follow-up singles, "Little Too Late" and "Looking for a Stranger", were also successful, hitting US #20 and #39 respectively. The last single, "Anxiety (Get Nervous)", failed to make the Top 40. The WWII-themed music video for "Shadows of the Night" featured then-unknown actors Judge Reinhold and Bill Paxton as an American fighter copilot and a German radio operator, respectively.

Live from Earth

By 1983, Benatar had established a reputation for singing about "tough" subject matters, with a significant amount of songs featuring a "battle" metaphor. This was best exemplified by one of the biggest hits of her career, "Love Is a Battlefield" (penned by noted hit songwriter Holly Knight with Mike Chapman), released in December 1983. By then her sound had mellowed from hard rock to more atmospheric pop and the story-based video clip for "Love Is a Battlefield" was aimed squarely at MTV, even featuring Benatar in a Michael Jackson-inspired group dance number. This new pop direction was a huge commercial success, with the single peaking at #5 in the United States, and #1 in Australia for seven weeks. The song even gained some interest in the UK where it peaked at #49. The song would also net Benatar her fourth consecutive Grammy Award for "Best Female Rock Vocal Performance" of 1983. A live album, Live from Earth, from which "Love Is a Battlefield" was one of two studio-recorded tracks hit U.S. #13 and became her fifth consecutive RIAA platinum winner.

Tropico

In October 1984, the single "We Belong" became another Top 5 smash in the US, and reached #7 in Australia. It was also Benatar's first ever UK top 40 hit, where it peaked at #22. In November, Benatar released her sixth album, Tropico (US #14, AUS #9, UK #31). A second single release, "Ooh Ooh Song," reached U.S. #36. It is also said by Benatar and Giraldo that this album is the first where they moved away from Benatar's famed "hard rock" sound and start experimenting with new, sometimes "gentler," styles and sounds. Despite not making the US Top 10, it earned her a sixth consecutive RIAA platinum certification. A third single, "Temporary Heroes" was also released in March 1985.

After the chart success of We Belong in the UK, Love is a Battlefield was re-released in early 1985 and became her highest chart hit there, reaching #17.

Seven the Hard Way

Benatar would hit the U.S. Top 10 with the #10 single "Invincible" in 1985. "Sex As a Weapon" would climb as high as #28 in January 1986, and "Le Bel Age" (#54) in February. The album Seven the Hard Way peaked at #26, earning an RIAA Gold certification.

The title of the album is based on a bet in the game of craps: "Rolls of 4, 6, 8, and 10 are called "hard" or "easy" (e.g. "Six the Hard Way", "Easy Eight", "Hard Ten") depending on whether they were rolled as a "double" or as any other combination of values, because of their significance in center table bets known as the "hard ways"." The album was the band's seventh release in seven years. Benatar is holding a pair of dice on the album cover with three and a half dots each.

Wide Awake in Dreamland

In July 1988, Benatar released her eighth album, "Wide Awake in Dreamland" (US #28, UK #11). A single lifted from the album, "All Fired Up" (written by Kerryn Tolhurst, ex-The Dingoes) reached #19 in both the US and the UK, and was a #2 smash in Australia, becoming one of the biggest hits of 1988 in that country. Other singles released from the LP are "Don't Walk Away" (UK #42), "Let's Stay Together", and "One Love" (UK #59). The album also earned an RIAA gold certification.

Best Shots

Best Shots (US #67) was first released in the UK in 1987 and in the US in November 1989. The US version included 15 tracks on 1 CD, 1 live version of "Hell is for Children" with Suffer the Little Children intro, "Painted Desert" (from Tropico) and a remixed version of "Outlaw Blues" (also from Tropico) and would be another certified RIAA gold (later platinum) album. Best Shots was the only official greatest hits compilation until 1994 when All Fired Up: The Very Best of Pat Benatar was released (2 CD). The box set Synchronistic Wanderings (3 CD) was released in 1999. "Classic Masters" was released in October 2002, and "Pat Benatar - Greatest Hits" was released in June 2005. The most recent collection, "Ultimate Collection" (2 CD set) was released in June 2008 under the Capitol Records label with forty 24 bit-digitally remastered tracks.

