You Better Run

The Zoo Crew, those hippie and rock n roll biker DJs spinning records at THE ZOO, have got "You Better Run" by Pat Benatar from the album Crimes of Passion going strong for all the Zoo Freaks out there listening in. This track comes from Benatar's second record, released back in 1980, and it is a cover of a song the Young Rascals put out in 1966. Written by Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati, the original was a blue-eyed soul number with a garage edge, a kiss-off tune aimed at someone who had done the singer wrong. Benatar and her guitarist Neil Giraldo flipped the gender and turned it into something heavier, slower, and more menacing, with her voice cutting through like a warning. It served as the lead single from Crimes of Passion, charting at number 42, and it also showed up on the soundtrack for the 1980 movie Roadie that starred Meat Loaf.

What really sets this one apart is its place in music video history. When MTV launched on August 1, 1981, the very first clip they aired was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles, and the second one was Benatar's video for "You Better Run." That made her the first woman, the first American, and the first rocker to appear on the channel, while Giraldo became the first lead guitarist anyone saw on those screens. The network was brand new and needed American acts with real videos, so they picked this one because the song was already known and it had a guitar solo ready to go. In the book I Want My MTV, Benatar talked about the shoot itself. She was genuinely angry during filming because she did not like taking direction from the film people. She said the bad attitude she had was exactly what the song needed, coming across as extremely sassy and aggressive, which fit the lyric and the image she wanted to project. The video is straightforward, just the band belting it out in a warehouse, directed by Nick Saxton who kept things simple on a tight budget. Giraldo later told Songfacts that he thought the video was okay but he never liked videos in general because they changed the context of the words. As they got more popular they turned into little stories, and after Benatar's "Shadows of the Night" clip where she played a World War II pilot he ordered a ban on historical costumes.

Neil Giraldo also spoke about the sudden fame that followed. In a 2012 interview he said he did not think MTV would revolutionize the industry. He could not imagine a channel with no commercials running 24 hours, and he did not realize they would play those first five videos over and over. After a few days of that, people who maybe knew what you looked like suddenly could not walk the street without someone saying they just saw you on MTV. It happened that fast. The album itself was a tough one to make. Fresh off a long tour, the band wanted a rawer sound than the more intricate debut. Chrysalis pushed them to work with producer Keith Olsen instead of the guy from the first record, and it was hellish for Benatar. She has said Olsen was a fine guy but the wrong dude for them. Giraldo had to step in and save the sessions, which opened the door for him to produce later work. They recorded at Sound City in Van Nuys, and the record went multi-platinum, peaking at number 2 and earning Benatar her first Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. She has mixed feelings about it years later, once telling an interviewer that people call it her best but it was material that did not fully work for her and she was not happy with how she sang on it.

Before all the hits and the MTV spotlight, Pat Benatar was Patricia Mae Andrzejewski, born January 10, 1953, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, to a beautician mother and a sheet-metal worker father of Polish descent. The family moved to Lindenhurst on Long Island, where her mother, who had given up her own opera career, passed on a love of singing. Benatar trained classically as a coloratura and even got accepted to Juilliard, but she skipped it. At 19 she married her high school sweetheart Dennis Benatar, a soldier, and they moved to Virginia where he was stationed. She worked as a bank teller near Richmond and felt stuck in the housewife life. Seeing a Liza Minnelli concert changed that. She quit the bank job, started singing with a lounge band called Coxon's Army, and worked as a singing waitress at places like the Roaring Twenties. The band got popular enough for a PBS special that never aired, but she knew she needed to get back to New York.

In 1975 she packed up her Honda Civic with about twenty-five hundred dollars saved and headed to Manhattan. She had read about open-mic comedy clubs and showed up at Catch a Rising Star, waiting until she was twenty-seventh in line and going on around 2 a.m. She sang Judy Garland's "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody" and the place exploded. Club owner Rick Newman swung open the doors, pulled her aside, and that was the start. She kept working the clubs, did some jingles, and eventually headlined at Tramps where the review in the paper brought the record companies. Chrysalis signed her, and she told them she wanted a musical partner, not just a guitar player. They found Neil Giraldo, whose aggressive style unlocked the rock sound she had been after. She did not want to be the next Linda Ronstadt singing about broken hearts from the soft side. She wanted to be more like Robert Plant or Lou Gramm, switching the gender on covers and telling people to get out of her face. That partnership, which turned into a marriage in 1982, carried her through Crimes of Passion and the rest of the catalog.

You can dig deeper into all of it on the official site at benatargiraldo.com, where they keep the history, the music, and the news. Follow along on Facebook at facebook.com/benatargiraldo, on Instagram at instagram.com/benatargiraldo, and on X at x.com/benatargiraldo. For the fans who have been there from the start, the Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo Fan Club site at benatarfanclub.com has tour updates, a members area, and an active Facebook group where Zoo Freaks and everyone else can trade stories and keep the rock going. That is the real deal behind the track the Zoo Crew just spun.