Pat Benatar talks jazz, rock and roll and parenting on the road in summer of 1991 before Pier Six concert
In the summer of 1991, Pat Benatar released the jazz album “True Love,” a significant departure from her rock and roll roots. Nestor Aparicio recalls interviewing Benatar and attending her performance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Benatar discussed her transition to jazz, her relationship with her husband Neil Geraldo, and her daughter’s first-grade education. The album, co-headlined with Roomful of Blues, was almost gold, selling nearly 500,000 copies. Benatar emphasized the creative freedom and rejuvenation this new direction brought, despite the challenges of appealing to both old and new fans.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pat Benatar, jazz album, True Love, Johnny Carson, California Angels, Memorial Stadium, creative control, Chrysalis Records, mixed audience, new fans, blues influence, tour break, rock and roll, album success, musical evolution
SPEAKERS
Pat Benatar, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome back. Wnst task Baltimore and W n s t.net, this is W N S G, rock week, and we get lots of interviews here from the old, old days of my pop music critic world in 1986 8788 in that era. And then we have some more modern stuff. But the one thing we don’t have a lot of our female rock stars, and there weren’t a lot of them. I I never had a chance to interview Chrissy Hind. I would have considered that to be, you know, the highest honor to have her on but I did, at one point, sit and talk with the First Lady of rock and roll, of my world, which is Pat Benatar. If you saw Fast Times at Ridgemont High of my era, you would know what I’m talking about, but I fell in love with Pat Benatar watching Don Kirchner’s rock concert late into the night, probably 1979 or 80 it was when I first had my first VHS, the ability to tape concerts and set up timers late at night before MTV and she had that outstanding black jumpsuit, and sing and treat me Right and Heartbreaker, and I need a lover that won’t drive me crazy. Someone will please me and then go away. I love Pat Benatar. So Pat Benatar came to town in the summer of 1991 now this is after all of the fame, all of the MTV and the videos and invincible and all the incredible stuff she had done, and really did something that’s up almost unprecedented. She took a turn from being an artist that was playing the capital center Merriweather, and said, I want to do a jazz album. And in the summer of 1991 she did a jazz album called True Love. And actually later that summer, in August of 91 I saw her perform in LA on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. I saw Johnny Carson before he retired. I had a chance to get tickets up that summer, and Pat Benatar was the musical guest that night. It was her publicist that actually got me the tickets for the Johnny Carson Show. So it was because of Pat Benatar. So this album was a complete departure for her. Was very, very, you know, noisy and unprecedented that this incredible rock star would go into a jazz album. I I had seen the alarm open for Pat Benatar. I saw Pat Benatar Merriweather. I saw at the Capitol center a couple of times on the seven the hard way tour with the alarm, who became friends of mine for years and years, and still are. And she was a major act, an arena act, and she was scaling down her life or sound. Talked about her relationship with her husband, Neil Geraldo, still with her. I know they still play here every summer. And she talks about her daughter being in school in the first grade and touring in the summer, and I talk about my son being in the second grade. My son’s now 31 so do the math on that. This is from the summer of 1991 she played pier six. There’s some baseball references here, because she and Neil were California Angels fans, kind of famously, and the California Angels were in town taking on the Orioles. Keep in mind, this was not Camden Yards. This was Memorial Stadium. Was a summer 1991 the final year of Memorial Stadium. Here is Pat Benatar, who was absolutely lovely. And yes, I did treat her, right? No, you’re in town Baltimore. I got a local call on my my caller ID. And I’m like, Whoa, that’s great. You
Pat Benatar 03:13
got the caller ID thing? Yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 03:14
I got the caller ID thing. I didn’t know you guys were in town. I’d invite you out to the ball game tonight. Thanks. I
Pat Benatar 03:19
think we’re going tomorrow night, actually. Oh, really,
Nestor Aparicio 03:21
have you had a chance to get out and look at the pier yet? Yeah, we
Pat Benatar 03:25
went out. We went to Little Italy. We had a good time. Oh, that’s good. It’s great. How
Nestor Aparicio 03:29
long is it breaking your tour? Just,
Pat Benatar 03:32
you know, a day or so. We’re second, third show now, so we’re just taking a couple of days off, and then we go back home, we do you guys, and then we go out again, do some
Nestor Aparicio 03:40
more. So how is this tour coming along? It’s just a much different vibe, seeing you in this setting. So what are you getting 45 minutes when you’re open shows,
Pat Benatar 03:52
well as we co headline. So it’s your co headline. You know, it’s like you do the same time you do, like an hour and 10 each, or whatever it is. I
Nestor Aparicio 04:00
didn’t realize. So, I mean, there’s not an hour, 10 minutes on your album. So will you fill it up with other oldies or nothing at all, just more r&b stuff? Yeah, just different r&b stuff. Is this original stuff that you didn’t put on the album? Or is it the covers, no
Pat Benatar 04:18
more of the old song, you know, old covers.
