In Gratitude: Pat Benatar

Every week, I will showcase the talents and attributes of a Female Rocker who positively influenced my young life. As I am finding myself just over the mid-way point of my time on earth, I hope, I feel like I am experienced and wise enough to take on this task. My first segment goes to the woman who put me on the path to proud self-actualization, Pat Benatar.

I will start out by saying that if you want to know the hard facts about Benatar, this article probably isn’t for you. Benatar and her Husband and band mate, Neil Giraldo, have their very own website and you can read up on her professional/personal life there. I am writing this from a fan’s point of view, and to be precise, a fan who is less interested in facts than she is in her unending love for the article’s subject: Benatar.

I had just turned eleven, and was becoming increasingly freaked out about my body and the strange level of attention it seemed to be getting from boys. I felt scared and alone, too ashamed to freely discuss this with anyone in my family, or my boy-crazed girlfriends. That changed when I took a trip to my local record store, Peaches, and purchased Benatar’s second album, Crimes of Passion. I took it home and listened to it on my mother’s sound system at least fifteen times….maybe twenty. Two songs in particular caught my attention: Hit Me with Your Best Shot and Hell is for Children.

The album and these songs were a revelation. Pat Benatar is not meek, she is not freaked out by her body, nor is she idly standing by while men decide whether or not she is hot enough to sleep with them, but whether or not they are tough enough to sleep with her. It turned my entire world on its head.

Since the moment that album graced my ears, I have consciously and unconsciously used her pearls of wisdom to guide me through some of my more complex relationship and sex problems. This all came rushing back to me on a road trip not long ago, as I sat next to one of my oldest and dearest besties and listened to the DUI playlist she had compiled for us. As Promises in the Dark and Fire and Ice played, I kept recalling all of the ways this woman positively influenced my life, and I thought, “this is something that might help people.” Maybe not as much as listening to the songs themselves, I can only hope that a handful of people will read this and then give Benatar’s body of work a listen. Her message is timeless and I think, quite useful for the young women of today, yesterday, and any age to come.

Three songs in particular have had a firm hand in lovingly guiding me along my path; the aforementioned Hell is for Children, Fire and Ice, and of course, the ever popular Love is a Battlefield. I could go on and on about the nuances and meanings of many of her other songs, (like We Belong, Shadows of the Night, and Treat Me Right), but if I am talking about influencing the younger version of myself in a positive direction, these three songs are stand-outs among a full field of epic hits and words of wisdom.

Hell is for Children came just in time for me, my mother and father were absent/emotionally abusive randomly and without cause, and this song justified the anger I was afraid of showing. Most valuable, the line, “you shouldn’t have to pay for your love with your bones and your flesh.” Felt especially poignant. Most importantly was the crescendo at the end, the crushing, vigorous guitar riff and Benatar screaming, “hell…hell is for hell..hell is for hell…hell is for children!” It was a revelation. After listening to this song about fifty times in one afternoon, I was never silent again to the rage that would occasionally spew from my parents’ mouths.

Fire and Ice helped later when I started fooling around with boys. Admittedly, I was quite confused initially when boys would behave as if they liked me as a person then would ignore me after I let them kiss me/feel me up/what have you, then I remembered this song. Oh, Pat Benatar, thank you for this little phrase: “you come on like a flame, then you turn a cold shoulder, fire and ice.” Oh, yes. I fully understood what the boys were doing after I reviewed this song and its pearl:

Movin’ in for the kill tonight
You got every advantage when they put out the lights
It’s not so pretty when it fades away
’Cause it’s just an illusion in this passion play
I’ve seen you burn ’em before

This is the stuff that woke me up to the games boys would play in order to touch my body. Simultaneously, it was a revelation to see Benatar up on stage in the video, working it in her tastefully revealing catsuit while revealing the wisdom she had garnered through mere observation. She was above their silly games, and by god, from then on, I would be too. In fact, I attribute snagging my high school boyfriend due to the wisdom I gleaned from this song by acting like I didn’t think or care much about him unless he was in fact standing naked in front of me. That shit drove him crazy with desire.

Perhaps the most influential, Love is a Battlefield, showed me the most important lesson of all, girls must stick together and stick up for each other. This came through not so much in the lyrics, but in the popular video made for this song. This ground-breaking video was made at a time when they were still a bit of a novelty in themselves, MTV was just picking up steam, and women were still very much overtly dominated and sexualized in the work place….well..way more than they are today. It was only a decade earlier that women had just started to be able to acquire credit cards. If you have not seen this video, I urge you to do so. It is a taste of the 80s that will make your entire day even more delicious.

The lyrics of the song have also been informative over the course of my life, as at this point, I have correctly identified myself as a leaver; a person who will leave a job/relationship/living arrangement when she has had enough of the bullshit. This is why the lyrics have been so helpful:

We are young
Heartache to heartache we stand
No promises
No demands
Love is a battlefield

And of course:

When I’m losing control
Will you turn me away
Or touch me deep inside
And when all this gets old
Will it still feel the same
There’s no way this will die
But if we get much closer
I could lose control
And if your heart surrenders
You’ll need me to hold

I mean, these lyrics say it all; it is a fine line between too much and not enough and we all get to draw that line for ourselves. Thank you very much, Pat Benatar, for helping me to understand that my peculiarities around relationships are just as valid as anyone else’s.

In closing, I would like to suggest, as I have throughout this article, that you take a listen to Benatar’s library of songs. She had a voice of gold and a band of heavy metal, and if you don’t like her music, you are not only dead inside, you are dead to me.

Next week: In Gratitude: Donna Summer