Rebecca: Surely. I'm a huge Pat Benatar fan. Who is Pat Benatar? She's a rocker with a huge catalogue of hits including "Hit Me With Your Best Shot." Her other monster hits would include "Love Is A Battlefield," "Treat Me Right," "Shadows Of The Night," "All Fired Up," "Precious Time," "Heartbreaker," "Fire and Ice," "Invincible," "We Belong" and "Little Too Late." The book jacket says she's had 19 top forty hits which is really amazing because her chart run was mainly 1979 to 1988 and she was a rock artist, not a pop singer. She continues to tour -- currently with REO Speedwagon -- but she hasn't recorded an album since 2003's Go. Her peer group includes Stevie Nicks, Ann and Nancy Wilson, Tom Petty and John Mellencamp. Her first single was a cover of Mellencamp's "I Need A Lover." Her look was iconic for the early 80s and is noted in Amy Heckerling's Fast Times At Ridgemont High when Phoebe Cates tells Jennifer Jason Leigh that there are several girls at Ridgemont cultivating the Pat Benatar look. In Between A Heart And A Rock Place, she's telling her story, and doing a damn good job of that.
Jim: Before we get to the praise, let's get the negative down. I asked everyone to think up one thing and Mike's was "omissions," so let's start with Mike.
Mike: At the very least, the book needed a discography at the end. There's no index which I can live without; however, a discography was needed and they need to put one in when it goes into soft cover. The book was just released and is hard cover with a list price of $25.99, by the way. If there had been a discography, "Sex As A Weapon" might have been mentioned. The single made it to number 28 and both my father and my brother wanted to know what Pat had to say about that, for different reasons. My brother, who remembers the MTV debut of the video loves the song and thinks it was Pat's most ambitious video. My father remembers that Pat got slammed by some in the press for the song and wondered what she thought of that? We'll never know because she doesn't mention the song or the video in the book.
Jim: Trina, he's talking about your husband. Anything to add?
Trina: Mike's my son, I would hope his father would be my husband. Seriously, I will go to something to get it out of the way. Pat is the mother of two daughters. She writes about that and about being a working mother and more. She does so in a wonderful way. She is a strong woman and a feminist but some will take exception to her writing about her children and including the line, "And that was the part the feminists conviently left out" -- when she's discussing working and children. What feminists? No, feminists didn't sell the idea that "You can have it all and it will be easy!" That was Madison Avenue. But a number of women do believe it was the feminist movement which sold that. They -- and Pat is among this group -- are wrong. So I just want to get that out of the way. In terms of "Sex As A Weapon," when Pat released that song there were a lot of male critics who huffed that 'those legwarmers and leotards' didn't hurt her album sales, referring to the Crimes Of Passion era photos. That really wasn't sexed up -- certainly not for the times. Even before you read the book, if you know of Pat's career, you knew that while the label tried to market her as a sex kitten, she always presented herself as a capable and strong woman. Certainly, ballet gear does not mean weak pushover.
Jim: I'm sorry, I don't know "Sex As A Weapon." Elaine?
Elaine: I'm totally not prepared for that but will try to answer. "Sex As A Weapon" was the first single for the Seven The Hard Way album. I have no idea who wrote it --
C.I.: Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg.
Elaine: Wow. Really. Hmm. They also wrote, among other songs, Heart's "Alone." In some ways, it's similar to "Anxiety" off of Get Nervous. But the message of the song is in the chorus: "Stop using sex as a weapon." It was a tough rocker and, apparently, the lyrics were too tough for some because, as Mike and Trina have noted, the song was heavily slammed by a number of male critics. And you could argue that the song played a part in the end of her chart run. She doesn't in the book. She notes Chrysalis, her label, and how they destroyed the chart run. I find that a fair call, by the way. Whether it's Billy Idol or anyone else still on the label after 1985, they all suffered.
Jim: Okay, why would you say one song would hurt her?
Elaine: After this album, Seven The Hard Way, she releases another album and gets a hit with "All Fired Up" which is just a rock classic in my book. But that's it. And I do think that Pat noting the obvious in that song made a lot of people uncomfortable in radio. And that was before I read the book. Reading the book and learning about her showing up at a radio station for an interview and some dee jay or program director telling her to come sit in his lap -- to which she responds "F**k you" -- and how it happened over and over, you really can see a lot of wounded egos bruised by that song. Also despite being a rock record, I remember hearing it more on pop stations than on rock stations.
Jim: Betty, your favorite Pat Benatar song was what?
Betty: "Little Too Late." I always loved that song, it's stripped down sound on the verses especially, but then C.I. noted it during the never-ending Democratic Party presidential nomination race at some point, probably April, May or June, and that song had so much more to say for me then.
Jim: Because?