Nestor Aparicio 04:22
Okay. Well, I just kind of befuddled by it all, because I was a big rock and roll fan of yours from way back. I remember being real upset one night when I couldn’t go down to meweather and see you guys because your show was sold out, or something like that. So how did this whole thing come together? I mean, first, first First of all, I guess you guys went in the studio to do
Pat Benatar 04:42
a rock album. Is that correct? Well, yeah, kind of we were in there. This is a long time ago now, probably about two years ago. We went in to do the record, and we just were, you know, we just it wasn’t happening. I mean, it was just, we’re all burnout, and everybody just wasn’t feeling real good about it. So we just don’t. You know, big time friends and stuff, what we were going to do, and it was either do something else or not do it. So
Nestor Aparicio 05:10
as far as chrysalis, how did they react to us? I mean, my, one of my best friends is a recording artist for chrysalis and child’s playing a rock and roll band. And he, actually, he and I trained together, run together and lift weights, and that’s what I was interviewing you. And he said, well, to her, you give child play a plug. I mean, what do they say when you know somebody that’s platinum artist does something like off the wall like this?
Pat Benatar 05:37
The great thing that happened was, during this time, our contract was up, and so we were released. You know, we could really just shop around. We were free agents and and we did. We went to other labels and everything. Because, you know, in the last five or eight years, things have not been great with crystals. We’ve been fighting with them, really.
Nestor Aparicio 05:54
Oh, no one fights with crystals, right? So, when the
Pat Benatar 05:58
contract was up, we just started shopping around for other deals. But we also but we also shop with them to see, you know, what deal we could get them. I mean, the biggest thing with them wasn’t money. I mean, because we already had a very nice thing, money was with them, but we were looking for creative control, which they had pretty much a tight grip on, so we couldn’t do anything else, you know. I mean, they picked album covers. They picked, you know, it was really tough. They had us, like, glued into this country that we had signed in 78 right? You know. And, you know, 10 years later, it was
Nestor Aparicio 06:27
just ludicrous. So let’s be honest, she made a lot of money for chrysalis, I
Pat Benatar 06:31
know, but it’s still not, you know, money doesn’t it doesn’t anesthetize everything. You know? What I mean? I
Nestor Aparicio 06:37
mean, you made them money. So they should, I mean, they should owe you something. But that’s not the way the music business works. The
Pat Benatar 06:41
contract is the contract is a contract. Thank you very much. But, you know, the paper stands. So anyway, so it worked out that we negotiated for complete creative control stuff we should have had, you know, 10 years ago. And so that’s why we were able to make the record, because they we literally just use them as a bank, you know, they said, Here’s the money. Go in, and we made a record, show it to them, or play it for them, or anything, until it was done. And that’s what
Nestor Aparicio 07:08
we did. How was this one sold? I mean, what was last?
Pat Benatar 07:10
Almost gold. I can’t believe so, it’s pretty incredible. I mean, you know, we were making it. We certainly weren’t doing this to have a, you know, a successful record, you know, you know, on a scale of, like pop records. I mean, we were making a record we just wanted to make and have some fun, just to get refreshed and everything. So anything it’s sold is going to be like a present. Let’s go. We can’t believe it.
Nestor Aparicio 07:35
So is it over 400,000 Oh, yeah, it’s approaching five. Then
Pat Benatar 07:39
we went gold in Canada.
