Pat Benatar: From Heartbreaker to True Love
By Steven P. Wheeler
It was 39 years ago this week that Pat Benatar’s iconic rock hit “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” was released, as it quickly became an anthem for female empowerment. Just like her platinum-selling debut album, In the Heat of the Night, did a year earlier with the ferocious, in-your-face power of “Heartbreaker” and her perfect gender twisting rendition of John Mellencamp’s “I Need a Lover.”
For ten years, between 1979 and 1988, the former Patricia Andrzejewski from Long Island was rock’s reigning queen, releasing six consecutive platinum and multi-platinum albums (with three others that reached Gold).
The fiery vocalist, who turned miniskirts, leotards and headbands into a fashion trend, cracked the Top 40 no less than 15 times (!) and dominated the Grammy’s Rock Female Vocalist category with four straight wins between 1980-83.
But Benatar didn’t do all this alone however, as her guitarist, songwriter, producer and musical director, Neil “Spyder” Giraldo, was the creative force behind the curtain all along the way. From their love-at-first-sight meeting in 1978, the two eventually married in 1982 and remain so to this very day.
It is a professional and personal partnership that has never faltered as they continue to perform 40 years after first bursting on the scene in 1979. They remain a refreshing rarity in the world of rock & roll.
Yet after the release of 1988’s Wide Awake in Dreamland, Benatar took a two-year hiatus to raise their daughter, Haley (Neil and Pat would be blessed a second time in 1994 with daughter, Hana), and finish building their impressive Malibu residence, while also immersing herself in various childrens’ charities dedicated to fighting child abuse.
During that two-year sabbatical Benatar contemplated retirement and for the first time in her life music took a backseat. So what did the influential figure of future female rockers do for an encore when she returned to the public eye in 1991? She shed the rock goddess image, hired a band called Roomful of Blues, and made a genuine blues album.
The resulting gem of an album, True Love, would become another Gold record—despite having no rock or pop radio support—and has continued to grow in stature and acceptance nearly 30 years later. On a personal note, let me just say that it should be part of any record collection. To this day, Benatar still says that the making of True Love was a highpoint in her career.
“I was really thinking of retiring at that point, because I was just so unhappy creatively. And there’s no point in making dead records, because you should be so happy and grateful that you have the opportunity to do this for a living.”
Pat Benatar (Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)
Visiting the Giraldos
With that in mind, I thought this would be the perfect time to go back to the memorable Saturday in the spring of 1991, when I visited Pat and Neil at the large estate they call home in Malibu, California. With their home studio on one end and their residence on the other, with a basketball court in between—obviously for the sports loving man of the house and not for the five-foot-tall Benatar—I was greeted by the ponytailed Giraldo, who walked me in to the impressive recording studio where they had just recorded their latest album.
The plan was for Neil and I to do our interview alone, and then Pat would come down to sit with me while her husband went off to play with his local softball team. As we sat down in the studio, the guitarist suddenly had another idea. “It’s a beautiful day out. Do you wanna see my favorite place in the whole world?”
This SoCal guy never minded a little sunshine, so I grabbed my tape recorder, papers and backpack. Little did I know that the backpack was apropos as Giraldo proceeded to lead me on a rather lengthy hike up a trail into the green hills overlooking their home and studio.
We stopped at a small clearing where a large rock and tree trunk served as nature’s furniture and as I dropped my stuff and turned around, I could see why this spot would be someone’s favorite place. Talk about Zen.
As deer scampered below, the Ohio-born musician simply said: “I consider myself very fortunate. I couldn’t be any happier in my life. I love everything about it. I love my family, and I love my music.”
Hard to imagine anyone feeling differently as I soaked in the tranquil setting, but there are those that would (just check Facebook and you’ll see millions of them). Giraldo isn’t one of those though. The epitome of the laid-back rock star, his personable and optimistic nature is not only cool, but real. Not pollyannish, annoying or fake.
The Saga Begins
The Cleveland-born Giraldo was playing keyboards and guitar with Rick “Rock & Roll Hootchie Koo” Derringer in the late ‘70s before his fateful meeting with his future musical partner and wife.
“Chrysalis Records had just signed Pat to her record deal, and she was looking for a musical director, and they heard about me through [Rick] Derringer. It’s funny, because I was writing songs throughout the time I was with Derringer, but they didn’t fit his style. So when Pat and I met, we definitely felt something musically—as well as a personal attraction.”
The petite superstar with the three-and-a-half octave range agreed, saying during our later one-on-one interview in their studio: “When I got my record deal, I told my record company that I wanted a musical partner, not just a guitar player, and they went out and found Neil. Obviously I did get much more than a guitar player.”
For her part, Benatar fell in love when Giraldo first walked in the audition room and when he played his first chord; that was it. But Benatar was still in the middle of a divorce (she married a military man at the young age of 19) and Giraldo was dating actress Linda Blair at the time.
Throw in the fact that the record company execs were fearful of a Fleetwood Mac situation as broken romances within a band don’t always lead to classic works, and it became clear the two would have to wait as they managed to hold back their feelings as their career took off like a skyrocket.
Then as fate would have it, Benatar’s divorce finalized as Giraldo’s other relationship ended. They no longer fought those pent-up emotions and they were wed in 1982.
Burnout & Motherhood
Following their 1988 album, Wide Awake in Dreamland, which included another hit single, “All Fired Up,” the four-time Grammy winner and mother was truly burnt out after a non-stop, ten-year roller coaster of recording studios and endless tours. It was time to take a break, if not call it quits entirely.
“I was really thinking of retiring at that point,” Benatar told me in 1991, “because I was just so unhappy creatively. And there’s no point in making dead records, because you should be so happy and grateful that you have the opportunity to do this for a living.
“So when that feeling goes away, it’s just not right. I didn’t get the feeling onstage that I used to have and that really bothered me, because it should feel great.
“The three of us—Myron [Grombacher, drummer], Neil and myself—decided that we really couldn’t do another one of those rock records again. We had been doing it for so long, and it really wasn’t feeling the same.”
Giraldo, in our separate interview, confirmed his wife’s thoughts, saying: “We were being stylized as something and had become almost like caricatures of ourselves, and we didn’t want to fall into that trap. We had a lot of restraints over the previous 12 years, which was the main factor in making things difficult to deal with at that time.”
“When you have a child, your whole perspective is completely changed forever, and that sense of change encompasses everything that you do. It filters into everything that you think and feel. Motherhood opened up everything in my life, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Pat Benatar (Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)
And when you throw in that little life-change called motherhood, well, suffice it to say that nothing will ever really be the same, as the singer pointed out: “When you have a child, your whole perspective is completely changed forever, and that sense of change encompasses everything that you do.
“It filters into everything that you think and feel. So I started looking at things from another point of view. The main thing is that I didn’t want to box myself in like I did before. Motherhood opened up everything in my life, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Benatar, then noted with a laugh that she even curtails her career these days when school is in session. Just a regular mom spending a few days a week at her daughter’s school, “I’m just Haley’s mom. Mrs. Giraldo, the school librarian.”
One also gets a taste of normalcy when Giraldo enters the studio, donning his softball uniform and carrying a gym bag stuffed with bats and gloves, and says, “Great meeting you, Steven,” with a shuffling of the baggage to shake hands, before turning to his wife and saying, “Okay, hon, I’m heading out.”
Pat says, “Oh, B.C. called, and asked if you could pick him up.” [B.C. being softball teammate and longtime L.A. radio deejay and host of Rockline, Bob Coburn. The radio personality passed away in 2016]. With a quick kiss on the cheek, Giraldo is off. And I just have to say that there is something pretty cool hearing one of rock’s biggest superstars, calling out to her husband as he heads out the door: “Oh, can you pick up some milk on the way home?”
New Contract, New Music
Feeling pigeonholed artistically and looking for a new musical direction, Pat and Neil flexed their muscles when it came time to negotiate a new contract with their longtime label, Crysalis Records. Not only did they secure higher royalty rates for their past and future albums, but they demanded, and received, the freedom to reinvigorate their muse in any fashion they deemed necessary.
“Neil is always coming up with ideas of what to do, and he wanted us to make a blues album, just to do something totally different than anything we had done before. And I told him, ‘No way!’”
Pat Benatar (Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)
“When we re-negotiated for a new album with Chrysalis,” Giraldo said. “They gave us more control to do whatever we wanted to do. They told us to make the record that we wanted to make and to give it to them when it was ready.
“We’ve started over from scratch,” the guitarist continued. “I just hope people accept it for what it is and not hate it because it’s not what we were. We’ll have to wait and see.”
And just what that new direction was would not only stun their longtime fans, but, in fact, Benatar herself wasn’t into Giraldo’s idea at first either. “Neil is always coming up with ideas of what to do,” she said, with a sarcastic eyeroll, “and he wanted us to make a blues album, just to do something totally different than anything we had done before. And I told him, ‘No way!’ [laughs].
“I mean, just because you listen to and love a particular style of music doesn’t mean that you have any sort of affinity for it as an artist. Rock and blues are obviously connected, but the technique is completely different.
“The blues is much more subtle; the vocals are a lot more control-oriented and the phrasing is really pulled back compared to singing rock & roll. So there was a bit of a process of trying to figure out whether I could sing this material. Suffice it to say that I was not convinced and totally against the idea at first.”
