by Pat Benatar
The success of my live shows highlighted that whatever was working live clearly wasn’t coming across in those demos. Finally Newman decided that it was time to showcase me for labels, to let them see the onstage energy I projected. We held it downtown at one of the city’s best-known clubs, a place called Tramps, on Fifteenth Street. It was the kind of place where up-and-comers debuted and established players went to showcase new material. Newman ran around getting people to promise that they’d be there, and every friend and relative I had showed up. The showcase would be for two nights, and I should have felt tremendous pressure about the whole thing—not only were we paying for the show but sometimes in the music business, you get one shot. If you pull those label people out, you better be prepared to deliver. But I knew that I would put on a good show. It wasn’t arrogance. I had worked for three years for this day and I was confident I was ready.
The first night my set list ranged from Roy Orbison’s “Crying” to the Rascals’ “You Better Run” to a reggae version of “Stairway to Heaven.” The crowd ate it up, partially because the entire room was filled with my friends and family. The one label representative I met that night was Jeff “Buzzard” Aldridge from Chrysalis, who loved it. And one music critic in attendance really loved it. This will tell you the power of the press back then: Carl Arrington from the New York Post wrote a rave review about the show—the kind of accolades normally associated with parental adulation or eulogies. The next night people were lined up around the block for my set. It was insane. On that second night of the showcase, five different record labels came to the show, all because of the Post review. Buzzard was back, and after the show he brought Terry Ellis and Chris Wright, the founders of Chrysalis Records, backstage to meet me. Suddenly all of the record companies who had passed were interested.
The very next day I started meeting with record labels. But having already met Terry, Chris, and Buzzard, I really felt like I wanted to sign with them. It was a smaller label, which was very appealing to me, since it meant I might get more personal attention than at the giants. After one meeting with Terry and Chris, I was signed to Chrysalis, unprepared but on my way.
What I didn’t know was that the contract I signed practically made me an indentured servant. Because Newman hadn’t managed a singer before, he didn’t know what to be on the lookout for. As a result, neither one of us really knew what was necessary to protect me. From the day I first signed on that dotted line, I felt like I was playing catch-up, learning on the fly as I tried to follow the record label’s rules.
At that first meeting with Terry and Chris, I explained what I wanted to accomplish, trying to describe for them the hard-rock sound that I’d been working to articulate but had yet to achieve. Though they’d liked what they’d heard and seen at the showcase, they were intrigued by my idea. The thought of having a female front person who could compete with male rockers, filling arenas, selling massive amounts of records, was unheard-of. Female pop singers, yes, of course, but a solo female rocker? There wasn’t anything like that out there. The cash registers in their heads were chiming.
The fact that they’d had such success with Blondie only made them salivate more, and oddly enough, one of the first things they threw my way after signing with them was the chance to take a small part in an independent movie called Union City that Debbie Harry was also in. I showed up on the set, and over the course of making it, Debbie and I ended up spending a few days together. From the start, I really liked her. She was everything I wasn’t—quirky in the best sort of way and definitely part of the New York art crowd, a group I admired and whose libertine lifestyle I enjoyed vicariously. She was crazy yet sweet as could be. The movie itself was a bizarre little thing, and I’m only really in it for a minute, but the whole experience just made me bat my wide eyes in disbelief at where I was standing. I was hungrier than ever to find that sound, my sound.
As it turned out, Chrysalis desperately wanted me to find that sound too, and they thought they knew how to get it. They assembled a group of New York’s finest session players, Paul Shaffer (later of David Letterman’s band) among them, and hired a successful producer named Ron Dante. With this pedigree, everyone thought we were off to a great start. The label had given me a song called “Heartbreaker” that we were pitched through the Chrysalis A&R department. It was written by a couple of British guys, Geoff Gill and Clint Wade, and though it was obviously a strong starting point, the original lyrics had too many English colloquialisms that an American audience wouldn’t understand. The record label worried that it wouldn’t fly with American listeners and asked me to rewrite some of the lyrics.
In spite of these promising beginnings, the sessions were a disaster. Everything was wrong. The tracks were played technically well, but they had no soul, no passion. The music was so uninspiring that I couldn’t conjure any fire in the vocals. We had “Heartbreaker,” for God’s sake! But the recordings were a fiasco. I cried for days, saying that I was finished before I’d even started.
After listening to the sessions, Chrysalis determined that they’d been a little hasty jumping on my “female rocker bandwagon.” They had a new plan. They had seen a “great vocalist” on that stage at Tramps, a technical singer who also knew how to work the crowd. They had determined that female singers were easier to market as solo artists, and marketing niches usually trump all else. They’d bring in the great producer Mike Chapman, who was working wonders with two other acts on their label, the Knack and Blondie. I’d be a pop star or a New Wave singer. See, all better.
But when I met with Chapman, the opposite thing happened. He got it. He knew exactly what I had been talking about. He started suggesting songs like “No You Don’t” and “I Need a Lover.” I was instantly drawn to “I Need a Lover,” a song that John Mellencamp (“Johnny Cougar” back then) had first released as a single. While it didn’t do much in the U.S., it went to number 1 in Australia. Mellencamp included it on his next record, and it charted in the U.S. It was exactly the kind of material I was looking for. The idea of singing that lyric from a female point of view was perfect. Chapman also thought “Heartbreaker” was the ideal vehicle for me lyrically and that the sentiment it exuded was spot-on. We both agreed that there wasn’t any female out there shoving that kind of message in your face.
Now all we had to do was get those tracks to rock. Not someone’s idea of how a “girl” would rock, but the real thing—only sung by a female. Chapman even thought he had an idea about where I could find that elusive guitar-playing partner I so desperately wanted.
I’M JUST GOING TO put this out there once and for all: without Neil Giraldo (or “Spyder,” as I’d later dub him), my career would not have happened. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have had any success as the pop princess Chrysalis wanted. But I never would have succeeded to the degree I did, made strides for women, been part of the eighties rock movement, had my face on MTV, won four Grammys, sold millions of records, and still been around thirty years later without the genius and heart of that man.
Because I am not responsible for it; we are responsible for it, all of it. From the moment he stepped into the room at SIR, our lives changed—first musically, and later romantically and spiritually. We were each other’s muse. It was like we had each been missing a part and when we met, we were finally whole, connected on a primal level. The sexual tension between us and the instant musical compatibility was intoxicating. The creativity that flowed was unstoppable. And even though I was crazy for him from the moment he walked into SIR’s rehearsal hall, Spyder and I did not become a couple at first. We had music to make.
From the moment we first started collaborating, I knew Spyder was a visionary. His mind never stopped. He was constantly experimenting and trying new things, yet he knew precisely what needed to be pushed farther and what needed to be discarded. It was exactly what I’d been missing. That’s not to say I had no vision, but I was such a grounded person. A lot of that had to do with my musical upbringing. There wasn’
t much room in classical music to go crazy or experiment. Your main job was to deliver what had been written in a precise and technically perfect way. Artistry was valued over innovation. Spyder was the perfect counterpart to my organized, by-the-book self. He’d get these out-there ideas, and I’d make them palatable to human beings. Together we worked beautifully.
The fact that we meshed so well was surprising given how different our musical backgrounds were. His experience was the antithesis of mine. Unlike me, Spyder grew up in rock and roll and spent his entire musical life playing it. He came from a Sicilian-Czech family from Parma, Ohio, just outside Cleveland. In the beginning, he’d balked at playing music. His sister played accordion, which his mother (from the Czech side of the family) loved. But Mrs. Giraldo thought that for family gatherings on a Sunday afternoon, the accordion would sound better backed with an acoustic guitar. Spyder was natural musician and a great acoustic player, but he had no real interest in the whole thing until his uncle stepped in.
Uncle Timmy was much younger than Spyder’s mom, and he was a rocker. Timmy was into the Stones, Zeppelin, and Hendrix, and being only four years older than Spyder, he helped bridge the generation gap. After listening to Spyder play acoustically and gripe about it, his father bought him an amp, but once his Uncle Timmy showed Spyder how to turn that amp all the way up, all hell broke loose. Nobody ever had to tell him to practice again. Music was his entire universe. While I was practicing arias, he was finding new ways to bend the strings on his guitar and turning his amps up to “eleven.” At fourteen, he was sneaking in back doors to play in clubs, and this prolonged exposure to the fringe of rock had pushed his musical taste and creative sensibility far left of my own.
I’ll say this about Cleveland: that city is rock and roll. Those people love music to the point of being insane. They’re crazy. Spyder says it’s because it gets so cold there, that Cleveland has the worst weather in America. People out scraping the ice off their cars in 4-degree weather don’t complain like some of us do. They’ve got to get to the steel mills to get to work. Cleveland ain’t Hollywood. It ain’t foo-foo. They need something to distract them. So they play football and they rock. The music they make is gritty. You’re not going to find that scene anywhere else.
Spyder’s connection to Mike Chapman came through his work with Rick Derringer. In 1978, Rick was getting ready to go on the road to promote his new album, If I Weren’t So Romantic, I’d Shoot You. Rick held auditions to replace his guitar player, who quit just before the tour. Out of the two hundred players who showed up, Spyder was chosen. The gig was perfect for him because Mike Chapman, the album’s producer, had put keyboards on the project, and Spyder was a multi-instrumentalist.
When Chapman came out on the road and heard the band, he was sold on Spyder’s fierce and innovative approach, as well as his understanding of the songs. Chapman also loved how aggressive Spyder was on the stage. After working out so well on the road, Spyder played on Rick’s next record, Guitars and Women. Just about the time they finished up recording, Chapman was brought in on my project.
From the beginning, Chapman thought that what I needed was a guitar player who had a good feel for the structure of songs, who came at music from an organic place instead of just playing along on whatever someone handed him. That fit Spyder perfectly, and as I watched him play guitar on that first day, I knew he was the right one.
Buzzard watched my face while Spyder played, and as Spyder finished, Buzzard lifted me up, walked over to where Spyder was sitting, and plopped me right in his lap.
“He’s our guy!” Buzzard announced.
Buzzard didn’t know the half of it. I was embarrassed and furious; I was never that transparent with my feelings. More than Spyder’s guitar playing had hit me in the gut. Spyder later told me that he too felt an instant attraction, but they had told him I was married and he was in a relationship himself, so he put those initial feelings aside (of course, he could just be saying that so I don’t look like a lovesick dog). Regardless of the attraction, he’d felt a good vibe between us, good enough to know we could work together on a record. That was how I saw it, too. But my head was simultaneously in the clouds.
My relationship with Dennis was disintegrating, and I knew that this meeting was the motivation I needed to get serious about my divorce. I went straight back to my apartment and called my best friend, Cynthia Zimmer.
“I met the father of my children today,” I announced.
She exploded. “Jesus Christ! Are you crazy? You’re just now trying to get a divorce! Give me a break. Live alone for a little while! Don’t be a dumbass!”
“No, you don’t understand. This man is going to be the father of my children.”
“It’s 1979, you don’t have to marry him to sleep with him!”
“That is not gonna happen. I won’t be able to get this man out of my system.”
“Dumbass.”
With Spyder signed on, we started making plans to record the first record, In the Heat of the Night, in Los Angeles. In the beginning, Chrysalis was infatuated with Spyder. He was miles ahead of me in terms of recording experience. They were relieved that they didn’t have to spoon-feed the novice every step of the way. He’d do that for them. He quickly became the guy who was getting it done. They stood by his decisions, especially when it came to the band. Roger “Zel” Capps had been playing with me since the Richmond days. He’d been the bassist for Coxon’s Army, and he’d actually moved to New York when I did. We’d been playing together in the city ever since. I was comfortable working with him, and Spyder liked his playing. But Chrysalis wanted him gone.
“He’s been playing in lounge bands with her,” they protested.
“That doesn’t matter, I’ll get him rockin’,” Spyder countered. “Pat’s worked with him and she likes him. He’s a nice guy who will be easy to have around on the road. And besides, she should have someone in the band who’s been with her from the beginning. He also sings backup.”
Chrysalis went along with him. And so we auditioned more players and got the band together. After we got Zel on board for bass and backing vocals, we hired a drummer, Glen Alexander Hamilton, and a rhythm guitarist, Scott St. Clair Sheets. Spyder would play lead and slide guitars and keyboards. Then we set off to California to make a record at MCA Whitney in Glendale.
As much as we were thrown together and I was incredibly attracted to him, I didn’t look to make it anything more than just infatuation while we were making the record. For one thing, when I’d met him, he was dating the actress Linda Blair. I wouldn’t have tried to split up a couple, whether they were married or merely dating. But it was hard to control myself. It was torture. I’d never had such a chemical reaction to anyone before. But it was more than that. We were connected on every level.
Some mornings he’d pick me up to drive me to the studio. When it came to his car, he was “relaxed” about neatness, which ordinarily would drive me crazy. Cleanliness and organization were always a big deal to me, and I was the kind of person who couldn’t go to sleep if there was a spoon in the sink. Spyder would open the door and a mixture of burger wrappers and paper cups would come spilling out onto the pavement. He’d knock a bunch of papers off the passenger seat and onto the floor so that I could sit down. His ashtray was overflowing with cigarette butts. And yet somehow, I never saw any of that; I saw only him.
Sitting so close to him in the car was the most intense time of my days recording that album. I’d sneak looks at him while he was driving and think about how good he smelled. Whatever it was—cologne, shampoo—it drove me nuts. This was so unlike me. I was always in control of my emotions. I was never the pursuer, always pursued. He short-circuited all of that, and my mind went crazy.
I’m gonna die. I am so in love with this man. I’m gonna kill myself if this doesn’t happen. I’m gonna kill him. And there’s Linda Blair. I might kill her.
So while I was busy plotting to kill Linda Blair, Spyder was busy getting the sound of the
record right.
Still, we kept it professional during the recording. We worked in the studio eighteen hours a day. I’d never been to L.A. before, but there was little time for socializing or hitting the L.A. scene. It was round-the-clock recording. One of the first things Spyder told me was that my instincts had been right all along—everything depended on me having the right sound, the right direction, and the right players. What I needed was a band where the bed of the music was aggressive and strong, a band that would push me to sing harder, tougher. As he says, I needed a Sicilian guitar player from Cleveland to dirty it up some.
And when Spyder made that sound a reality, I thought the very same thing I’d thought a few years back at the Liza Minnelli concert: I can do that.
I’d had it in me all the time, but it was Spyder who let it out.
Spyder understood that my classical training could be either a plus or a minus, and maybe both. I was always going to have that range and clear quality to my voice, because I’d spent years training for five and six hours a day. Whereas most rock musicians might see that vocal clarity as a detriment, he actually thought the contrast of pristine vocals with hard-edged playing would be unstoppable—the unique combination we needed to produce a powerful sound.
What we both heard was unmistakable: with the right music behind me, I could go head to head with any rocker and still have the years of classical training help me with both stretch and stamina. What I really had to put behind me was the time I’d spent singing covers of Ronstadt and Streisand. I literally stopped listening to all music while I was recording that first album, because I was still very impressionable musically. If I listened to Linda Ronstadt, I might put some of her vocal mannerisms into a song. The same thing went for Chrissie Hynde, whom I admired vocally and didn’t dare listen to before I went in to record. I avoided listening to even the male singers I loved, just to make sure that what I was doing was me and not outside influences.