Superlatives
A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers.
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Well, it was cut along with a blazing performance of All Fired Up that preceded the remarks.
I was being a smart-ass.
They made me wait 20 years.
This is really important for everyone to know, Benatar says.
This is an adaptation, and all of the songs have been reorchestrated into theatrical pieces.
Youll recognize them, but you wont hear them in ways that youre used to hearing them.
Career-defining song
There are so many songs that have so much importance.
We Live for Love is the first song thatSpyderand I worked on together.
He wrote it, and he says its always been for me.
Promises in the Dark was the first song that we wrote together, so thats very important.
Hell Is for Children is monstrously important for the impact it had and the good it did.
I wanted a band, a partner.
I didnt want to be a solo female artist standing up in front of everybody.
Like Robert Plant and Jimmy Page I wanted that kind of relationship.
Heartbreaker was the song that initiated everything, because we played it together first.
It was the first song we recorded, and it was the first song Spyder played.
I knew it right then.
That added, really, to the clandestine thing of meeting Spyder.
Besides knowing, musically, this was the person, he was romantically and emotionally the person for me.
I was madly in love with him on so many levels from the first moment I saw him.
We always have at least four or five of those monsters on an album.
Then we have our lovely ballads, which are sometimes anthemic.
Invincible is massive, especially now because of the Me Too movement.
Ive been a liberated brat all my life.
Im the total female-empowerment girl.
I send it out to all my sisters always.
They can pick for whatever reason how they want to be invincible.
Im out there bashing, and its what I love to do.
Most defiant song
Invincible and Heartbreaker.
Those two are the most ferocious in attitude when theyre being performed.
I mean, everything is heavy and always attacked with such ferocity.
Because if I couldnt point, I wouldnt have a gig.
You know what I mean?
Im the one looking at everybody all the time and pointing.
I dont think that you’ve got the option to learn or fabricate that jot down of defiance.
Ive always been just a little absurd.
Even when I was little.
I lived on a block with mostly boys.
I was raised in a sweet community that was really working class.
Most of the kids I went to school with their fathers were laborers.
My father was a sheet-metal worker.
My mother was a hairdresser, and their fathers were clammers.
This was not even moderately well-to-do.
I was a nice girl growing up polite and very studious.
But outside, I was toeing the line.
It was scary, because it was not really acceptable at the time.
This was before the 60s even started.
When the womens movement began, I gravitated to it immediately.
I read everything that Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem were writing.
It finally sounded like something I could relate to.
Now I didnt exactly know how to implement this.
Somewhere along the line, I decided that was enough.
I started to feel like it was getting more acceptable to be like this as a woman.
We moved to South Carolina and Virginia, since it was the Army, and people were such assholes.
They had a floating staircase in the bank.
Im new, and I dont know anything.
They made me the head teller.
Im 20 years old, walking up and down the staircase every day to the break room upstairs.
The loan officers, who were all men, sat under the open staircase.
There was a dress code.
Women werent allowed to wear pants.
So I got the girls together one day and I go, This is bullshit.
Were going to tell them the dress code has to change or theyve got to get a new staircase.
So I said, Really?
Because you know whats going to happen?
Im going to go to the RichmondTimes-Dispatchand tell them about this conversation.
Are you ready to do that?
So it started all that pushing and being pushed.
I got the idea that every time you did something like that, it empowers you.
I mean, I wasnt thinking of a global plan.
I was thinking of myself personally.
The country was ready.
It was just kismet.
Song that features your most aggressive vocals
There are other songs that are subtly aggressive.
People should think on their own.
But I have my veiled ways of putting things into songs.
Theres a song called Purgatory.
Its about the Second World War when DDT was invented to help.
It did a lot of great things.
It weakened malaria and typhus.
But they didnt ban it until 1972.
Purgatory isnt aggressive in the sense that its loud and big, but the sentiment in it is.
It says we will be the forgotten ones.
They will shake their heads and pity us.
We sacrifice our sons and daughters with the sweet taste of victory on our lips.
Its about winning the war, coming home, and still fucking it up.
With my aggressive stage presence, I was singing atCatch a Rising Staruntil I got signed.
I went for an open-mic night in 1975, and I stayed until 1978.
Robin Williams, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, and Billy Crystal were all there performing.
I was working with songwriters trying to get a grip.
I was doing really well, but something was still missing.
Im a sci-fi lunatic.
Sci-fi is my absolute favorite thing.
There was this really terrible movie calledCat-Women of the Moon, and it was a grade-F movie.
But the costumes were incredible.
They wore black tights and what looked like leotards.
And they had big catlike eye makeup and ray guns.
Thats what I wore to go to Cafe Figaro.
I won the costume contest.
Then we went back up to Catch a Rising Star at three in the morning and performed in costume.
So I went up in this little leotard with black tights and short boots and big eye makeup.
I always wore makeup but not like that.
I sang the same songs that Id performed for two years, and the audience went insane.
I remember standing there going,Whats happening here?
Is it too late?So I did it again the next night toned down.
The same thing happened.
I did this for ten subsequent nights, and I thought,Thats it.
I cracked it.The audience changed how they reacted.
But now I had it on the outside.
It looked like what it felt like.
It looked like,Oh, shes a nice girl up there singing.
So then the other thing came out.
I always call it her to this day.
I call it her, because shes my other person.
Shes Pat Benatar, and Im Pat Giraldo.
Its like being civil.
Its kind of fun.
Song that youve outgrown
Theres a few.
Its not because theyre not good.
Its because the lyrics seem pedestrian to me or they seem too juvenile.
Hit Me With Your Best Shot is really difficult for me now.
I just want to clarify this: I stopped performing it for multiple reasons.
Its too juvenile for me to sing.
People get angry when I say this, but theyve got to understand that you have to believe it.
I cant do that.
Thats just sacrilegious to me.
Im not saying I wont find it again.
Fire and Ice is another one.
I cant sing, You come on like a flame, and you turn a cold shoulder.
I mean, I just cant say those words.
Hit Me With Your Best Shot is a special case.
Its a fabulous song.
The interpretation of it has changed for me because of what has happened with all the mass shootings.
Fire away, if youve lost a child.
Im not equating this with gun violence.
I know the songs not about gun violence.
Lets not be stupid.
But for me to physically have to say the words, Hit me with your best shot.
Fire away I cant find the place to make that okay.
Can I just take a year break while I sort this out?
Youre so grateful, and you just cant wait to begin.
So when youre doing that first record, everything is new.
You dont know what to be afraid of.
You dont know what the pitfalls are.
You have no opinion.
Its so open and free.
you’re able to do anything you want, because you dont know any better.
The hardest record to make was probably the second one,Crimes of Passion.
The sophomore curse, of course.
Everyones making you crazy, but youre not crazy.
Inside, youre cool.
All of your band members youre all good and writing songs.
Then they go back and forth, back and forth.
Making music is just like any other art form.
Its a living thing.
It needs to be influenced by everything thats happening to you.
You have to be participating in the universe.
And sometimes, the universe goes fucking south.
Its like, shit happens.
Youre just a person, for Gods sake.
Good, bad, ugly I dont care.
I want all of it.
The next album that was really impactful wasTrue Love, because at that point, Id had enough.
It was around 1989.
I was like,Enough!
We were completely morphing into a much broader, thoughtful, insightful, beautiful, and well-rounded life.
It wasnt just about music and rocking.
I was becoming really disillusioned, and I wasnt happy.
So I talked to Spyder about how maybe we should …
Lets just do this last record, then Id like to take a really long break or possibly retire.
Maybe Ill go back to doing theater.
He said, No, no, no, no, no.
Ive been wanting to do a jump blues record forever.
And Im like, What the fuck?
Are you insane now?
But this is what we listen to in our house.
This is inside my blood every day blasting Sonny Boy Williamson and everybody all the time.
So he convinced me to do it, and it was one of the best things we ever did.
First of all, it was really fun.
Second, it kick-started my enthusiasm again to go back in and start recording.
How many record executives you threw out of your house for being assholes
Several.
Every day, it was an ongoing thing.
I would be at a board meeting and just sold five million records.
Think about it: You were their biggest-selling artist.
You had all the power.
Youd be in the meeting, and there would be one other woman in there.
She would be publicity, and everybody else would be a dude.
Spyder hated going to these things.
So you realize that you have just made them gazillions of dollars.
And you would sit there, and they would be talking about, say, the album art.
Then someone inevitably would ask, What are you going to wear?
you’re free to feel this burning on your back their eyeballs.
I would turn around, and they were all looking at my ass.
Id be like, Are you fucking kidding me?
So this was great ammunition.
I was so crazy.
You Better Run was one of the first videos played on MTV.
The web connection came to us with the pitch.
It was very exciting, but the boys were like, Were not doing that.
And Im like, Come on, this is a great way to get the songs in another venue.
We should do this.
Because at that point, the only way anyone ever saw you was live.
Being the entrepreneurial human I am, this made sense to me.
I didnt see anything wrong with this as long as we did what we did.
So they brought us to this warehouse in New York.
Nobody knows what theyre doing.
All we know is were going to film a live performance of You Better Run.
The director is a film director.
I look at Spyder, and I say, Excuse me?
Im not a runway model.
Im not going to go.
What are you talking about?
Out with the wind machine.
So the attitude in You Better Run came right after that conversation.
Because I was like, What the fuck?
Im going to be prancing around like I was a runway model.
No offense to them.
Im just saying that Im not that.
This guys going to turn a wind machine on, because thats what you think I do.
I would try some ideas out, I mean, because Im game.
But the guys never loved it.
After we did Shadows of the Night, historical costumes werebanned forever.
The definition of the song, or what peoples definitions of the song is, stays solid.
Thats fine for them, but its not fine for me.
It closes everything down.
It changes the meaning.
Thats what13 Going on 30did for me.
Thatsthe spark.If it happens organically, which it must, thats what gives you the inspiration to continue.