Nestor Aparicio 07:43
I guess you have to make a whole bunch of new friends with radio and programming and things like that. I mean, because all your old friends, I mean, this stuff is not going to get played on 98 rock here. So, so how did all that work? Very
Pat Benatar 07:56
you had to throw out everything. I mean, start over. It’s like being a new app, you know, you start over. And, you know, for example, we now we have songs that can be played on AC radio, which, you know, never, has never happened, you know. So you have to like, you meet all those people, and it’s just different, you know, you just got to pretend that you didn’t do the other thing. And you’re just, you know,
Nestor Aparicio 08:19
starting from zero right now, I assume you’ve made some new fans, people who had never heard your rock music, or maybe didn’t even like it. That like this, right? But what about the old fans? I mean, there’s
Pat Benatar 08:30
a lot of people out there who just, they come to the shows, you know, and they really, they like the record, and they still like the old stuff. And I think that if we went back into the contemporary record, they would like that again. But, you know, there’s, I think that it’s a mixed audience. I think that we have people that come to shows no matter what you do, and they’ve got people who’ve never heard of you before and only bought the record because it’s a blue, you know, an r&b thing, and then, you know, and then you got new people all the way around. So it’s kind of interesting. It’s been very different. I mean, you can’t count on the things used to count on, and then there’s other things you can count on now that you couldn’t before. So it’s kind of, it’s kind of fun.
Nestor Aparicio 09:07
So why don’t you do the rock stuff? I mean, why don’t you just do a R and D version of fire and ice or something? It’d be good. I
Pat Benatar 09:18
would do it. I mean, we, we worked on a couple of things like, Let’s stay together and stuff like that. It’s just, and plus, I can’t sing them together. If I sing hella street children, I can’t sing any of the other stuff at all, you know? And plus, you got the room full of blues which can’t play the Rock and Roll stuff. And if we have our rock and roll band, they can’t play the blues stuff. So it’s just, it’s not possible, right? And the point was to remove ourselves from it anyway. So to do it with, you know, we defeat the purpose.
Nestor Aparicio 09:46
This was very conscious effort to get away from alcohol.
Pat Benatar 09:49
It wouldn’t be like a job, you know, it’s a long time.
Nestor Aparicio 09:53
Is it permanent?
Pat Benatar 09:54
I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t, I don’t think that we’ll ever go back and do what we did before. Are, but I think that the records that we make now, if they’re contemporary, will be different. Steve mill, was
Nestor Aparicio 10:06
it a blues album about three years ago, born to be blues, you know, and that was sort of a switch for his fans. And his fans went to the show expecting to hear, you know, Fly like an evil and they weren’t getting that either. So I try
Pat Benatar 10:18
to really, I think, you know, it says on the marquee and everything. I think that when I do the interviews and stuff, we try to stress that there won’t be any old stuff at all. And you know, once or twice you get somebody who scrim knows, basically they are not doing that. They are singing the words the new record. So
Nestor Aparicio 10:36
it’s really kind of, I saw David Byrne last year. He was doing his his Spanish show. And yeah, there’s people standing up, you know, ended up burning down the house, and he just got really annoyed by it. But as far as the show, you do have room full of blues on the road with you. Then, yeah, okay. And so the horns and all the things we hear on this album are, you’re gonna hear it live? Yeah? Well, I just read through your old press clips. I have a year old press package from seven the hard way here. That’s how long I’ve been a critic, and just seeing some of the motherhood stories six years later. How does this affect you? Is she on the road
Pat Benatar 11:11
with you, or summer so she can go? Okay, was she the first grade then to be in first grade in September? Yeah, mine’s
Nestor Aparicio 11:18
going in the second grade about the same. So as far as just to end this thing, as far as the failure or success of this album, when do you when do you judge it? Is it already success? Because it’s almost cold,
Pat Benatar 11:32
it was successful the day we started. Because at the point of doing it was achieved. You know, the point of doing it was to not be burned out and not to not want to play anymore, you know, and all that kind of stuff we were making, we’re about to make a dead record. You know what? I mean, I don’t want to make a dead record, because if I’m going to it’s going to be like that. I’d rather do something else, you know, and just not do this for a living if I can’t find what it was that I did it originally for. And so that point was accomplished. How
Nestor Aparicio 12:03
long had you been a r&b fan or blues fan before you had heard rock or
Pat Benatar 12:10
No, I mean, my roots are not there. Neils are, but mine, I probably started listening to 78 I mean, I just, I had heard, like, you know, peel the holiday and that kind of stuff. But, I didn’t I was not like, there was no influencer. I mean, I had no exposure to it. I was singing classical music. I mean, it was not even remotely interested, you know. But then when Neil and I got together, he had this collection of stuff already started. Now we have this giant collection of vintage stuff. It’s great. That’s really fun to play. It’s just great to be it’s a whole other thing. You know, you feel like you starting over from scratch. It’s exciting again. You feel good. The audiences are great. That’s fun. All right, well, I
Nestor Aparicio 12:52
gotta write a story about you now, because I wait so long to get the interview my stories do tomorrow. But all right, thank you very much. Bye. Bye.
