Between a Heart and a Rock Place

by Pat Benatar

  Even with that small glitch, we had a blast. Chuckie entertained us with his endless stories, and traveling with Roomful was like having all your crazy brothers over for Sunday dinner at once. We had a lot of laughs, but most important, it wiped the tour slate clean. It was like starting over; we’d been given a gift, a second chance.

  There’s no doubt that as an album True Love wasn’t as commercially successful as the earlier records, but it was a completely different genre. It had absolutely no radio support. It was like comparing apples and oranges. Blues records can’t be held to the same sales standards as pop and rock records. True Love sold 339,000 copies in the U.S., and for the blues, that’s a damn good showing.

  In the end, making True Love turned out to be the most important decision of our career. Spyder’s idea to create a record that had a completely different direction was brilliant and fateful—exactly what we needed to conjure the spark that had brought us together in the first place. True Love was a labor of love from two people who couldn’t bear the thought of a life without music. When it was finished it had surpassed all that we hoped for. We were newly inspired and ready to begin the next phase of our musical life together. True Love was God’s gift to us for sticking it out.

  WITH TRUE LOVE, we’d put the new Chrysalis’s pledge to give us creative control to the test, so we decided to sign on for another record, Gravity’s Rainbow. It would be our last with them.

  From the start, we were looking to make this album something that was more traditional for us, but the impact that True Love had on our psyches was apparent. The high from True Love carried over to Gravity’s Rainbow, making the atmosphere positive and optimistic. We were all happy to be there. Don Gehman was co-producing with Spyder, and he was a mellow, upbeat guy. He brought along his engineer, Rick Will, who we could tell right away was born under the same “I’m a bent, lovable lunatic” sign that Spyder was. We had some fun. We were happy to be back playing the kind of music that had been our signature sound. Seeing all those amps again and hearing that wailing guitar just made me smile. I had tucked my love for all of this away in a safe place and it had survived. In spite of everything, I still loved my job.

  By the time we recorded Gravity’s Rainbow, Spyder and I had given up trying to have another child. We’d been trying for almost nine years—ever since Haley had been born. In 1988, I’d had an ectopic pregnancy and lost the baby very early on, and that was enough to make us feel that we were not destined to have another child. We desperately wanted one, but it just wasn’t going to happen.

  One weekend while we were making Gravity’s Rainbow, we went away—just on a little getaway to decompress from recording since I had to be back on Monday to shoot the cover for the record. That weekend, Spyder and I talked about how we really needed to stop trying for another baby. Obviously God had a different plan for us, and we were so grateful to have Haley, who was now eight years old. We made a pact to give up the hope of having another child and simply live in the present, enjoying our family the way it was.

  On Monday after the relaxing trip, I went to the studio where the shoot would take place. I got my hair and makeup done, and then it was time to go to work with the stylist. She’d put together a bunch of outfits for me to try on, but I always hated this part, dressing and undressing—the whole thing was so tedious. On this particular day, it was especially awful because apparently she’d gotten all the wrong sizes. Everything was uncomfortably snug.

  “I don’t understand it. I know I took the correct measurements,” she said, exasperated.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, trying to adjust the seams on my clothes. “Let’s just get it over with.”

  We tried on several outfits and took Polaroids to preview how they looked before we started the actual shoot. One of the photos in the pile was a close-up of my face to check the lighting. I picked it up to see if I liked the makeup, and looking closely at my face, I stopped dead: there, in my eyes, was the light I’d seen before, in the footage from the “Painted Desert” video.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I told myself not to get my hopes up. I didn’t say a word to anyone, and I finished the shoot. On the way home I had the limo driver stop at an all-night pharmacy, where I bought a pregnancy test. This was back when you had to wait to do the test in the morning, so when I got home, I hid the test and set my alarm to get up before Spyder. I got up the next morning and took the test. The line was blue. It was a miracle. Nearly nine years of trying and finally, a baby. I ran into the bedroom and jumped on my sleeping husband, waking him out of a dead sleep.

  “Spyder, wake up! We’re pregnant!”

  “What? What? What are you talking about?”

  “I took the test, it’s blue, I’m pregnant.”

  He just stared at me. “Nope. I don’t believe it. You did it wrong. I’m going to the drugstore and getting another test.”

  It was six-thirty in the morning and the closest pharmacy didn’t open until seven A.M. He sat there waiting, and when it finally opened, he bought $150 worth of tests. We spent the next hour turning sticks blue. Oh yeah, we were definitely pregnant, and we had a pile of blue plastic sticks scattered across our bathroom floor to prove it. The next day I went to the doctor, and it was verified—we were having another baby.

  The knowledge that I was pregnant again made the release of Gravity’s Rainbow a particularly joyous occasion. This album was back in the AOR pocket and contained a big hit with “Everybody Lay Down,” which reached number 3 on the album rock chart. A second single, “Somebody’s Baby,” was released with a beautiful and compelling video.