Best Shots became Benatar's biggest selling album in the UK, where it reached #6 and achieved Gold sales status. The album was also a top 20 hit in Australia.

True Love

True Love (US #37) was a jump blues record, released in 1991 and featured the blues band Roomful of Blues, backing up Pat Benatar, Neil Giraldo and Myron Grombacher. The album sold over 339,000. albums without any radio airplay and limited exposure on VH-1. The album reached #40 in the UK.

Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow (US #85) was released in 1993 and was a return to the AOR genre. "Everybody Lay Down" was picked up by Album Rock radio and went all the way to #3. The single was never released to Top 40/Contemporary Hit Radio and a music video was never produced. "Somebody's Baby" was instead released as the single to Top 40 radio and a music video produced.

A third track was scheduled and a video shot for "Everytime I Fall Back", but the single was never released and the music video was lost when Chrysalis was sold to EMI records. Pat Benatar had become pregnant again and this may have had an effect on her label's support of the album. This was Benatar's last album recorded for Chrysalis records. Gravity's Rainbow failed to have the same commercial success as Benatar's previous works. The album sold approximately 200,000 copies in the US.

Innamorata

Innamorata (US #171) was released in 1997 on the CMC International record label. A single video was produced for "Strawberry Wine (Life is Sweet)".

Go

Benatar has released only one album of new material since 1997's Innamorata, which is 2003's Go (US #187). The album included the 9/11 charity single, "Christmas in America" as a bonus track. A compilation video was produced for the single "Have It All", but was never released, the only video from this album is for the bonus track.

Recent activity

Many best of/greatest hits compilations have been released over the years by Benatar's former record company. 2008's Ultimate Collection included the version of "Everytime I Fall Back" from her appearance on The Young and the Restless. In 2009, Benatar also teamed up with Blondie for the joint "Call Me Invincible" tour, which also features The Donnas.

Band

Although billed as a solo artist, Benatar recorded and toured with a consistent set of band members over most of her career, who contributed greatly to the writing and producing of songs and are recognizable characters on album photos and in many of her music videos.

• Neil "Spyder" Giraldo (incorrectly spelled as "Geraldo" in early liner notes/credits) is the distinctive lead guitarist of the band and has performed on all of Benatar's albums. (He is also Pat's second husband.) He was born on December 29, 1955. Neil also sings, plays keyboards and harmonica, and has many writing and producing credits on the Benatar albums. Neil performed with Myron Grombacher in Rick Derringer's touring band, appearing in a possible bootleg entitled Derringer Live At The Paradise Theater Boston, Massachusetts, July 7, 1978 (UPC 672627400428).
• Myron Grombacher is billed as drummer on nine of Benatar's albums and has numerous writing credits. Myron is easily recognizable in the music videos, particularly as the mad dentist in Get Nervous.
• Charlie Giordano performed keyboard duties on five albums, and is identifiable by his glasses and distinctive array of berets, blazers and 80s-style ties. In 2007, he replaced the late Danny Federici in the E Street Band.
• The original bass guitarist was Roger Capps, replaced on Tropico by Donnie Nossov, and then later by Frank Linx.
• Scott Sheets is credited on rhythm guitar on the first three albums.

Other Achievements

Benatar still writes and tours with her husband Neil Giraldo.

In the summer of 2005, the couple's older daughter Haley Giraldo starred in E!'s reality TV series Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive.

