Pat Benatar at Bank of America Pavilion
In 1988, I saw an advertisement in Rolling Stone for the new Pat Benatar cd that was about to be released. The ad simply said: Benatar rocks. That statement couldn’t more accurately describe the ferocious performance of the 80’s rocker last Saturday night at the Bank of America Pavilion in front of an adoring audience.
Now co-billed with her husband/guitarist Neil Giraldo, Benatar brought her Summerized 2007 tour to Boston on a rare, cool summer night. Opening with her last single to hit the charts, All Fired Up, Benatar, now 54, set the stage for what was to come: a rocking, no-frills 90-minute show featuring her still-in-great-shape voice and Giraldo’s virtuoso guitar-playing.
After offering 3 more hits to the audience, Shadows of the Night, I Need a Lover, and Invincible (featuring those classic operatic high notes that she can still hit), Benatar and Giraldo threw a curveball. The next 4 songs were rare, obscure album tracks that only die-hard fans would recognize. First was the steamy ballad Painted Desert, from the underrated Tropico cd. Then came the bluesy River of Love from 1997’s overlooked Innamorata cd, which was followed up by Tradin’ Down, the hardest rocking song of the evening. That song, from Benatar’s 1993 Gravity’s Rainbow cd, saw the diminutive singer rip through one of the hardest vocals I’ve seen her master, and had her joking at the end that she was a lot younger when they recorded it. The last of these rarely performed songs was 1988’s Let’s Stay Together, done mostly acoustically, and ending with Giraldo switching to drums, where he and drummer Chris Ralles had a drum-dueling session.
We Live for Love was next on the set list and was revamped as an acoustic ballad. Benatar’s crystal-clear voice hit the highest notes of the night on this hit from her debut album. Then cell phones became the new cigarette lighter, as Benatar and Giraldo encouraged audience members to wave their cell phones to the 1984 smash We Belong, featuring the familiar keyboard looped in.
The next 5 songs are what Benatar often refers to as the "monsters", or the anthem-songs that made her a fixture on hard rock radio stations. Of course, Hit Me With Your Best Shot won the audience over with its familiarity, Heartbreaker got people to sing along, but it was 1980’s Hell Is For Children which can still strike a nerve, as Benatar wailed that "hell is for hell" lyric like a woman scorned.
Proving that love still is a battlefield, Benatar closed the night out with her biggest hit from 1983, and gave this enthusiastic fan his highlight of the summer of 2007.
by Pat Benatar
www.benatarfanclub.com