Betty: I listened to it and, rightly or wrongly, heard Pat singing a song about her own life. Within the context of Hillary fighting all that sexism and all that garbage thrown at her, putting the song into that context made it, for me, an anthem of women's strength and survival. And Trina was talking about how Pat's visual image was strength which I would really agree with. My older brother had those albums, on lp, and I'd look at those covers and I never thought, "Oh, there's a cream puff." Whether it was just her or the band, those covers were about strength and, many times, that might have just been the expression on her face if it was just her in the photo, but she was a strong presence. The first song I heard by Pat Benatar -- and this is after her chart run -- was "Fire and Ice." My brother made me put on the headphones and he turned off all the lights and had me listen to it that way. She was like nobody else I'd ever heard. Even now. She hit notes that Mariah and Whitney combined can't reach and she had more power than those two and about five other women combined. From the first notes, it was obvious she was one of kind.
Jim: And what stood out to you in the book?
Betty: I was really interested in "Fire and Ice" and enjoyed reading about the recording of it and other tracks for that album and how she and Neil Giraldo, her guitarist and husband and producer and songwriting partner, rehearsed it and how Neil felt that the guitar instrumental shouldn't compete with the vocal but should continue the journey. I did a lousy job of summarizing that but read the book. It's a great book.
Jim: Dona, you wrote "great" as your one word, so why don't you pick up there?
Dona: I just loved the book. Pat didn't go out of style in my area -- Midwest -- after her chart run. You can't have rock radio without Pat. And I was so curious to read about this woman who is such a part of rock history. She didn't Janis -- and I mean she didn't die of an overdose. I'm not saying that should define Janis -- or Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison -- but I am saying, Pat lived to tell. And I wanted to hear what she had to say. And I loved every word of it. Trina mentioned the part, that one sentence, that might upset some, and I can see that it might, but I loved the whole book. Even when she meets Nancy and Ronald Reagan.
Ava: Jim, I'm jumping in here. Dona, you wanted to read the book -- and you did and you loved it -- but that goes to something you and I have long discussed.
Dona: Right. One night, when we were still in college and still lived together, Ava and I made a list of all the rock women who'd written their life stories and it was a tiny list. We started with Tina Turner and then there was Michelle Phillips and then there was Melissa Etheridge and Diana Ross and then there was Grace Slick and then Tori Amos. And that's covering something like 1985 through 2005. And that was it. But these men are always writing their life stories. And if you think about it, you'll realize that is mirrored in the lack of books about women in music. Recently there was a book on Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and Carole King, and there was a book on Joni. But that's nothing compared to the tons of books each year on men. How many more books on Paul McCartney will publishers foist off on us? How much more can be said? Ditto that regarding Bob Dylan. By contrast, I'm aware of only one book in the US on Dusty Springfield and only one book on Laura Nyro. The three women in music during the rock era with the most books about them are probably Janis Joplin, Diana Ross and Madonna. And yet if you combined all the books published on those three your list would still not be a third of the books published just about Paul McCartney. It's really something. And that's why I was so glad to read this book and was right on board when Ava and C.I. proposed this as a roundtable book.
Jim: Marcia, I know Pat Benatar mainly through "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" and "Love Is A Battlefield." Am I going to enjoy this book?
Marcia: Yes, I think you will. First off, those are covered in the book. Secondly, it's just a really readable book. Pat Benatar doesn't put on airs. If anything, she short changes herself. But it's a really readable book, with a story told in an interesting voice. I got home Thursday night and hadn't read the book yet because it was that kind of a week. I tossed something in the oven and then sat down in the living room. I as twenty pages in when the timer went off. I went to the kitchen, pulled the dish out and sat it on a stove burner. Went back to the living room intending to finish the section I was on and then eat. Instead, two and a half hours later, I was two-thirds done with the book. It's really hard to put down.
Jim: Okay. Good. Mike talked about omissions. One thing he didn't mention was photos. Does the book have photos, Stan?
Stan: Yes, it does. To pick up on Dona's comments just a second ago, though, we broke into two groups. One of us is doing the roundtable and the other is doing a short -- or it's supposed to be short -- book review article. Ava and C.I. are helping on both but the rest of us broke into two groups. And one of the books the other group is tackling is a photography book. Tina Turner doesn't have photography books every year or every two or five years. Men get that. Over and over. And I do think that's worth noting. There are sixteen pages of photos. Some are in color, some are black and white. They cover the range of her life.
Jim: Stan, your favorite Pat Benatar song and what was the best part of the book for you?
Stan: I can't say just one. If you're pressing me, "All Fired Up." But my favorite part was during the making of Tropico. I wrongly believed the sound on that was influenced by the fact that Pat was pregnant but it turns out they were already recording when they found out she was pregnant. And I won't spoil that story because how she finds out is really an interesting story. And the books filled with interesting stories. It's really well written and, as my cousin just pointed out, really hard to put down.