But having full belief in her partner’s instincts, Benatar did agree to at least give it some further thought by doing a little homework. “Neil told me to sit in the room with all this blues stuff and see if anything stirred my mind. So that’s what we did, and it went from 500 to 300 to 250 to 50 songs until we finally got it down to 15. I mean we could do 20 volumes of this stuff.”
“I didn’t consciously look at what Linda [Ronstadt] did and say, ‘If she can do it, I can do it.’ But I certainly saw what she had done and saw that it is possible to make a clean break from everything you had done in the past and try something entirely new.”
Pat Benatar (Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)
In addition to the cover songs, the album also features four original songs that were written in the style of the bygone era, including the seductive title track. However when it came to the songs by others, Benatar said she was always conscious not to get too enraptured by what she was hearing.
“I tried not to listen too intently to the original versions that we covered,” she said, “because I didn’t want to start coping vocal licks. The thing is that you can’t duplicate what they did originally, and to even presume that you could is stupid, so I tried to sing them as if they were my songs.”
Eventually, she came around, and felt a renewed passion for moving forward with her career again. “Once you put away all the fear of trying something new, you get revitalized. If you do something too long, you get locked into it so much until you can’t see anything else anymore. And I don’t think I have the personality that can move gradually from one thing to another. And this project helped wipe the slate clean, and I feel good about making records again.”
When I mentioned another superstar vocalist who had abandoned her own successful pop career in search of an entirely different musical path, Benatar nods in agreement. “I didn’t consciously look at what Linda [Ronstadt] did and say, ‘If she can do it, I can do it.’ But I certainly saw what she had done and saw that it is possible to make a clean break from everything you had done in the past and try something entirely new.”
Jumping Blues
Neil’s idea for a blues album would be a major shift as to what went before for the two artists. This wasn’t to be one of those standard issue blues/rock projects. Not even close. This was to be a big band sound of jumping blues. Where the music swings, rather than plods.
“The original idea for the record that I wanted to make was patterned after an album that Roomful of Blues made with Big Joe Turner about ten years ago,” explained the musical mastermind. “So, in my mind, I kept thinking of that sound, and I finally realized that I might as well get the band that I was thinking about.”
Having finally convinced Pat about the concept of his idea, Giraldo then had to do another sell of his brainchild. This time to the band in question. “When I originally talked to the guys in Roomful of Blues, they thought I meant we were making a blues/rock album and they told me in no uncertain terms that they weren’t the right band for us.
“But when I mentioned their album with Big Joe Turner and that I wanted to do some T-Bone Walker songs and things like that, they were convinced.”
Once the material was selected and the vocalist and band were on board, Giraldo now focused on how to best record this huge band and capture them live in their home studio. “I looked at this project more like a producer, because there have been times in the past when I get caught between being the guitarist and the producer and the arranger,” he admitted. “But when we started this project, I wanted to focus the energy around the whole rhythm of the band, as well as the vocals.
“Now I’ve worked with horn sections a little bit in the past, and I had mikes on each individual horn at the outset of this recording. But it only took me 25 minutes to realize that it wasn’t going to work that way. So I moved them around the room and put a couple of tube mikes up, because I wanted all that live energy to be mixed around.”
Pointing to their home studio below from where we sat on the hill, the studio wizard said: “That studio has a very nice room sound to it, and the close miking was choking the overall sound of everything. I wanted that ‘air’ around everybody, but once everybody gets in the studio, the sound gets soaked up a little bit, which in retrospect was good, otherwise it would have been like being in a reverb tent.”
The recording went incredibly quick—only two weeks—and Giraldo captured it all with incredible precision. “It might sound like jive,” he said, “but there’s a real family feeling among the people who played on this album. It’s that family thing that makes great takes and keeps things rolling.
“It was boom, boom, boom, one right after the other, and I think that feeling comes across because I think it has a very happy feeling to it. Even though it’s the blues, I think this album makes you feel good.”
Thoughts & Reactions
“We had no delusions of this style of music being readily accessible to radio, but you can’t let it stand in front of your original motivations. I’m just going to see what happens. Right now, I’m a junkie, and I’m hooked on the blues.”
Pat Benatar (Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)
When it came time to deliver their new album (and musical direction) to the label folks at Chrysalis, the reaction was shock, as Benatar is happy to point out: “No, the record company definitely wasn’t expecting an album like this. They knew that we wanted to do something different, but they had no idea that we meant this,” she said with a hearty laugh.
“It’s like they passed out, and we gave them some oxygen. But once they heard it, they loved it. The thing is that we had no delusions of this style of music being readily accessible to radio.
“Sure you care about those things,” she continued, “but you can’t let it stand in front of your original motivations. I’m just going to see what happens. Right now, I’m a junkie, and I’m hooked on the blues. It’s just a different attitude and a whole other vibe all together.”
