PAT BENATAR was born Patricia Mae Andrzejewski on January 10, 1953 in Brooklyn. Her music training was strictly theatrical and classical. She pursued health education at SUNY Stony Brook, but dropped out after one year to marry her high school sweetheart, Dennis Benatar. She worked as a bank teller in Virginia for three years while Dennis was stationed at Fort Lee. She quit her job to pursue a career as a singer in 1973, when she was inspired by a Liza Minnelli concert.
She started out as a singing waitress and got a gig with a lounge band, Coxon’s Army, attracting enough attention to be the subject of a PBS special that never aired. The bassist of Coxon’s Army, Roger Capps, eventually became the original bass player for the Pat Benatar band.
In 1975, her big break came when she earned a call back by a comedy club owner in New York for her rendition of Judy Garland’s “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody”. The club owner, Rick Newman, eventually became her manager. She was a regular at this club for three years and recorded commercial jingles for Pepsi Cola until signing a record contract with Chrysalis Records.
In the Heat of the Night, her debut album, was released in 1979 and peaked at #12 on the Billboard 200. In 1980, she released Crimes of Passion, which peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200. The album went 5x platinum and won her four consecutive Grammy Awards for Best Female Rock Performance. The song “You Better Run” was made into a music video, and was the second video ever played on MTV.
Her third LP and most successful album, Precious Time, was released in 1981, went platinum, and hit #1 on the Billboard U.S. Top 200 LP chart. The lead single from this album, “Fire and Ice”, won her a second Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.
In 1982, Get Nervous was released as a result of her hit single, “Shadows of the Night”. This album also went platinum and earned her another Grammy.
Live From Earth (1983), her first live album, was recorded during her Get Nervous world tour. It also included two studio tracks, “Lipstick Lies” and “Love Is a Battlefield”, the second of which was one of the biggest hits of her career and won her yet another Grammy.
Tropico was released in 1984 and was Benatar’s sixth consecutive album to go platinum. During the shooting of a music video for a track on the album, she found out that she was going to be having a baby. At this point, Benatar began taking her sound to a “softer” style, in contrast to the “hard rock” style for which she was known for to this point.
Her seventh album, Seven the Hard Way (1986), went gold and is currently out of print. The title comes from the game of craps, where “the hard way” is represented by two dice with the same number. Her Eighth album, Wide Awake in Dreamland (1988), went gold as well and is also currently out of print.
True Love (1991) was classified as a Blues album, featuring the drummer and horn section from Roomful of Blues. It is a combination of original and cover tracks.
In 1993, Benatar went back to her rock sound and released her tenth album, Gravity’s Rainbow. The title comes from a novel by Thomas Pynchon. It did not have the same commercial success as her previous albums, which may have been due to the fact that Benatar had become pregnant again. This album is also out of print and was her last release on the Chrysalis label.
Innamorata (1997) was released with CMC International and produced one music video. She has not released any albums of new material since then, with the exception of one album, Go (2003).
Benatar has been touring every year since 1996, teaming up with acts such as Blondie, The Donnas, REO Speedwagon and The Bangles. She is currently on her “The Elements of Five” tour with her band and husband Neil Giraldo.
