HOTEL BALTIMORE’S (NOT JUST) FOR CHILDREN

She is begining to believe that there might be something to this rock superstar business, even for someone like her who's hardly lusted after the role.

Columbia, Maryland, is a planned community", nestled among scads of functional greenery, midway between Baltimore and Washington D.C. Columbia was laid out according to the best sociological and architectural theories of the 60's and 70's, and as such, tends to be as rational and good-liberal as this month's Alan Alda brainscan. Phil Donahue would welcome Columbia and its tasteful structures to his' show any morning of the week.

Columbia is dedicated to renewing community and family life, according to pamphlets I've found in my hotel room, and as our little party invades Columbia's heart, The Mall, in search of this evening's meal, I realize that we've probably already deviated from some California norm or other, like say averaging 2.3 children per family unit. Seven adults tooling down .The Mall here— Pat Benatar and her man/lead guitarist Neil Geraldo, drummer Myron Grombacher and his spouse Monica, Chrysalis Records promo woman Toby Lubov, busdriver/ bodyguard Suds," and R. Riegel the writer—and apparently I'm the only one who's been able to squeeze reproduction of the spedies into his/her worldly career, so far.

Nothing outrageous about our appearance this afternoon—Pat Benatar, the overnight sex symbol currently leaping off at least thirty-two covers at your corner magazine stand, is dressed simply enough in a little white T-shirt, white jogging shorts and shoes, she has a thin white headband through her curly orange-brown hair, and could easily pass as a young Columbia matron fresh from the tennis courts in her Volvo, snapping up an item or two at The Mall before heading for her condo to drive the sitter home. And the rest of us are comfy in the functional jeans and T's that've been worn since the Year One of rock 'h' roll, but still some of the drowsy late-afternoon shoppers look up as we pass, surprised momentarily that we're not also pushing their universal-stroller baby carts.

I like perfectness in everything I do.

The genial Suds is sheparding us along with careful haste; he knows firsthand just how gigantically Pat Benatar's superstardom has mushroomed in the past few months, and he's vigilant for teen fans who may leap from behind The Mall's live trees and jetting fountains any minute, fans who will want to get right in Ms. Benatar's face before we can reach the restaurant.

But Pat Benatar herself turns out to be the swooning fan today, as she exclaims, Oh, no," and without putting on her turn signal, darts completely across the mall, to the show window of the f Docktor Pet Center. When we catch up/'we see Pat's attention was grabbed by a small white dog lying against the window, almost buried in the shredded newspaper. Pat's afraid the pup is ill, but after bending down and startling him, she's satisfied that he's just dozing, and she goes on into the store, to gaze at each of display-caged dogs and cats, her eyes big like—well, like a kid in a pet store.

Pat's obviously enchanted with a beagle pup who lies languidly on his back to suck on his water bottle, in a clever parody of the L.A. lifestyle Pat's discovering in her adopted home. But this is a big time rock 'n' roll tour, in a bus no less, and where would they put a puppy who wanted to step outside for his urine-scent connection every few minutes?

So Neil Geraldo rather reluctantly foregoes the whole dog, but does purchase a choker chain from the Doctor people, and as this ain't no Mudd Club, nor no Judas Priest feature, I should inform you right now that Pat Benatar's taking the chain home to one of her pets (4.0 per family unit; a collie, a pit bull, and two cats), and that no cheap S&M stimulants attend this band, even when they hit you with their best shot. This story is definitely rated G".

When I get back home from a tour, I like to vacuum as a kind of therapy.

Which I pretty much figured before I arrived in Columbia—I have CREEM so well-advised of my own confirmed-familyman status that many of the family-oriented -rock features assignments, like Cheap Trick and Devo, fall my way. But at the same time, I had been halfway-sucked in by some of those other mags' articles about Pat -Benatar-the-cruel-bitch-goddess, Pat-Benatar-The-Lip, Pat-Benatar-The-Chin, etc., and I wasn't quite prepared for the warm, exuberant Patti" Benatar (as everyone in the party but me seems to know her), who grins again and again with every muscle in her face (her large eyes crinkle at the corners, and her lips open to reveal those dazzling white teeth), and who grabs me elbow with instinctive, non-Anglo-Saxon eagerness, to emphasize points in her anecdotes.