Giraldo said that although the two of them had always had battles with their record company in the past, the new regime there was onboard once they heard the finished album. “In the past, they didn’t like certain things we did; they wouldn’t like the mix on this song or they thought that song was too fast. But I think they’ve really got some great people in there right now, who understand the concept of artistic freedom.
“They love this album, which feels great because they had no idea what we were doing until we were done.”
“People loved Crimes of Passion. People always say it’s my best album, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Shit, you don’t know how good I could have sung on that record.’ I don’t think I can say that I’ve ever made an album that I’m thrilled with as a whole. That’s just the way it is with me—you’re never satisfied.”
Pat Benatar (Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)
Benatar agreed whole-heartedly with that assessment, noting past struggles with former execs who liked to dip their hands in where they didn’t belong: “It’s a different company now, because there’s been a big personnel change, and the new people don’t pretend to have anything to do with the creative end of things. They’re business people, and they know that, which wasn’t the case there in years gone by.”
That sentiment becomes clearer when the opera singer turned rock icon surprised me by saying: “I love this whole record, and it’s a rare thing for me to be satisfied with an entire album of mine. I mean, people loved Crimes of Passion [her 1980 album, which won her the first of four consecutive Grammy Awards and remains the biggest selling album of her career].
“But I just want to scream when people say that, because it was just a bunch of material that didn’t work for me, and I wasn’t happy with it because we were so rushed to make it. People always say it’s my best album, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Shit, you don’t know how good I could have sung on that record.’”
But surely the success of that record makes up for any armchair quarterbacking a decade later, no? “Well, yes, the success of an album anesthetizes that feeling,” Benatar admitted, “but it doesn’t make it better. It’s still there for all of time for people to hear.
“I don’t think I can say that I’ve ever made an album that I’m thrilled with as a whole. That’s just the way it is with me—you’re never satisfied, you can’t get it all right, so you just go for as much as you can.”
Final Thoughts
As our time together grew to a close, I asked Pat to summarize her current state of being. Having made a major upheaval to the direction of her music career while balancing the real demands of motherhood.
“I’m 38 years old,” she said at the time in 1991, “and I finally feel like I have a grip on my life, on my ability. I just feel like I’m starting out again. This album has been like a shot that cleans you out and gets your juices flowing again—you’re excited and scared at the same time. It’s given me all the things that you need to have to be creative.
“I don’t know if the rock thing is awkward for myself and others my age, but, for me, it needs to be augmented, because it’s not what it was. If I ever do go back and make albums like I did before, this experience can only make it that much better, because what I’ve learned on this project in such a short time is amazing.
“Looking back on everything, I guess this album was a natural step. Every ten years I seem to try a whole different thing.
“And, truthfully, it is out of pure admiration and extreme reverence that I made this record. This album is a personal thing, but the secondary factor involved with this project is hopefully that people who don’t know these incredibly influential musicians are going to check out the rest of their stuff.
“A lot of people don’t know about all these great blues artists who really started it all, which is amazing to me,” she said, before adding with a laugh, “I mean, it didn’t just start with Elvis Presley.”
I couldn’t think of a better way to end my latest time-travel than to pull this quote from Pat’s excellent 2010 autobiography, Between a Heart and a Rock Place. Her outlook in 1991 and what she would write in her book 20 years later clearly shows a woman who had found herself. Invincible, indeed.
“As the producer for VH1’s show Behind the Music once told me—mine is one of the only stories that doesn’t involve at least one trip to rehab. I’m proud to say that like a lot of rock & roll truisms, that whole debate about burning out or fading away is bullshit—the same crap music execs kick up to sell records and make you think that rock music only belongs to people under 30.
“A true rocker is going to do whatever the hell she wants to, whether she’s a school teacher, a CEO of a large corporation, or someone’s mommy. Because that’s what rock & roll is really about: following your passion with no apologies. Following that sound in your head that only you can hear. I believe that every step, good or bad, has been a step forward. People much smarter than I am have long agreed life’s not meant to be perfect.
“Over the past 31 years I have been a singer, a lover, a businesswoman, a daughter, a friend, a wife, a mother, and yes, sometimes even a rock star. In my journey I tried my best to honor all of these things. In the end, I suppose that’s all that’s really required. I am exactly where I want to be. The only clock that I punch is the one that I built myself.”
Here’s to building your own clock and being a rocker no matter what you do in your own life’s journey.
Ode to Neil
And, finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t include a tribute to the musical brilliance of one, Neil Giraldo. Outside of his work with his wife and musical partner, the vastly unsung guitar hero was spreading his Midas Touch throughout some of the biggest hits in the ‘80s, as well as working with the should-have-been-huge band the Del-Lords. Here’s just a very small sampling of Neil’s non-Benatar work: