Interview/article from: Mode Avantgarde (UK, 1980)

PAT BENATAR: NOBODY’S CLONE
-Ricki Amy

I caught Pat Benatar, one of America’s latest chart successes, at "The Venue", and managed to have a chat with her in a cramped little dressing room, overflowing with champagne, enormous bouquets and excited tour managers. After seeing her powerful, almost macho, stage performance, I came in looking for a statuesque Amazon. Instead, I found a small animated brunette with exquisitely dark, liquid eyes, who seemed to be making all the men in the room feel twice as tall beside her. Our conversation, in keeping with the occasion, was a little frenetic: every five minutes someone would rush up: - "Hello, congratulations…see you in Brussels…kiss, kiss, thank you, thank you, goodbye…", and from time to time people would appear with great slabs of Black Forest Gateau, greeted with cries of delight and envy from Pat: "Where DID you get THAT?"

As a result, it was a while before we could get down to the serious business of discussing Pat Benatar.

Comparisons are odious, but that hasn’t stopped the media jamming every unsuspecting female rock singer into the pecking order of the species. Pat Benatar has been compared to the best and the worst of them, and still manages to remain unruffled by such journalistic frivolities. The fact that she is the latest of the Mike Chapman protégées inevitably means that the names of Debbie Harry and Suzi Quatro (both Chapman-produced) are the first to be flung at her. I don’t know how she feels about being compared to the butch Ms Quatro, but she is not worried at being likened to the Ice Queen of New Wave…"We’re on the same wave, and she’s real good, so it’s O.K. Debbie and I know each other well because we’ve worked together on films and stuff. In fact, we’re good friends."

All the same, Pat is not just another chip off the Mike Chapman block. Her band is an attractive, competent outfit, but it is the lady who runs the show. They serve merely as a foil to the Benatar voice. Rising out of a tiny, slim frame, encased in clinging leotard and tights, it has a quality which reduces most female journalists to petulant bitchery and most male writers to weak-kneed adulation. She sings classic, full-blooded rock most of the time, full of sass and energy, flirting with her blonde Italian lead guitarist and lover with charming naivety.

Her influences? "I was into English, all-male rock bands like Led Zeppelin…Robert Plant, Roger Daltry and so on. I never listened to women singers when I was growing up – I guess that has had some effect on what I do." In fact, Pat’s charm is indisputably feminine, but "low key and laid-back I’m not. When I was a little kid I was a tomboy and used to punch boys out. But I enjoy being a female. I’m with a guy who’s a real macho type. He’s Italian, and I know who wears the pants in the family! But it’s all in good fun…a natural thing, really, as long as you don’t feel at a disadvantage."

Unlike Debbie Harry’s alter ego, Chris Stein, however, Neil Geraldo is not constantly springing up to interrupt an interview with supportive, defensive statements. He obviously feels that she can take care of herself…

Pat has also been quoted as saying: "A lot of women singers today seem to be saying ‘If you love me, then hurt me, I’ll die.’ I say, if you love me then hurt me, I’ll kick your ass." I do believe her…

A New Yorker, she is moving to Los Angeles this year, "New York is really crazy – one of the reasons I’m moving to Los Angeles is that I need to calm down." Going into films is another possibility, and screen tests are imminent, though there are no definite projects as yet. I asked her if she could see herself becoming another star on the Hollywood circuit. She burst out laughing and taking a gulp of her drink, "No! We’re definitely not Hollywood material. Such an amusing place though…because, you know, they’re really serious about it all…fur coats in the California winter and so on…we live down in the hills where it is not so crazy. Some of those people are so obnoxious you just want to smack them! But most of them are real nice when you get beyond the Hollywood façade. It’s just an attitude. Like in New York everyone goes around hustling…" She paused here to hold out her glass for another dose of Moet and Chandon and instead received another effusive farewell session. When she had recovered from this, I tried to find out how she lives offstage.

Pat’s tastes in recreation are a strange mixture of athleticism and hedonism. After assuring me that she and Neil were "kinda quiet", she went on to list watching American sports like baseball, riding, and Roller Disco as examples of the peaceful pleasures they ere into. It sounded all frighteningly energetic and healthy to me, but when it comes to food Pat is definitely not one of the nut cutlet and dandelion salad brigade. Apart from her obvious fetish for chocolate cake "I like Italian food like crazy. Neil being Italian, we eat spaghetti, lasagna, all the time, ice cream and cakes too…"

I stared in disbelief at her tiny waist.

"Oh, I don’t really gain weight, I’m too little. Apart from the odd five pounds here and there…I go on diets once in a while, but I’d die if I had to go on really heavy regimes. I do most of the cooking, Neil cooks breakfast – great omelettes, lousy coffee!" At this point she cast an envious glance at the girl devouring a wedge of gateau.

Apart from some childhood singing classes, music wasn’t in the forefront of her mind until quite recently. "I got into this through trial and error, mostly. Before that I wanted to teach." I tried to imagine Pat Benatar tenderly guiding a flock of little darlings through their education, and failed. Still, I suppose that both professions take stamina and a strong voice…"Yeah! I cold yell at those kids real loud!"

She turned professional in 1975 and was first noticed when she auditioned at New York’s major promoter for young talent, "Catch A Rising Star". Club owner Rick Newman was so struck by her charismatic voice that he booked her again and again and ended up managing her. An engagement at Tramps brought superlative reviews, a contract with Chrysalis Records and a following across America.

Pat, however, is still the opposite of arrogant on the subject of success. "I tell you, our record is in the Top Twenty in America now and I’m still not secure enough to feel it’s really happened. I think I’ll always stay a little afraid."

Was she happy feeling that insecure? "Yeah, I like it. I’d rather feel like that than be cocky about it. I don’t want to get that jaded attitude. You know – ‘I’ve been through all this before’. Being afraid keeps you going, motivated to continue. When I came over here I was petrified because we’re nowhere yet in Europe, which really makes you try harder to win people over."

This, then, is one star who does not seem in danger of an over inflated ego and ritualistic obsession with her own brittle image. She has an equally balanced attitude towards reviews, good and bad. Good ones? – "Hey, wait a minute, sounds like my father wrote that report!" Bad? – "This guy obviously hates aggressive women!"

To the music. The premiere album, "In the Heat of the Night", is a result of Pat’s desire to "do a lot of different things, to get them out of my system – old rock songs and things like that." Unfortunately, no, perhaps inevitably, this has brought criticisms of unoriginality, a sell-out to commercialism, onto Pat’s sleek head. Any hints of a reflection of the public taste is death to music critics. The maxim "Business and art. Art is business", however, springs to mind. Look at Amanda Lear. One reviewer described the hit single from the album, "Heartbreaker", as "totally predictable but as catchy as the flu". In fact, it’s a good classic rock song. Other tracks, like the idiosyncratic "My Clone Sleeps Alone", give delightful promise of the unique Benatar style, to be more fully displayed, she hopes, in the next album, where she plans to "experiment with a lot more New Wave stuff."

"I hope things go well enough so we can continue. It’s what I really want to do, and I just hope that women singers don’t become a batch thing".

I have a feeling that even if they do, Pat Benatar, her warmth, her professionalism, and that outstanding voice, will always stand out in any musical crowd.

I was tired from just watching the sheer energy of the concert. In spite of a flight to Brussels at 7 AM the following morning, Pat and her entourage ere off to celebrate their tour manager’s birthday. She managed to shout out a "Goodbye" when she left, even as she disappeared in the throng of admiring males.