Stage and Screen Credits

• Benatar played the character Zephyr in Harry Chapin's futuristic rock musical "The Zinger". Set in a recording studio sometime around the year 2000, the production, which debuted on March 19, 1976, at the Performing Arts Foundation's (PAF) Playhouse in Huntington Station, Long Island, renamed the Harry Chapin Center, ran for a month and also featured Beverly D'Angelo and Christine Lahti. Benatar said, "It was great. I had an afro wig with glitter on! It was so fabulous." Benatar performed the solo "Shooting Star" in honor of Chapin for the Harry Chapin Tribute, Carnegie Hall, December 7, 1987.
• In 1980, she portrayed the character "Jeanette Florescu" in Marcus Reichert's film noir Union City.
• In 1982, the song 'Treat Me Right' and, very briefly, the Crimes of Passion album cover too, featured in the 1982 movie, An Officer and a Gentleman, starring Richard Gere and Debra Winger.
• Benatar had a song entitled Here's My Heart, featured in the 1984 version of the 1926 movie Metropolis.
• In 1985, "Invincible" was the title track to the cult movie The Legend of Billie Jean.
• Benatar contributed the original tune "Sometimes the Good Guys Finish First" to the 1987 The Secret of My Succe$s soundtrack.
• In 1987, "Run Between the Raindrops" was featured on the soundtrack for The Stepfather
• In April 1989 she appeared in an ABC Afterschool Special entitled "Torn Between Two Fathers" about a teenage girl who sues her natural father for the right to remain in her step-family's home following the accidental death of her natural mother. Pat played "Donna", the current wife of the teenager's natural father.
• Benatar contributed a cover of the Fontella Bass hit "Rescue Me" to the 1994 Speed soundtrack.
• Benatar has made numerous TV appearances, mostly as herself. She appeared with her husband in the Charmed episode "Lucky Charmed" on which "Heartbreaker" was used and in an episode of Dharma & Greg as herself singing "We've Only Just Begun" at an impromptu wedding in an airport.
• "Love Is a Battlefield" was featured twice on South Park, the first being the Season 2 episode "Ike's Wee Wee", but most notably in the episode "Red Man's Greed".
• In 2003, "Love Is a Battlefield" was featured in the movie 13 Going on 30.
• Benatar appeared in an episode of the short lived sitcom That '80s Show as herself as an old rival of the character Margaret. Her "Love Is a Battlefield" video appeared on an earlier episode of the show.
• On February 14-15 2008 Benatar and husband appeared as themselves on The Young and the Restless performing at the Indigo Club.
• "Love Is a Battlefield" was featured in Christian Dior Ready to Wear Fall/Winter 2006 by John Galliano.
• In 2007-2008 Benatar's single "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" was put into the songlist for Guitar Hero 3 in the first tier of songs, also in Guitar Hero On Tour,and is available as a downloadable song in the video game Rock Band. Her song "Heartbreaker" is a playable song in the 2008 video game followup Guitar Hero: World Tour as well as also being downloadable content on Rock Band.
• "Shadows of the Night" was covered in 2008 by Ashley Tisdale for the television movie Picture This.
• "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" was covered by one of Charlize Theron's friends in the 2005 motion picture North Country.

Advertising

In 2006, the song "We Belong" was part of a $20 million dollar ad campaign for Sheraton hotels, although the version used in the commercial was not Benatar's. Her version of the song is featured in the 2006 comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, starring Will Ferrell and directed by Adam McKay.

Though she had earlier expressed dismay for rock stars endorsing products (including onetime cohort Debbie Harry, who had developed her modeling career simultaneously to her rock career), Benatar herself has now become a commercial spokeswoman for the Energizer company, and is currently being featured in an ad for Candies Vintage shoes for Kohl's department store. Her 2007 song "Passion" can be downloaded free from the Jell-O official site.

See also

• List of best-selling music artists

External links

• Official Site
• EMI Artist Page
• Sanctuary Records Artist Page
• Chrysalis Music Group USA
• Fan Club
• Pat Benatar at the Internet Movie Database
• Pat Benatar Live from Austin on October 6, 1981