Pat Benatar was one of the first female rock singers to hit the airwaves back in 1979. Her voice is always strong and powerful, but what about that gorgeous guy playing lead guitar? Together, Pat Benatar and her husband Neil Giraldo will rock The Ridgefield Playhouse on Thursday, June 7, at 8 p.m. with their mega-hits including “Heartbreaker”, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”, “Love Is A Battlefield”, “You’d Better Run” and “We Belong”. This event is part of the Guinness Black Lager Rock Series with media sponsor i95fm – the Home of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Pat Benatar is an iconic American rock singer and four-time Grammy® Award winner who was one of the most heavily played artists in the early days of MTV. Interestingly enough, her early musical training was strictly classical music and theater. She trained as a coloratura (soprano) and got a job as a singing waitress. Her big break came in 1975 at an amateur night comedy club in New York when she sang a rousing rendition of Judy Garland’s “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody”, and the rest, as they say, is rock history. She won an unprecedented four consecutive Grammy® Awards for Best Female Rock Performance from 1980 to 1983 for songs from her album Crimes of Passion and was nominated eight out of ten times for a Grammy® for Best Female Rock Performance for “Invincible”, “Sex as a Weapon”, “All Fired Up” and “Let’s Stay Together”.
Neil Giraldo is not only an accomplished guitarist and songwriter but also a prolific producer. His credits include their Crimes of Passion album. It is said that Neil is the main reason Pat’s music sounds the way it does, both on recordings and live. It is also said that girls of all ages swoon when Neil Giraldo is in concert and most especially when he takes off his shirt to expose muscular arms, and that, like fine wine, he only gets better with age.