Patricia Mae Giraldo sounds like a pretty cool name for a performer. You know her as Pat Benatar. Let’s take a deep dive in to the career of one of the best female rockers of our time:

• Speaking of the name Benatar, it’s actually not a stage name. Pat was married briefly to a GI named Dennis Benatar, and decided to keep the name
• So where did her current married name Giraldo come from? She married her guitarist and musical director Neil Giraldo in 1982
• Benatar is one of the few female rockers ever to be accepted to the prestigious Juilliard School of Music. But she rebelled, and never attended
• Like most of her rock counterparts, she started humble, singing nights and weekends in bands while holding down jobs as a bank teller, and waitressing gigs
• Out of the 12 studio albums she has produced, 6 of them went Platinum, including her debut album In The Heat of the Night
• Though the height of her success happened in the 80s, Benatar got her start in the 70s singing regularly in the New York City area, where she was discovered at the Catch A Rising Star club (singing a Judy Garland song at 3am) and signed by Chrysalis Records
• If you’ve gone to any of Benatar’s shows, you know she’s a huge Zeppelin fan. She often closes her live shows with a reggae version of Stairway to Heaven
• Songs like Crimes of Passion, Fire and Ice, Shadows of the Night, and Love is a Battlefield earned her a 4-peat of Grammy awards from 1980 to 1983
• Pat Benatar remains quite active in her music career, continuing to tour, put on live shows, and writing new material