Between a Heart and a Rock Place

by Pat Benatar

  By the time they announced the nominees for Best Rock Performance, Female, my headache was gone. I think it was the kid in me, the excitement, the anticipation. I was completely caught up in the whole thing. There was something incredibly satisfying about knowing that even after all the crap Chrysalis had done to make life hell, they couldn’t spoil this moment. I’d found a way to keep the joy of it all locked away in a safe place, somewhere they couldn’t touch. They read the names of the nominees: Grace Slick for Dreams, Marianne Faithfull for Broken English, Joan Armatrading for How Cruel, Linda Ronstadt for “How Do I Make You,” and Pat Benatar for Crimes of Passion. They took the winner’s envelope and opened it. “And the—”

  “Don’t be mad if I don’t win,” I whispered to Rick.

  “—winner is Pat Benatar, Crimes of Passion!”

  I bolted out of that chair like there was a spring up my butt. I went flying up to the podium, all worries about being seen as a sellout gone. I was so thrilled.

  I was hyperventilating. All plans of being übercool and nonchalant vanished as soon as I heard my name. Looking back on it now, I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I’m pretty sure I gushed—not exactly Sally Field’s “You like me” speech, but probably close. Then, when I walked offstage, I took a real look at the award. It was set on a wooden block, but the little Victrola was plastic. I remember thinking, Wow, plastic! That’s kind of chintzy!

  Chintzy, maybe. But thrilling nonetheless.

  CRIMES OF PASSION WAS still a top ten album in the spring of 1981 when Chrysalis started pushing us to get back into the studio for a new record. It was insane to think that we had to make a third album while the second one was still being promoted. We should have used the leverage we’d gained from Crimes of Passion, taken control, and avoided jumping right back into the studio. But once again Chrysalis invoked the suspension clause of our contract. They had the right to request a new record even though we were still promoting the last one. At least we were starting from a small base of material. We had a few songs that had been recorded but not used on the second record that we planned on carrying over to the new project. Unbelievably Chrysalis brought Keith Olsen back in to produce; however, this time they offered Spyder co-production, with producer credit and full pay. While Chrysalis had fought us every step of the way about giving Spyder credit, the irony was that they saw the talent that he had for producing. They loved his actual input, which was why it was so mystifying that they didn’t want to acknowledge his contribution. Depending on how you looked at it, this was either a peace offering or a consolation prize, but it didn’t hurt that he got his own attorney.

  Even still, there was a lot of tension. Keith clearly had been forced to give Spyder the production credit and he was not happy about it. As a result, he did even less than he had on Crimes of Passion. On that record he at least had a façade of involvement. This time he was much more blatant about checking out. His attitude toward Spyder was basically, “You want to co-produce? Have fun, I’m outta here.” In all honesty, we were glad. At least this time it was more up-front, and we knew how to react. Things ran much smoother in his absence.

  The strange thing about recording this third album, Precious Time, was that I felt little of the pressure I’d experienced during the making of Crimes of Passion. With Crimes of Passion, I felt like I had to do something to top In the Heat of the Night and “Heartbreaker.” Now, even with the strength of Crimes of Passion, I felt easier about the whole process. I had a lot of faith in the routine and collaboration we’d established on the first two albums, and now that Spyder’s role in the process was clearly defined, things would move even more smoothly. Not to mention that the confidence that came from multiple successes was immeasurable. It wasn’t that we were arrogant, but we finally trusted ourselves—no small thing in a business where instincts are usually the difference between a good record and a great one.

  From day one, it was evident that Spyder appreciated going into the process on equal footing instead of simply being the lifesaver. As usual, he busted his ass in the studio. He was a perfectionist, sometimes recutting a song time and again before he was satisfied. The one time that Spyder’s state of mind showed up on the album was on the reggae-flavored song “It’s a Tuff Life.” Here’s how he explained it: “I really didn’t like the things that were going on in Southern California at the time. More of the same hollow excess that seemed to permeate every aspect of the record business. Reggae seemed to fit the lyric—You thought you’d move to Jamaica, so you packed your bags and headed south to get an even tan, But you didn’t count on the rain.”

  I wrote more melodies on this album. I was sometimes reluctant to go for the melody because Spyder was so good at it. However, with “Promises in the Dark,” I put together the whole melody with the exception of the bridge, though I was so new to songwriting that I wasn’t at all confident about my skills. I was also embarrassed to write about anything personal; most of what I’d previously written was more observational. But this song was about our relationship. When I’d first written the lyrics, Spyder was working in the music room in our house, and I was so nervous to share them that I literally slipped them under the door and walked away. When I came back he told me how much he liked what I’d done, and we immediately began constructing the song. This became our writing process, with one of us beginning an idea and giving it to the other one, then stepping away so that the other could put all the ideas together to complete the song.

  The end result was a record that was more contemplative, more reflective, than either of the first two. Some of the songs are very long—but it’s been called a masterpiece of layered, explosive rock and roll. And while the label worried about the length of some songs, they primarily cared that they had a couple of strong radio songs. They found them in “Fire and Ice” and “Promises in the Dark.”

  The recording, though, had taken its toll. By the time we’d finished the record, we were ready to move from the house in Tarzana, but both of us were unhappy—not as much with each other as with the situation. For such a long time, I would have laughed at the idea of anything coming between Spyder and me. Then one day, in the middle of our tour, Spyder sat me down and when he started talking, his words froze me.

  “I love you so much, and I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with you. I thought we were going to make a family together.” He paused just long enough for me to fear the words that would follow. “But you know what? It’s just too hard. It’s killing me.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I can’t do this anymore.”

  I tried to talk to him, but he was adamant. He was getting killed emotionally. He said that he wasn’t coming with me when I moved, that we’d still stay close and we’d keep the band together. But he just had to separate himself from the relationship.

  I couldn’t believe that this was actually happening, and I had no idea how it had gotten to that point. I felt I had no choice but to go ahead and move. I bought a house in a gated community there in Tarzana, and in February of 1981 I moved in alone. I knew that we were meant to be together, but the situation had driven a wedge between us—a wedge that it didn’t seem we could move past.

  In a little over six months I’d hit just about every high and low imaginable. The euphoria of having a bestselling record was now tainted by my crumbling relationship. I was devastated—pushed to the brink of a nervous breakdown. This was the man I planned to spend the rest of my life with, to have my children with. We had it all planned. Now there was no plan. Except that we would make this band work.

  When we were in Los Angeles, Spyder came over every night for dinner. We talked about music, about what the album was doing. We talked about upcoming shows. We made small talk. But there was no outward display of emotion. It was like we were back to the beginning again, with every moment spent close to him my own private agony. The worst part was that instead of feeling like we were m
oving toward something, we were moving farther away, and I was unable to set things right. He was the person I knew I was supposed to be with. There was no doubt in my mind that without the drama of the music and the label, we would have been together. If we were both just punching clocks somewhere in the Midwest, everything would have been fine, but we weren’t. As a result we couldn’t be together, and we had no physical relationship. Neither of us wanted to be with anyone else, but we just couldn’t be with each other.

  Sitting alone at my kitchen table in Tarzana, I had no illusions about what had gone on here. They’d won this round. There had been many slights and signs of disrespect since I’d had that showcase three years earlier and signed on the dotted line, but I felt this one more acutely than anything that had come before. They’d hoped for a breakup all along, and now they finally had it.

  PRECIOUS TIME WAS SET to release in late July 1981, right before we debuted on a new television concept, a game changer in the music industry. The first I heard about it was when Chrysalis approached us about shooting a live performance to be aired on a television channel that was to launch in August. It was called MTV.

  “It’s cutting-edge,” they said. “You’ll be one of the first bands on the air.”

  Be a guinea pig? Sure. I loved the idea.

  It would be a performance video of the Rascals song we’d covered, called “You Better Run.” It had been a hit when I was in junior high, and when I moved to New York, my friend Cynthia Zimmer, who had an extensive record collection, pulled it out one day when I was looking for cover songs to sing at Catch. I ended up working the song into my live show when I was trying to land a record deal. “You Better Run” was one of the tracks on Crimes of Passion, even though we’d recorded it previously for the soundtrack to the movie Roadie. Keith Olsen had actually produced “You Better Run” as his trial run for the fiasco that would become the Crimes of Passion sessions. Because everything had gone smoothly during that recording we’d agreed to have him on Crimes of Passion.

  Because Crimes of Passion was still going strong on the charts, we decided “You Better Run” would be a good cut to use for our debut video. Everyone in the band was incredibly excited to be a part of this new method of bringing music to the fans—everyone, that is, except for Spyder. This was uncharted territory, and he wasn’t exactly on board. His skepticism came from his concern that having a visual rendition of a song would interfere with the listener’s personal interpretation. His reservations were partly responsible for the look and content of the video. There was no artsy story line, no imagery that might take you away from the music. This was going to be just like a live performance—nothing more.

  We weren’t told what to expect from the video shoot, just that it would be shot near the docks in the warehouses of Manhattan’s far West Side. There was no stylist, no wardrobe direction. So I just wore my own clothes: black pants and a striped shirt. All we really knew going in was that it hadn’t been tried before and that it was supposed to be cool.

  When we got to the docks, I was immediately impressed by how well they had it lit at night. The set itself wasn’t really a set—just the barren, stripped-down corrugated metal of the warehouse with a corner where we were supposed to perform—but it was exactly what we were looking for, especially in light of Spyder’s desire for this to be as true to our performance as possible. With no set dressing, no costumes, and no elaborate distractions, it was all about us and the music.

  As we were getting ready, the director walked over to us. “We’re going to turn a fan on you, and I want you to just do what you do. Just go!”

  That told me he didn’t get what we did. I wasn’t a freakin’ runway model.

  “What do you mean ‘just go’?” I said. Just go? I don’t just go.

  “Well, you know, start posing and stuff.”

  I was horrified. This was new territory, and it was going to be on television. If this MTV thing was going to make us look foolish, then we’d have to take a walk. This guy didn’t know us, didn’t know our music, and almost certainly had never even seen us play. He didn’t know that I was not someone who walked the catwalk and posed on command.

  “No! No! No!” I shot back at him. “Here’s the deal. We’re gonna play and you are gonna film it. There’s not going to be any blowing hair, and there’s not going to be any posing.”

  The director agreed that we’d just play the song, which we did several times. Even though the director let us do our own thing, I still had a bad attitude. In the end, that attitude ended up helping me with my performance for the camera. It was the perfect visual for that song. I was pissed and it showed in everything I did that night. My sneers were real. It was a complete accident, of course. I was so young and raw then, and I felt like we were on the verge of a big crash and burn. But I definitely had a fuck you look on my face.

  When MTV launched that August, we were the second video played on the inaugural day, right after the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” The Buggles were an all-male guitarless band, which made me the first woman and Spyder the first guitar player to appear on the network. That day, we were sitting in a hotel room in Oklahoma, where we were staying to play a festival called Rock-lahoma (I know…). Miraculously the hotel we were in had MTV. Someone joked that it was one of the five places in America that had actually signed up. We were lounging around when Newman called and told us to turn on the TV, and the entire band sat there and watched slack jawed as history was made.

  Coming on the heels of the Buggles’ video, ours made for quite the contrast. Whereas theirs was produced with effects and imagery that displayed the fantastical side of what a music video could be, ours was simple and straightforward. The grit and grime of the location where it was shot covered the TV screen, as did the fact that I was so pissed off when we’d shot it. I gestured at the camera, pointing aggressively as I moved around the frame. It was high energy but it was a different energy from a live show. The dissolves between shots and elements showcased every aspect of the band. It was aggressive but contained. It was our performance but also something else entirely. I’d never seen anything like it.

  I don’t remember how many videos of other artists they played that day or that first week, but it seemed like they played us round the clock, every hour, twenty-four hours a day. They didn’t have a full rotation of videos, and back then there were no game shows, no reality shows on the channel—only music videos. After a certain point, they ran out of options and would cycle back to us. “You Better Run” was inescapable.

  In one week, our world changed. After Crimes of Passion, I’d become much more recognizable, but it was nothing like what happened after MTV. To have a hit song on the radio was to have someone know your voice, your sound. To have a hit video was to have someone know your face. The semi-anonymity that we enjoyed was gone. We had officially arrived, and America had seen our faces—a lot. In the week that followed MTV’s launch, I could no longer go to the grocery store or the movies, because I was swamped. People didn’t simply look at me and think I looked familiar. They thought they knew me. It was great and awful, a blessing and a curse. There was no handbook on how to deal with that kind of stardom. Even musicians who’d hit it big on the radio never had to contend with their faces being everywhere literally overnight.

  It was obvious that there had never been a promotional opportunity like this before in music. Even if you had great success, you could live a relatively quiet life because aside from touring and recording, the marketing options were so limited. MTV changed all that. Today, we take it for granted that video content is available anywhere you look—on the Web, on TV, on DVD. If you’re an artist today, the ways that you can reach your fans without actually playing live for them are seemingly endless. But back then, communications were so archaic that this really was a revolution in how music was brought to the masses. The timescale on music success was suddenly more immediate than it ever had been. I was living proof.

  CHAPTER FIVE />
  GETTING MARRIED—GETTING NERVOUS

  THE TIMING OF MTV’S debut could not have been better. The “You Better Run” video brought interest in us to a fever pitch and fueled the launch for Precious Time. It also kept the focus on Crimes of Passion, which had been going strong for almost a year and continued to sell about two hundred thousand copies a week. In all, Crimes was on the Billboard chart for ninety-three consecutive weeks, eventually selling over five million copies in the U.S. alone. Despite this massive success, it never got to number one, instead getting stuck in the number two spot on the Billboard charts, right behind John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy.

  Although Crimes didn’t reach the top spot, I’d made Chrysalis about $75 million and in the run-up to Precious Time, it was clear that I’d garnered more than enough clout to renegotiate my contract. After all the issues surrounding the marketing of Crimes of Passion, I knew that I had to get more control over my name and my image. I wanted the label to understand that I didn’t like the confining role I was being given. Women had been rocking big since Janis Joplin—maybe there had been a lull in that of late, but we were still there doing our music. And we didn’t need airbrushed posters and ads selling someone who didn’t exist.

  There was definitely an old boys’ club at work, and it was time to take a stand against the unlimited power the record company seemed to have over me. I wasn’t becoming a crusader, though. I didn’t think of it in political terms. Like any worker who’s been pushed around by their boss, I felt that the label was holding too many cards. I was just like every other girl next door who wasn’t getting the recognition she deserves. What was happening to me was happening to every other female in America. The only difference was that I was in a unique position to do something about it.

  Before Precious Time came out, Newman tackled the long-overdue renegotiation of my contract, but unfortunately my moment to take a stand ended up as more symbolic gesture than actual power shift. For his part, Newman worked tirelessly on our behalf, but he was still trying to walk the fine line between doing his best for us and not ruining his relationship with the label. This impossible task overwhelmed him. While he’d learned a lot in his first couple of years on the job, he was still playing catch-up, and being in slightly over his head only made those tough negotiations even harder.