Favorite Book of 2011: Pat Benatar’s Autobiography

Pat Benatar: Between a Heart and a Rock Place
By Pat Benatar with Patsi Bale Cox
William Morrow Publishers

Singer-songwriter Pat Benatar is best known as a magnetic female rocker but she reveals in her autobiography, Between a Heart and a Rock Place, that her greatest achievement has been her family, a unit which consists of her husband, Neil “Spyder” Giraldo and their two daughters, Haley and Hana. Benatar’s career spans across three decades of surreal highs and intense lows. Now entering her fourth decade in the business, she and her husband have found an equilibrium that puts them in the unique position of doing what they want creatively and reaping the benefits of their past recordings.

Benatar’s rise was meteoric spawned by her 1979 debut album with Chrysalis Records entitled In the Heat of the Night which launched the single “Heartbreaker” now a staple in Benatar’s catalog. Her narration describes that although she received a Grammy in 1981 for Best Rock Performance by a Female, the journey to reach that peak did not happen overnight, and once she was there, the struggle for her and her husband to carve out a niche for themselves on rock ‘n’ roll’s landscape challenged their relationship and tested their endurance.

Still happily married and still performing live, albeit occasionally each year, Benatar and Giraldo have the stuff that dreams are made of. She reveals she was born in Greenpoint, Brooklyn in 1953 and raised in Lindenhurst, Long Island, a time when she was known by her birth name, Patricia Andrzejewski. Her vocal prowess was discovered by Georgia Ruel, the high school choir director while she was attending middle school. Though groomed as a classical singer, Benatar relinquished her chance to go for the brass ring after graduating in 1971 by skipping out on an audition to enroll at the Julliard School and instead married her boyfriend, Dennis Benatar, an Army man. It would not be until the mid-’70s when she would see Liza Minnelli in concert which would motivate her to pursue a singing career. The rest is history.

By the late ’70s, she returned to New York City booking gigs around town. Her happiest time was at a club called Catch a Rising Star, owned and operated by Rick Newman who would become her manager. It was during her time with Newman that her career took off. Newman organized a showcase for her at the club, the old way in which artists were discovered by record companies. Chrysalis’ people were the only takers and Benatar, new to the game, jumped at the chance of being on their roster in the wake of the label’s success with their artist Blondie.

Benatar goes into detail about how the record producer, Mike Chapman, brought Neil “Spyder” Giraldo on board, the man whom she knew from the first moment she met him would be the father of her children. She also explains how the label executives bullied them, coerced them, and mistreated them, not only Benatar and Giraldo but also the rest of her band which included at the time bass guitarist Roger “Zel” Capp, rhythm guitarist Scott Sheets, Giraldo’s high school mate Myron Grombacher on drums, and keyboardist Charlie Giordano.

At a certain point, she depicted herself as a junkyard dog chained to a metal fence. It’s worth mentioning her confrontation with Chrysalis’ top guy, Terry Ellis, who told her, “I hope you don’t think people are actually coming to your concerts to listen to you sing?” Her response was a burst of expletives followed by a slap across his face. Today, Benatar is popularly known for her vocals and having a catalog of great songs, which she credits to her husband’s instincts for melodic song structures.

She was there at the start of MTV Networks and when digital recording was on the brink of widespread usage. She was there when corporate takeovers were prevalent and Chrysalis was absorbed by EMI/Capitol Records, and when the Lilith Fair was a vehicle for burgeoning female artists. Her observations and perceptions are insightful and make her life relatable to people living outside of her sphere.

One of her most moving tales is when a concert promoter pressured her to play a show on September 11, 2001 after the attacks on Washington, D.C. and New York City. She performed when the fans reached out to her and showed they wanted her to perform. She began the show with ” America, The Beautiful” followed by her track “Invincible.” The reader becomes aware of how sleezy radio deejays can be, how shallow record label executives are, and how one-sided concert promoters treat artists.

Benatar sticks to the facts in her tales and continually sees the other person’s side in a conflict or disagreement, which is a rare quality in people. She takes the reader through the events and conditions that influenced the changes in her life, and lays them them all out in a chronological scheme. Fans of Benatar will discover Giraldo’s impact on her life which had been shielded in the past. People just discovering her music have a front row seat to a transitional period that changed the role of female rockers in the music industry forever.

Benatar’s autobiography is not only a good read for its conversational manner, but for its mentorship voicing. Whether the reader is entering the music business or another profession, Benatar’s tales are educational and informative not only about the sheltered world she is in, but also about the world around her. She shows how she developed a coping mechanism to deal with reality on a regular basis, and how she sharpened it over the years. She sounds happy about the person she has become and has no regrets about the direction of her life. Benatar’s autobiography is a retrospective not only about the music business in the ’80s, but also about making choices and living up to one’s potential. It is my favorite book of 2011.


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