  Of course, when it came to the label’s reaction to my pregnancy, old habits die hard, even when the old habits are being perpetrated by new people. This was partly because by the time we found out I was pregnant, the reasonable and rational team of Joe Kiener and Jim Fifield was gone and Chrysalis had been completely absorbed into EMI. Now we were EMI artists under the direction of Charles Koppleman, CEO, and Ron Fair, the head of A&R, part of a monstrous company with their fingers in every pie, from music publishing to electronics. With all that the folks at EMI had going on, you would have thought they’d have better things to worry about than my pregnancy. Apparently not. They shouldn’t have cared but they did. While they didn’t put us through the hell that we went through with Haley, they were clearly displeased and made no attempt to hide their dissatisfaction.

  Gravity’s Rainbow came out, and though I was pregnant, we still went on tour. From the start, though, the performances were tough. I had terrible morning sickness that made it really difficult to focus. Eventually it got bad enough that we had to cut the tour short after three or four weeks. Our decision didn’t go over well at the label, and there was no doubt that the premature ending hurt sales. While it was disappointing, we made no apologies about where our priorities were. We didn’t forget how blessed we were to be in the situation we were in, and how careful we needed to be in order to preserve it.

  Whether the record execs they liked it or not, Hana Juliana was coming, and she arrived in the world on March 12, 1994, screaming her head off. She was so loud that Spyder and I started laughing and her godparents, Moni and Myron, jumped up and peered through the delivery room windows to make sure everything was okay. She was a force of nature from the moment she arrived. She was beautiful, with twinkling eyes. As for Haley, all of her sisterly instincts came out, and she doted on Hana night and day. We worried about her having been an only child for so long and thought maybe she’d resent this new little creature, but if she felt any of that, she never showed it. She adored her baby sister. Our lives were officially on our terms, and we were going to do whatever we could to keep them that way.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ALL’S FAIR IN ROCK AND MUSIC

  AFTER GRAVITY’S RAINBOW, WE made the decision, once and for all, to leave Capitol/EMI. The decision was mutual and without any big fireworks. The timing just seemed right to go our separate ways. Though we�
�d grown up there, it was not the label it once was, and it hadn’t been for years. The record business was made up of too many bean counters and not enough guitar players. Just watching what had happened to Chrysalis after the EMI merger was disheartening. Artists were considered roster “prizes” to be included in money deals, stock values, and corporate wheeling and dealing. While we were treated much better than we had been in the 1980s, it came at the expense of marketing and promotion. Simply put, they weren’t supporting our records as they once had, and we were ready to move on to whatever the next phase of our career would be. EMI wasn’t exactly crying to see us go.

  Not long after our departure, they put together a hits package, All Fired Up: The Very Best of Pat Benatar. Now that we were gone, they didn’t have to pay us advances or consult us on artwork, content, or release dates. In fact, when it came to our catalog, they could do pretty much whatever they wanted. Since these were songs that already existed and they owned the masters, they could decide things unilaterally. They could package and repackage them as many times as they wanted with barely any overhead. For a while, they seemed to put out a compilation every year—with no input from us whatsoever. They’d pick some producer who’d go in and hack up our original recordings and make a record out of it. It was just put out there with no promotion. Throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.

  I knew it was “just business,” but I felt used anyway. While in the short term their efforts didn’t hurt us financially, if they got greedy and saturated the market, it would make selling new product difficult. We had to make sure this didn’t happen. They didn’t care how this would impact our future, because they didn’t have any claim to our future. It was shortsighted and mercenary, and of course, it was all about the bottom line.

  But not for us. We weren’t shortsighted. In the end, the EMI product was very profitable for us, but we knew we had to become better business people. We began to look at ourselves as a brand. We had worked long and hard to establish what we were. We were unique; no one else could do what we did. That had to be worth something. We still had a lot of music in us and we weren’t about to let anyone screw that up. Figuring out our next step was crucial, and it was made more complicated by the fact that we also had to find new management. After Gravity’s Rainbow, Danny Goldberg had decided to take a hiatus from his management company, going instead to Atlantic Records as president. We started looking and had a few short-lived relationships but finally decided on the team of Elliot Roberts and Frank Gironda, who went right to work getting us back out in the public eye.

  Right away they approached us with an idea for a tour package: Fleetwood Mac, REO Speedwagon, and us. My initial response was “Absolutely not.” I had nothing against those other bands, but we’d never been part of a package before. I was used to headlining on our own. However, I also knew we were in transition and without a record label. After much discussion, Spyder, Elliot, and Frank convinced me that it was a good idea, a way to see where we stood with audiences with minimal risk. We signed on.

  And so we spent the summer of 1995 traveling the U.S. as part of the Can’t Stop Rockin’ tour. It ended up being a great experience, a little like being in the circus. It was a huge operation with three bands, three road crews, and an endless parade of buses and semis. We forged friendships with everyone on the tour and had a great time. We played baseball and had barbecues while our kids hung out together. All in all it was just a great group of people.

