Saint Pat: Benatar balances rock career, family

Kirk Baird

Friday, Aug. 30, 2002 | 9:27 a.m.

Before Pat Benatar, women vocalists just didn't rock.

At least, not like their male counterparts.

"I loved a lot of the female performers that were there," Benatar said in a recent phone interview. "Just not as role models. I mean, I loved Joni Mitchell, Janis (Joplin) and Linda Ronstadt, and that kind of thing. But these were women who weren't doing what I was looking for. I was looking to Robert Plant and Mick Jagger for what I wanted to do."

On the road for a summer tour, which Saturday and Sunday brings her to the Las Vegas Hilton Theater, Benatar was on her tour bus somewhere in the Northeast while on her way to New Hampshire. "I'm not really sure where I am," she said.

Maybe geographically, but in terms of her career, the opera-trained vocalist with a four-octave range knows exactly where she is and where she has been. Through a music-industry obstacle course.

Known for such hits as "We Live for Love," "Hell is for Children" and "Love is a Battlefield," Benatar broke into the business in 1979 with the album "In the Heat of the Night," which featured the power-pop song "Heartbreaker."

At that time, she was the exception to the prevailing rule in the music industry, that a woman could not be successful in the male-dominated rock 'n' roll world.

"They really truly believed that a female was not capable of selling out arenas and having records on the charts unless they were doing pop or R&B music," Benatar said. "So that was a huge obstacle to overcome and I spent every day of my life fighting that mind-set."

But the more the recording industry resisted her pioneering attempts, the harder she pressed. "I never gave up," Benatar said. "I was telling my kids that I'm like a Jack Russell (terrier). I'm really small, but I am going to get that bone."

Her tenacity was rewarded in a string of multiplatinum discs, Grammys for Best Rock Vocal Performance Female and a spot as rock's pre-eminent female artist.

Still, Benatar's triumphs were short-lived.

"Even when you had great victories, there was always the next day (when) something would just cut you down at the knees," she said. "You would win a Grammy and you were pretty much responsible for the record company's entire bottom line. And then the next day you would go to a radio station and the program director would say, 'Why don't you come here and sit on my lap and we'll talk about getting that record played.'

"It was a constant battle for a long time, probably until my first daughter was born (in) 1985. And that's when I became extremely fierce. I always say once you make a spinal cord from scratch, nobody can give you (expletive)."

And as the outside forces eased off Benatar, she backed down as well. Motherhood will do that, she said.

Benatar took more and more time between albums, and explored different musical terrains (such as blues) rather than maintaining the hard-rocking sex kitten image she created and cultivated early in her career.

"(The image) was my invention," Benatar said. "It became problematic when I was tired of it, which was shortly after it started. Then the record company, they wouldn't let it go, or to evolve into something else. It was just so one-dimensional for me. I got tired of it quickly."

It's difficult to think of Benatar in that way today. She is a mother of two who loves cooking and watching Nickelodeon's cartoon series "SpongeBob SquarePants" with her family.

The 49-year-old singer-songwriter fully embraces her life offstage.

Her focus at this point in her life is now on her family, rather than making records and touring.

"I have two kids and I'm really committed and they're my priority," Benatar said. "So I just don't have the luxury of time, like I usually have to spend 16 hours a day on vocals."

She then laughed.

"It takes a little longer than usual."

Actually, two years.

That's how long she and Neil Giraldo, her husband and longtime guitarist and producer, have labored on her new album, which is scheduled for a January release.

Benatar described the as-yet-untitled disc as a "guitar-driven contemporary record."

While musically the record is not a throwback to the raw, emotive rock sound that typified Benatar's early work, she said fans won't be disappointed by the new disc.

"It's about relationships, and, hopefully, it sounds like were we should be at this point in our lives."