Jim: Coming back to you, Mike. You noted no index. I'm at the bookstore, there are a lot of books on the shelves, I'm sure a lot of them are well written. Why should I pick up Pat's book?
Mike: That's another reason she needs an index. It would help sell the book. Do you like Debbie Harry and Blondie? They're covered in the book. What did Donna Summer say to Pat at the Grammys in the women's room? When Pat wanted advice from Chrissie Hynde about being a working mother in rock, what did Chrissie tell her? There are a lot of stories like that in this book. And my favorite Pat song is "Invincible."
Jim: Ava, your favorite song and one moment in this book that you'd stress to would-be readers.
Ava: I think I'm going to go with "Precious Time." To answer your other question, I'll read this paragraph about Pat participating in the first Lilith Fair festival:
Standing up there with all those successful, capable young women made me think of the early years when every day was a fight just to be a woman in the man's world of rock and roll. I thought back to all the radio promoters and record men. The guys who'd said things just to try to make me feel uncomfortable and the guys who told me I didn't know what I was talking about. I thought about wearing baggy clothes to hide my round pregnant body and having the program directors at radio stations lick their lips as they asked me to take a seat on their laps. I thought about the extra five layers of skin I'd had to grow just to be standing on the stage two decades after that lunatic songwriter had chased me around a piano.
Ava: Pat's a trail blazer and the book's an important read.
Jim: C.I.?
C.I.: Exactly. Pat's writing of what she went through and many women went through that -- in the music industry and outside of it. Her strength and her refusal to be anyone's puppet make for an encouraging and feminist tale. She's a survivor, not a victim. Whether it's slapping the head of her label when he insults her singing and says that's not why people buy tickets to her shows, or staring down the dozen or so men in a business meeting who decide the most important thing is what she will be wearing, Pat's a strong woman and her actions and steps made the path easier for other women to walk down it. That she did all that and retained her sense of humor and humanity are a testament to her and to her parents. This is a woman, one of the first, who did arena tours. As the main act, not the opener. She's accomplished a great deal and continues to. As for having it all? It hasn't been easy, but look at her life, she's juggled some wonderful moments including a ground breaking career, two daughters and a long running marriage.
Jim: And, Kat, talk about that ground breaking career. I'm 12-years-old, I've never heard of Pat Benatar. In fact, I hear that name and don't know if we're talking about a man or a woman. Who is Pat Benatar?
Kat: Pat was the woman not afraid to go toe-to-toe with any man. Vocally, that's who she is. With amazing breath control -- most notable on her cover of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" -- and her incredible range, Pat hits notes others couldn't and held them. It's an amazing raw power she projected vocally. In terms of the lyrics, Pat also went toe-to-toe. She wasn't backing down, she wasn't cowering. And early on, she took that strength and used it to expand on her persona. "Hell Is For Children" is my pick -- C.I.'s too -- for best Pat Benatar song. That's a song about child abuse. And Pat took the strength that she exhibited and became the protector. It's the same role she plays in "Love Is A Battlefield" and "Invincible," to name two other songs. She could sing those songs in a way that other singers -- male and female couldn't. Bono, for example, can sing an anthem. But a certain type of anthem. His creaky voice that doesn't always hit the notes and sometimes reveals no breath control at all does not project strength -- which might be part of his charm. But Pat's did. And she was the big protector who would lead you through those dark moments. I can't think of anyone who was doing that archetype when she was or before she was. She's truly an original. Now in terms of her visual image, I think Trina hit on it with the fact that she projected strength. Lita Ford, for example, is seen as a 'rocker' by some. But her solo career was nothing but tits and ass -- and both shoved in your face. That's not the road Pat Benatar pursued.
Jim: And for final thoughts, we'll return to Rebecca.
Rebecca: Pat rarely connected with the critical mass. She's a four-time Grammy winner but that's the industry, her peers. They respected her. The critics often didn't. Rolling Stone repeatedly referred to her audience as "the great unwashed," for example. So if she'd depended upon critics to sell her records, she never would have made it. What sold her records, and tickets and t-shirts and everything else, was her bond with the audience. I think Kat perfectly captured the Pat Benatar persona. And it was that persona and the talent and the way she worked the stage that created a new avenue for women. So much so that she had a number of copycats following in her wake. Probably the one that received the most success was Quarterflash -- a band that was nothing but a Pat Benatar rip-off. In retrospect, the critics have gotten her. That's in part due to the weakening of the sexism that was so prevalent when she was coming up but it's also true that the real originals are rarely immediately embraced by the critical establishment.
Jim: Alright. The book is Between A Heart And A Rock Place, $25.99 from HarperCollins, written by Pat Benatar with Patsi Bale Cox. And, as with all roundtable pieces, this is a rush transcript.