  This was Hana’s first tour, and she was fourteen months old when it began. Like her sister, she was a wonderful traveler who loved the road, the bus, and swimming every day. She learned to swim in the pool at the Arizona Biltmore, and she loved being onstage, something that Haley didn’t care too much about. Haley was a little shy when she was small, but Hana wanted to go out onstage all the time. In general it had been our policy to keep the girls out of the public eye, but Hana would wait in the wings every night hoping one of us would scoop her up and bring her out. I remember taking her with me one night; I had her in my arms, and I introduced her to the audience:

  “Hey, everyone, say hello to our youngest, Hana.” They all cheered, and Hana had a huge grin on her face. The crowd was yelling pretty loudly, and I asked her, “Are you scared?”

  “Noooo, I like it,” she said happily. After that we had to find ways to distract her during the performance or she’d cry to go out. We’d station crew members in the wings, because she’d always try to escape from her babysitter and sneak onstage during the show to get bubblegum from Spyder’s onstage stash. We’d be deep into the set and this baby would calmly walk out onstage and grab a handful of bubblegum off of Spyder’s stool. The audience would go crazy, and of course that only encouraged her to do it again at the next show.

  Overall the tour was a success for us. Throughout that summer the reception we got from the crowd was encouraging—strong enough to show us that there was plenty of support for us all around the country. There were still a lot of people who would show up to hear us, and that was an important confidence boost that would help dictate our next step.

  Now that we knew there was still goodwill out there toward us, it was time to try putting out a record. Tours were good but they weren’t enough to keep us relevant. To do that, we needed to record new music. We’d have been delusional to think that once we left a major label, we could just sit back and hope people remembered us. Without the exposure that new material generated, we could do ourselves long-term damage. We stood at a crossroads, knowing that if we didn’t step up and make a new CD, we might never again be in the position to do so with any fanfare.

  We could have easily signed with another major label, but why? Fifteen years of being big on a big record label had left us feeling exhausted and demoralized. The label had helped us to tremendous success but at a huge psychological cost. Our goal now was not to replicate that success, but to find ways to continue to do what we loved and make money in the process. And so instead of jumping right back in with another major, we set off on a different journey.

  Around the time that we split with EMI, I read an interesting article about the singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco. At the time, I wasn’t all that familiar with her music, but I was instantly fascinated by what she was doing. In 1990, she’d started her own record label called Righteous Records (later changed to Righteous Babe Records), and through this label, she had financed, produced, and distributed her own records. This was something that Spyder and I had been talking about for years—creating an independent label that would give us complete artistic freedom to do whatever we wanted at our own pace.

  What seemed like far-fetched crazy talk started to make sense after I read about what Ani DiFranco was doing. The recording industry has long had a rich history of independent labels. Let’s face it: Jac Holzman founded Elektra Records in his dorm room in 1950. Sun Records in Memphis launched Elvis Presley. Motown. The list goes on. These were historic labels, and if Ani could do it, so could we. I always say, “God bless Ani DiFranco,” because she was my inspiration to stop thinking about being independent and actually start doing something about it.

  As it turned out, this intense interest in going independent combined with another trend; by the midnineties, we could see that digital music would soon be forcing change on the recording industry. For a few years digital technology had been slowly seeping into the music business, and we’d been keeping an eye on how it was changing things. Gravity’s Rainbow was the first recording we edited and mastered digitally. Spyder loved the technical aspect of recording, and he embraced digital advances with enthusiasm. As producer he was constantly looking for new ways to push the boundaries of what he could do in the studio, and the digital world held all kinds of possibilities, many of which he utilized on Gravity’s Rainbow. Its value was undeniable, and in the years since Gravity’s Rainbow, Spyder had been steadily incorporating digital methods into his recording process whenever he was playing around in his Soul Kitchen. At first it was simply di
gital editing and mastering, but then he moved on to digital recording and mixing.

  While Spyder was fixated on the new studio experimentation that digital made possible, my goals were different. The way I saw it, digitally recorded music opened up a whole new way to get music to the masses. No more large manufacturing costs, no expensive album art—it might not even be necessary to make actual CDs if we didn’t want to. All these ideas crystallized in 1994, when Spyder and I read an article about an innovative new concept called “file sharing.” Learning about this process helped me visualize how we could actually implement this new distribution to the consumer while cutting production and manufacturing costs. Basically we’d be eliminating the middlemen, who of course were the record companies. It would no longer be necessary to have their money or muscle to get product made and sent out to the public. Distribution would be simple and cost-effective. The playing field would be level: artists and small labels would have the same access and clout as the majors.

  Spyder and I each had our own vision for the future significance of digital music, differences that mirrored our original disagreement over the role of music videos. Spyder was fascinated by the impact on the actual music and the limitless creative possibilities that the digital age ushered into the studio. My interests were not so lofty. I was a businesswoman first and foremost, and though the artist inside me saw what technology could do for recording, I was more drawn to how it could prevent the financial turmoil that we’d experienced at the hands of the record label throughout our career. It was true digital was untested and uncertain, but if it worked, it would return the power to the artists, where it belonged. As with music videos, we recognized the game-changing promotional power that existed in digital music if we used it to meet our own needs.