A lot of Pat's stories this afternoon seem to concern children and all their implications. Like the one about Pat's recent discovery that there are a lot of other rock 'n' roll women like herself—she mentions Chrissie Hynde, among others—who have already achieved much of the popular and creative success they set out conquer, in the man's man's man's world of rock, and who are now beginning to think much more urgently of reproducing themselves, as the big hand on their biological clock races toward thirty. Or the one about the guy in the front row at One of Pat's concerts last week, the joker who was laughing uproariously all through her performance of her edifying Hell Is For Children," and about what she told him when she finished the song (sorry, this is still G-rated).

Pat Benatar's rock 'n' roll career has taken so many unplanned, space-shuttle leaps of faith already, that delivering a baby somewhere between a couple platinum album chartings would seem almost as magically feasible, these days. Back on Long Island in 1966, the teenybopping Patti Andrejewski jumped and shouted to Young Rascals 45's on her portable record player because it was so much fun; she never thought of making a living out of the stuff, as the biz was pretty tentative even for the guys in those days. As a young-married bankteller in Richmond, Virginia, Mrs. Pat Benatar handled other folks' dough all day long, never dreaming that she would be at the very eye of a hurricane cash flow of her own a few years later.

Now that the new Precious Time has shot off the racks onto the nation's radios, with even greater accelerative force than her previous two albums, Pat Benatar is finally beginning to believe that there might actually be something to this rock superstar business, even for someone like her who's hardly ever lusted after the role. If she just didn't have to give up being a civilian at the same time...

When we reach Barry's restaurant, Pat does a quick turn by the salad bar to size up the condiments available, but she can't linger there—she has to settle into the corner of the darkest booth in the place, as kids are already beginning to stare into the restaurant windows. Co-star group members Neil and Myron commandeer the Phoenix electronic game, in full picture-window view of the whole Mall, but nobody out there seems to notice. Was it Chrysalis who said, Pat Benatar is a Band?"

Meanwhile, when Pat's deep-dish lasagna pizza arrives at our table (complete with a mash note from the gaping teen cooks: It's the best pizza they've ever made," says our waitress), Pat graciously cuts and serves slices for each of us before digging in herself, as though she's already a young mom with six screaming toddlers dependent upon her attentions, rather than the possessor of the keys to the planned city of Columbia, Maryland.

Pat Benatar's apparent automatic self-denial at the dinner table reminds me so much of my own sainted mother and thoughtful wife that I remember to ask Pat about her comment in last year's Rolling Stone feature, that she sometimes busies herself between shows by tidying up after the guys on the tour bus. Oh, sure," she says now, I just went over the whole bus today, with Windex on the windows" (spraying & wiping motion with her mike hand) and all that." (But you missed something, Pat, an empty bottle rolled from under my seat when we rode over to the soundcheck, looked like somebody'd had a real good time on the cranberry juice that'd left it not long before...)

I Just went over the whole bus today with Wlndex on the windows and all that.

Pat Benatar calls her platinum-with-abullet rockstar persona even more seriously into question when she admits to me that not only has she never flushed a color TV with Fantasy Island playing on it down the toilet, but that she even has this real perverse habit of straightening up her hotel room before the maids can get at it. When I get back home from tour, I like to vacuum, as a kind of therapy. It's not the clean thing so much, as I just like perfectness in everything I do." I can't help thinking that it's probably sexist of me to be so charmed by all these quaint housewifey undersides to Pat Benatar's uncertain sense of her own stardom, yet it's hardly the female-servitude aspects I appreciate, but rather Pat's honesty in obeying her own harmlessenough compulsions, no matter how weird they might appear in context. Pat Benatar's clone not only sleeps alone, but has to save all the fun-stuff heavy dusting for her perfection-driven mistress's return from the road.

Riding back to the Merriweather Post Pavillionfor the show, I decide that it's only my overheated, hook-happy writer's imagination that persists in catching Pat Benatar's big eyes giving the Columbia Children's Zoo (and its romping little ones) the once-over each time the bus glides past. Pat may have grown up in Happy Days (her own simile) environment, but that's no reason for me to write her into a Brady Bunch sequel. Just the facts, okay, which now find Pat's lap full of all sorts of gold leotards and glittery garments, from which she'll choose tonight's costume.

