Book review: Between a Heart and a Rock Place

Between a Heart and a Rock Place by Pat Benatar

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I grew up listening to Pat Benatar. She's in fine voice (ha!) here, and because she's one of the few rockers who also has a plausible claim to being a role model, I'm glad she wrote a memoir. Benatar's love for her husband, her passion for music, and her feminist convictions all shine from these honest, well-written pages.

This memoir is better than Clarence Clemmons' "Big Man," because Benatar and her co-author are more disciplined than Clemmons and his co-author were. It's also worth noting that Benatar is a class act. Her sense of humor comes through even in photo captions, and she has kind words for Blondie and Bruce and Ani DeFranco, as well as lesser-known musicians with whom she has crossed paths.

What kept me from rating the memoir even higher was its unimaginative structure: once past interesting material about her early days, every album in the Benatar catalog is viewed through the prism of her 20-year fight with money-grubbing record label executives. Although she and her husband are on the side of the angels, I wanted to learn more about the records themselves.

Benatar tells good stories -- her remembrance of the Sept. 11, 2001 concert in Napa Valley is especially poignant. The thing is that she should have told more stories. Ditto for the rare arguments with her husband and chief collaborator Neil Giraldo; there's no need to invent conflict that isn't there, but it was fun to hear her exasperation when she pointedly asks him to "write something humans can actually sing." Unfortunately, vignettes like that come few and far between.

Perhaps Benatar has internalized the "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" ethos to the point where she always has her guard up in public. One can't fault her for that (Isn't it a tough life?), but it creates an emotional distance that undercuts an otherwise-absorbing memoir. A rock icon whom you'd actually want for a neighbor could have let her fans in on more than she did.

If you're a Benatar fan (as I am), you'll want to read this memoir, but if you're not, the most resonant thesis in these snapshots of life behind the microphone -- and the video camera in the early days of MTV-- is likely to be "many music industry execs are sleazeballs."