The woman whose anthems paved the way for today’s female rockers will hit Eastern Connecticut on Friday between tours.
Pat Benatar, the original female rock star, will perform with her husband, Neil Giraldo, at 8 p.m. Friday at MGM Grand Theater at Foxwoods Resort Casino.
“It’ll be kind of a free for all, really,” Benatar said. “We’re
Benatar and Giraldo will, of course, perform some of her classics such as “Love Is a Battlefield,” “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” “Heartbreaker” and “We Live for Love,” though they’ll also “throw in some new ones we’re thinking about for the tour. We’ll try a bunch of different things.”
Rule breaker
Benatar, who broke rules in the 1980s and blazed a trail with her bold, self-assured and independent attitude when it came to her music, said she had no intention of being a trailblazer when she first started.
“You’re not thinking in those terms, you’re just trying to get through the day,” Benatar said. “In retrospect, it seems really amazing. I came in a really amazing time to be part of that group that went through all that. It was challenging and it was great. At the time, I was just trying to duke it out, personally.”
Those times at the beginning are what interests many people — especially publishing company Harper Collins, which approached her about writing an autobiography, “Between a Heart and a Rock Place,” which was released in 2010. Though Benatar didn’t want to write it at first, she eventually agreed.
“I really had no interest in doing it at all,” she said. “I’m not one of those people where everyone needs to know every single thing about me. They thought it would be an interesting position ... They wanted to concentrate on the beginning, and that’s where it all happened. It’s always been the most interesting to me as well.”
On her terms
In the book, Benatar says before she started playing big arena shows she “wanted to give the people who came out to see me more than a performance ... I wanted to let the audience live out fantasies, go into some other time and place with me. But even though I wanted to take the audience on a journey, it was always on my terms.”
On her terms, Benatar earned nine Grammy nominations for Best Rock Vocal Female Performance — winning an unprecedented four awards in consecutive years from 1980 to 1983 — and picking up three American Music Awards. Seven of her albums were certified platinum and three certified gold.
“We’re just nuts,” Benatar said of her and Giraldo’s longevity. “We love playing, playing is great, that never changes. This is what we do. This is our life besides raising our kids.”
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