Prima Donna of Rock 'n' Roll

By Michael Walsh

Fire and ice from Pat Benatar, heartbreaker

It is a transformation scene in the best Hollywood tradition. By day, the lithe, compact brunette dresses plainly in sweaters and blue jeans, and talks about her desire to settle down and raise a family. But as the heat of the night approaches, she starts to change. Her large green eyes begin to flash with fire and ice as, clad in black tights and a form-hugging tunic top, she dashes up the back stairs of a stage and into a burst of light. Hit Me with Your Best Shot, she sings to thousands of screaming fans. That precious time has arrived: Patty Andrzejewski, former cheerleader, has become Pat Benatar, the heartbreaker queen of rock 'n'roll.

For a long time, Brooklyn-born Pat Benatar thought she was going to be an opera singer. Her mother had been in the chorus at the New York City Opera, and their home resounded with classical music. In Lindenhurst, N.Y., little Patty started singing in the fourth grade, and by the age of twelve, it was obvious that she not only liked to sing, she really could sing. There was only one problem: she wanted to sing rock 'n' roll.

"I hated opera because it was my mom's music, you know?" explains Benatar, 28. "I was into pop and rock. But I never thought I was going to sing anything but classical."

In the opera house, Benatar would have been typecast as a pert soubrette because of her size (5 ft., 90 Ibs.) and high vocal range. Instead, she cracked the male-dominated rock world in a hurry. In just two years since the release of her first LP, In the Heat of the Night, she has sold 3 million singles and 7 million albums, riding her sultry, powerful voice and sexy stage demeanor to a 1981 Grammy Award.

Benatar's music is a return to rock 'n' roll's straight-ahead roots. Her best songs--Promises in the Dark, Fire and Ice, Heartbreaker--are free of the fussy overproduction that characterized so much of '70s music. They have a big beat and hummable melodies--a throwback to the '60s. But what she purveys is not nostalgia, even though she includes in her act such songs as the Beatles' Helter Skelter--"That's what we heard when we were teething," she explains. "You can't escape it."

After marriage at 19 to her high school sweetheart, Dennis Benatar, an Army draftee, Pat found herself living in Richmond and working in a bank. She had even stopped singing. "But I couldn't reconcile our poor life-style with the sight of all that money," she recalls, "and when I got the first thought of stealing it, I quit."

Determined to be a rock singer, she resumed voice lessons and began singing in local piano bars. When the couple returned to New York City, she worked in cabarets and clubs, evolving her tough-as-nails performing style. In 1978 two executives from Los Angeles-based Chrysalis Records signed her; Heartbreaker was her breakthrough single, followed the next year by her smash Hit Me with Your Best Shot. The days of living on rice and beans were over.

But along with money and fame, success has inevitably brought a loss of privacy and other discontents. "I did what I set out to do," notes Benatar, "but it's not always what I expected, and sometimes it's more than I can handle." After her divorce from Dennis in 1979, she took up with her lead guitarist, Neil Geraldo. But that relationship dissolved when the couple decided they could not handle the strain of mixing their personal and professional lives. "The performing and creative sides of rock are what I like best," says Benatar. "It's the life-style I can't get into."

Even though part of her appeal is unabashedly sensual, Benatar is a reluctant sex symbol. "Sometimes I don't want to be dark and slinky black," she says. "Sometimes I just want to be Doris Day." Given her exotic beauty (she is of Polish-Irish descent), that is unlikely, and she knows it. "I'm not trying to be cerebral out there," admits Benatar. "I try to get your blood boiling." And although she expresses a desire to get into movies, she is addicted to live performing. Soaking up the cheers of an arena full of fans, she says, gives her a unique rush. "That's why you begin and why you continue. That thing you have going with the audience--I'd die without it." --By Michael Walsh

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