Neil Geraldo's already dressed for the stage, in a sleeveless shirt with the collar turned up, a huge comb in his hip pocket, plus he's dumped at least two quarts of Shell Fire & Ice motor oil on his hair to grease it back into a perfect 1950's pride-ofCleveland ducktail. Neil intrigues me, as Pat had described him in her previous CREEM interview as a real Italian, and real macho," so I half-expected to meet a Sly. Stone ego brute, who would be pulling even more of Pat Benatar's art & sexpot strings than Chris Stein reputedly does Debbie Harry's.

But I've found Neil polite and very much a team player; he seems quite open to Pat's ideas and opinions, and appears to have no trouble with her (continually-media-reinforced) dominance of the band's public image. In fact, he seems suspiciously liberated, as macho Italians are supposed to go, so here's another stereotype that can be filed in the trash along with all of Pat's cruel bitch" clippings.

Neil reaches high up on the bus bulkhead to switch cassettes in the player, and Pat says, Spyder. Your shirttail's out." Spyder Geraldo reaches around and locates the delinquent tail, tucks it back into his jeans, and beneath the greased tidal waves of his hair, he has a perfect Ricky Nelson/Fabian benign-hoody expression of amused gratitude in his dark/light eyes. It's a nice little moment.

Rob Patterson, who did CREEM's prior Pat Benatar story, claims to have fallen asleep during her show, a published admission that has Chrysalis's Toby Lubov a bit anxious tonight, wondering if CREEM hires only narcoleptics. I once fell asleep at a Bootsy Collins show, so it is theoretically possible, but if Patterson caught the same Benatar concert I'm getting tonight, and still went to sleep, then he oughta have his tastes examined.

When I first met Pat Benatar this afternoon, Toby introduced me as CREEM's biggest Benatar fan," and I was a bit embarrassed at the time, for fear that Pat would expect me to start frothing at-dhe mouth any minute. But as I watch and listen to the Pat Benatar Band bolt into their set at Merriweather Post, I realize that Toby had it right the first time. Because of my cantankerous belief that the golden age of rock 'n' roll ended with Sgt. Pepper (until the punk renaissance of 1977 set up a new struggle for the real stuff), I tend to find my true-believer r'n'r champions in the weirdest places. Like the Pat Benatar Band, supposedly off limits for us hip (heh, heh) scribes.

I used to Sing'Wild Thing

I realize that Pat Benatar has vaulted from her teen years to the present with her mid-60's Long Island-rock values timewarp-intact. Working in lounge bands ironically enough kept her r'n'r pure, by steering it away from the country-rock and last-gasp-folkie corruptions that dominated the officially-acceptable pop of the 70's. Pat Benatar's rock springs from a radicallycharged middle-road stance; on the one side, maybe Pat's not quite so intimate with all the cosmic hoo-hah as somebody like Lydia Lunch, but at the same time she's no blanded-out blonde musher in the tradition of Stevie Nicks (the Holly Hobby of rock). Yet Pat also manages to sneak her loud, dynamic rock 'n' roll past the tipsheeters who want to make the airwaves, safe for hasbeens, and that's an achievement in itself these days, no matter where your music's coming from.

For all my well-thought-out enthusiasm forthe Pat Benatar Band, though, I haven't gotten around to catching them live until tonight, and I'm pleased to find that their show's as fast-paced and economic and punchy and (my fave word for this group) textured as their albums. Apparently no one's informed the Benatar Band that they're long since FM-validated as stars, as they still play with headlong, garage band dynamics, revva-revva-room-let-me-know -when-three-minuteS-are-up rhythms, and solos?-what's-that? aesthetic drive, Both guitarist Neil Geraldo and drummer Myron Grombacher are veterans of Rick Derringer's band, of course, and Derringer always seemed particularly adept at this same apolitical punk" (if there is such a category; yeah, I know there is, like the Rascals and Raiders of Pat Benatar's adolescence) the Benatar people are laying on us tonight.

