Pat Benatar Biography

Pat Benatar (born Patricia Mae Andrzejewski on January 10, 1953) is an American rock singer.

Famous for her hit song "Love is a Battlefield", she was born in Brooklyn to a Polish-Irish family and grew up in Lindenhurst, New York. She initially studied voice and opera, following in the footsteps of her mother. [1] She graduated from Lindenhurst High School in 1971, and in 1972 she married her high school sweetheart, Dennis T. Benatar, providing her the surname with which she became famous. She immediately moved to Richmond, Virginia with her husband, where she worked as a bank clerk and sang gigs at night.[2]. She and her husband moved to New York in 1975 where they were soon divorced.

Benatar then began to pursue her singing career in earnest. She was discovered at an amateur-night contest in the New York City comedy club Catch a Rising Star in 1977. After performing successfully several times at the club, Benatar finally found her onstage persona in the form of a wild Halloween costume which she had worn as a joke. In several interviews, Benatar recounted her realization for the new audience reaction: "The crowd was always polite, but this time they went out of their minds," Benatar would later report. "It was the same songs, sung the same way, and I thought, 'Oh my god...it's these clothes and this makeup!'" Because of that performance, she was signed to Chrysalis Records by its founder Terry Ellis. [3]

Benatar married her lead guitarist Neil Giraldo in 1982, and they have two daughters, Haley and Hana.

She amassed a sizeable run of hit albums and singles in the 1980s, including "Heartbreaker", "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", "You Better Run", "Hell is For Children", and a cover of John Mellencamp's "I Need A Lover". Benatar had a reputation for writing about 'tough' subject matter, having recorded a significant amount of songs with a "battle" metaphor (such as "Invincible", "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", "Sex as a Weapon", "Fight it Out", and "Love is a Battlefield") and harsh subjects such as child abuse ("Hell is for Children", "Suffer the Little Children"). As her career progressed, her sound mellowed a bit from hard rock to more atmospheric pop songs ("Love is a Battlefield" and "We Belong".)

She won four consecutive Grammy Awards for "Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female" from 1980 to 1983, and was nominated four additional times in 1985, 1986, 1988, and 1989.

She will be inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2007.

Although billed as a solo artist, Benatar recorded and toured with a consistent set of band members over most of her career, who contributed greatly to the writing and producing of songs and are recognizable characters on album photos and in many of her music videos.

Benatar still writes and tours with her husband.

In the summer of 2005, the couple's older daughter, Haley Giraldo, starred in E!'s reality TV series, Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive.