Jan. 10: Pat Benatar - "Love Is a Battlefield,” "Hit Me with Your Best Shot” and "Heartbreaker,” is 58 today.

YouTube video of "Love is a Battlefield" is at end of this post.)

Pat Benatar is a four time Grammy winner. She had considerable commercial success particularly in the United States. During the 1980s, Benatar had two RIAA-certified Multi-Platinum albums, five RIAA-certified Platinum albums, three RIAA-certified Gold albums and 19 Top 40 singles, including "Love Is a Battlefield,” "Hit Me with Your Best Shot,” "We Belong" and "Heartbreaker.” Benatar was one of the most heavily played artists in the early days of MTV.

Patricia Mae Andrzejewski was born in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and grew up in Lindenhurst, New York on Long Island. “Patti” was interested in theater and began voice lessons at an early age, and sang her first solo, “It Must Be Spring,” at age eight.

At Lindenhurst Senior High School Benatar participated in musical theater, march din the homecoming parade, sang at the annual Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony, and performed a solo of "The Christmas Song" on a holiday recording of the Lindenhurst High School Choir her senior year.

Her parents were strict, and while she could go to symphonies, opera and theater, she couldn't go to clubs. She has said while she was singing Puccini and West Side Story she spent her free time with her little transistor radio listening to the Rolling Stones.

With plans to attend the Julliard School and study classical music, she instead pursued health education at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, dropped out after one year to marry her boyfriend. Pat became a bank teller.

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In 1973, Benatar quit her job to pursue a singing career. She got a job as a singing waitress at a flapper-esque nightclub named The Roaring Twenties and got a gig singing in lounge band Coxon's Army, a regular at Sam Miller's basement club.

In 1975, the couple headed back to New York following Dennis' discharge from the army, and Benatar went on to be a regular member at Catch A Rising Star for close to three years, until signing a record contract. She also landed the part of Zephyr in Harry Chapin's futuristic rock musical, The Zinger.

On Halloween 1977, rather than change out of the vampire costume she had worn to a Greenwich Village cafe party that evening, she went on at Catch A Rising Star wearing black tights, black eyeliner and a short black top. The audience went wild, and Pat Benaatar’s new image was born.

After two lackluster records, Benatar's third single "Heartbreaker" was released in early December 1979 and became an immediate hit, climbing to #23 in the U.S. A fourth single "We Live for Love," which was written by her future husband Neil Giraldo, was released in February 1980, and reached U.S. #27.

Benatar's debut album In the Heat of the Night was released in October 1979, and reached #12 in the U.S. It established Benatar as a new force in rock. Producer Mike Chapman, who had worked with Blondie and The Knack, broke his vow not to take on any new artists when he heard Benatar's demo tape.

Chapman personally produced three tracks on the album. The album also featured two songs written by Roger Capps and Benatar as well as "I Need a Lover" written by John Mellencamp and "Don't Let It Show" written by Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson. The album would be Benatar's first RIAA certified platinum album.

In August 1980, Benatar released her LP, Crimes of Passion, featuring her signature song "Hit Me with Your Best Shot." The song was her first single to break the U.S. Top 10 and eventually sold more than one million copies in the U.S. The album peaked for five consecutive weeks at U.S. #2 in January 1981 (behind Yoko Ono and John Lennon's Double Fantasy) and eventually sold over five million copies. A month later, Benatar won her first Grammy Award for "Best Female Rock Vocal Performance" of 1980.


It was just the beginning of Pat Benatar’s successful recording and performing career.

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In June 2010, Benatar's memoir, Between a Heart and a Rock Place was released. The book touches on her battles with her record company Chrysalis, and the difficulties her career caused in her personal life.

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