The Pat Benatar Band just played'this open-air Meriweather Post stage a week ago tonight, and after dates in Philadelphia and New York City, the band (and their thousands of fans) are right back for more of the same. Pat's dressed in rather touching lounge-rock style, in a black jumpsuit with red laces down her back and up her pants legs, a red belt snug around her ant-sized waist.. When Pat rears her 90-lb.-dynamo body back at center stage, and lets her lyrics fly, from the launching pad of The Lip (now I seesit), I sense how important her operatic training is to the group's sound. Serious" -music background not as a source of snob value, the way Yes has always employed it, but as a way of bringing brand new swoop & dive Vocal textures to the band's basic Crunch. To live outside the rock cliches, you must be honest.

Neil Geraldo flips his greaser mane back, and grabs fresh guitars from the roadies, he's got a flash touch, for sure, but stays well within the zoom of the group's tight ensemble sound. Roger Capps, the tried & true bassist, who's been with Pat longest, looks as all-American as if he were born in Harlan County, Kentucky (he was), and provides a real roots-rock center to the band's sound, along with rhythm guitarist Scott St. Clair Sheets, the tall, dark & etc., mystery man of the Benatar album covers, who sports an unmistakable Yankee-New England accent to further befuddle my pigeonholing efforts. Myron Grombacher, in his camouflage kungfu suit and slippers (he just grew up with the Dead Boys back in Ohio; he don't dress like 'em), pounds his camouflage drum kit into the kind of pulp that would never be admitted to a Richmond, Virginia, cocktail lounge, without proper I.D., of course.

Columbia/Baltimore knows the score on Pat Benatar real well tonight, the crowd chant the spoken part of Heartbreaker" right along with Pat, an event that had never happened until the band played Seattle early in this tour (Pat just made records; she didn't realize everybody out there was listening to them.). Nobody seems inappropriately amused by Hell Is For Children," and the John Cougarpenned I Need A Lover" (which the Benatar Band performs faster, but just as infectiously, as Cougar's own Hold-on-Iain't-come-yet version) draws the largest ovation of the evening.

Until, of course, the Pat Benatar Band second-encores with the Beatles' Helter Skelter." They've stuck close to the Fab Four's pop-kultur original than Siouxsie and the Banshees did in their icy-manic version of the son§, but still the Pat Benatar Band's cover is electric stuff live. Neil Geraldo's strapped on a Pepto-Bismolcolored dart guitar, he and Caps and Sheets are rushing around the stage with firealarm urgency, like so many crazed Manson lieutenants, while Grombacher hurls more sticks into the crowd and threatens to levitate into the Columbia Children's Zoo any second. Pat Benatar finishes her vocal, touches her toes from the suppleness of her aerobically-disciplined body, and shakes her hard little fist at the depths of the stage, as the instruments roar off their last chaos.

Pat Benatar relaxes in the dressing room later, sipping water and popping M&M's, her sample-sized-platforms propped on the end of my couch, and tells me how much she likes the more personal feeling of her new Precious Time. Pat's always had a refreshingly open approach to recording any song that expresses her emotions, whether or not the song originates in Tier band; she hasn't been hit by the royaltiesgreed fever that denies so many current groups' albums the decisive texture they could achieve with a well-placed cover or three.

Pat talks, about her own and Neil's Promises In The Dark" and Billy Steinberg's Precious Time" interchangeably, as the two songs on her new album which expresses herself closer than ever before. I like Geraldo's snotty-reggae It's A Tuff Life," and his and Pat's Evil Genius," which neatly responds to Hell Is For Children" by admitting that sometimes kids can go just as weird by not being abused. But I'm still a bit miffed that the Benatar Band's cover of Paul Revere's Just Like Me" has no keyboards (one of my alltime top-tenners, and that organ-I'd-kill-for is gone), so I kid Pat a bit by telling her how much the guitar snarl at the beginning of her fave Precious Time" always makes me think Wild Thing" is starting, lets me down a little when it's not, etc., but still she's ahead of me: I used to sing ˜Wild Thing' too,." declares Pat.

Yep, should've known, can't one-up a young pro like Pat Benatar.