Pat Benatar in Concert

I’ve just returned from seeing rock n’ roll singer Pat Benatar in concert and she and her rocker  husband Neil “Spider” Giraldo  literally rocked the house. Pat has been around since the early 80’s and is known for such rocking hits as ‘Hit me With Your Best Shot”, “Love is a Battlefield”, “Invincible” and ‘We Belong.” At 59 years old she proves she still can rock with the best of them, even better. She looks much younger and sounds great. They also were the second act to have a video on MTV when it started and Neil was the first guitar player to appear on MTV

 Wednesday’s concert opened up with Pat and “Spider” as she calls him walking on stage side by side with him already playing. They are backed up by only two other musicians, a drummer and bass, but you’d swear there were more instruments. Neil’s guitar playing has so many notes flying out of it that it sounds like ten guitars are playing. I’ve seen hundreds of concerts, but I’ve never seen a band like this. I’ve seen bands with much more musicians than this that didn’t display half the energy and musicality of Neil’s guitar combined with Pat’s crisp, clear voice. Pat orginally was trained and started out in Opera before turning to rock. She and Neil have been together for 35 years and married for 32 on Feb. 2014. They have two grown daughters.

Pat was dressed in black leather pants and a black blazer while her husband was dressed in an open denim shirt and denim jeans with the cuffs rolled up. They had audience members standing on their feet jumping up and down with each number and rocking to the music as Pat sang her hits, “We Belong,” ” Love is a Battlefield” and others from various albums over the years. When Pat sang her hit song “Hit Me  With Your Best Shot” she had the audience singing the chorus while she stopped and the band would join in again as she picked up the song repeating the chorus with the audience again singing acapella.   She repeated this several times much to the delight of the audience.

 At one point Neil said they wanted to invite the audience into their living room and they told stories of how they met and various tours. At one point they did a question and answer part which I felt they could have done without as you couldn’t hear the questions and they had to have some members repeat the questions so they could hear them. I would rather they skipped this part and just stuck with their stories and music.

Neil took some time to explain about his guitar who he refers to as “she” because  it is shaped like a woman  as he pointed out and said he calls her “pain” because she can get real irritable and can change moods which he demonstrated with different chords. Pat looked at him with her hands on her hips and said “Is this going somewhere?”  much  to laughter from the audience to which Neil added, ”but she’s always right and I’m wrong.” 

Neil admitted he never went to school much and the reason he took up guitar was because he found that if you played guitar you could get any girl any time night or day. 

 One of Pat’s chief pet peeves is child abuse and she dedicated a song she did to all the children who have been abused called “Hell is for Children” and said she would keep singing it until no child is abused again.

The encore was a rocking and rolling jumping up and down one featuring Neil’s fantastic lightning fast fingers on guitar that had the audience  yelling for more and cheering wildly.

I have enclosed several videos and pics of Pat and Neil so you can see what they were like. 

 NEIL GIRALDO (Pat Benatar’s guitarist) AND HIS SOLOS! – YouTube