Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo find unconventional path to chart-topping success

By Joshua Maloni

GM/Managing Editor

Forty-plus years ago, the music of Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo struck like a Mike Tyson uppercut, with their words compelling even the most stoic and hardest-hearted rock critics to exclaim “Love is a battlefield!” Her matchless mezzo-soprano voice paired with his steel-twisting guitar licks ripped a hole in the music industry and opened the door for a sound – and a style – that would help define a decade. The musical duo shook the heavens and rattled the earth with their powerful 1980s-era prose.

And today, this married force of nature – this thunder and lightning – is hard at work. …

On a children’s book.

“It's true,” Benatar said in a phone interview. “Yeah, it's coming out in 2025. We’ve been working on it just this past year, and we're in love with it. It's adorable. The artwork is beautiful. It's just about grandparents and music and their grandkids. So, it's really fun.”

Wait, what?

“It's what we do,” Benatar continued. “We have our three grandbabies, and we're with them all the time. You know, trying to get them to play piano and do all these things and get them interested in music. They're little. One’s just 5, we’ve got 4, and then the baby's turning 2. We're always doing all kinds of things with them musically, and they're always watching videos. And, ‘Grandma, is that you? Why is your hair dark?’ That kind of stuff (laughs).

“It’s just really fun; and we just thought it would be cute to write a little book about our experiences with them. And it's a beautiful, little rhyming story for kids to read.”

Adorable? Beautiful? Fun?

Now, if your mind is blown – and you’re wondering, “What next? Will Darth Vader adopt a puppy?” – consider how this musical union began. It’s then this latest chapter will make sense.

You see, “When I go in to do a record, or produce a song, I want it to be different,” Giraldo said. “Not to be different just to be different. I do it because it's my nature. It's who I am. I want it to sound different. I want to crossbreed different styles. And that's what it is.”

Going against the grain – doing the thing that nobody expects – is what first set Benatar and Giraldo apart from their peers in the late-1970s. She took a 2 a.m. open mic night slot and turned it into a record deal. Far from phoning it in at that hour of the night, she showed the world why she is a force to be reckoned with, and a singer whose sound demands to be heard.

Giraldo was the perfect producer for Benatar, because, “I don't like following (a formula),” he said. “If you notice, a lot of the songs, when they became hits, they didn't sound like the one before it. That was intentional. I did that intentionally. I wanted to push people. I wanted to challenge them.”

So, instead of repeating what worked – what was expected – from past successful singles, Giraldo and Benatar boldly declared, “We belong to the sound of the words we've both fallen under.”

“I can tell you this, that, a lot of songs when they came out, people didn't like him at first,” he said. “But it's been part of the thing I like, because, if you don't like it right away, and it grows on you, it stays with you for the rest of your life. It's like a tattoo. That's really important to me. And yeah, I intentionally did that.

“Every time I’d get ready to deliver a record, the record company would go, ‘You’re going to do the same thing you did last time, right? It's gonna be the same?’ I would go, ‘Nope. It’s going to be 100% different.’ They’d go, ‘Oh, no, why can’t you do the same thing?’ I go, ‘I'm not going to.’

“And that's kind of who I am.”

It's that kind of creative obstinacy that leads two rockers to write mild-mannered stories for children. It’s also what led the pair to two multi-Platinum records, five Platinum and three Gold albums; 19 Top 40 hits; record sales exceeding 36 million worldwide; four consecutive Grammy Awards; three American Music Awards; and a People’s Choice Award.

Neil Giraldo and Pat Benatar photo by Travis Shinn // courtesy of High Rise PR

••••••••

“Love is a Battlefield,” “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” “We Belong,” “Invincible,” “Treat Me Right,” “Fire and Ice,” “Shadows of the Night,” “Heartbreaker”: Together, Benatar and Giraldo – 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees – crafted songs that are both iconic and enduring; that, five decades later, are still featured in commercials, on TV and in movies; that are sealed in our hearts and minds, having surrounded us on first dates, weddings, never-ending summer nights, and car rides with best friends.

And despite a desire to be different musically, “I think the main thing about what works always is that they were always a good fit,” Benatar said of her songs’ substance. “They fit from the moment you heard them, from the moment you recorded them, and they were always completely spot-on in every aspect. They were what you were feeling; they were in the right key; they were the right tempo. Everything.

“There's so much that goes into it, but I think the major thing is that you can relate. And there are songs that, no matter what age you're at, no matter what part of your life you're in, the songs make sense to you. You can relate to what you're saying, the words. And this is, for me, especially – obviously, I'm the vocalist and I'm doing the talking – for me, the lyrics, everything has to make sense to me. And then for Spyder (Giraldo), everything has to make sense musically.

“You get to a point, at this point in your life, where it's a long time and you've learned so much, and you can't play things that are not at least elevated in some way. Some of those songs were elevated right from the beginning. So, even if you were young and you didn't know any better, but your intuition was good, you felt it then, because you instinctively knew. Not like you could articulate it back then. But those are the ones that still hold up.”

Just like Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo.

As part of Artpark & Company’s 50^th anniversary season celebration, Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo headlined an outdoor concert on Wednesday, July 24.

For more information on Artpark, visit www.artpark.net.