Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo came into her third studio album, Precious Timehot.
The couple, who married during 1982, was riding the wave of two Top 15 and Platinum-or-better albums — 1979’s In the Heat of the Night and 1980’s Crimes of Passion — and a string of hits including “Heartbreaker,” “We Live For Love,” “Treat Me Right” and the Top 10 “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.”
“It’s the music industry, though,” Benatar told us a couple of years ago. “You’re only as good as what you’re doing now, so… there’s always that pressure.”
They answered with Precious Time.
The nine-song set, recorded in Los Angeles and co-produced by Giraldo and Keith Olsen, would become Benatar’s only number one album on the Billboard 200. It would also be certified double Platinum and spawn another Top 20 hit with its first single, “Treat Me Right.”
More memorable, however, was its follow-up, “Promises in the Dark.” Although it only reached number 38 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and 16 on the Mainstream Rock chart), it was a high point for Giraldo. In addition to featuring a blistering electric guitar attack, the song is a showcase for what is arguably the hottest solo he ever put on record. With its combination of intricate melodies, emotional impact and technical excellence, it’s frequently cited as Giraldo’s best in his long career with Benatar.
Their union came about while the guitarist was playing in Rick Derringer’s Derringer band. Producer-songwriter Mike Chapman recruited him to write and record with a new singer he was working with — Benatar, a trained coloratura with a multi-octave range. Giraldo wrote “We Live for Love” for In the Heat of the Heat of the Nightthen hit the road as Benatar’s bandleader.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better thing,” he recalls. “I remember when I met her and we started playing together, I was like, ‘Where have you been?!’ and she felt the same way, as if we were floating around somewhere and all of a sudden we finally got the message that, ‘You two have to meet…’
“And it worked.”
“Promises in the Dark” is a Giraldo-Benatar co-write, started by the latter while they were in Tarzana, California.
“We were in our very first house that we rented in southern California,” the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer says, “a little house with a tiny little music room. I had my guitar there, a little piano, electric. We were writing it right around Crimes of Passion. If we would’ve finished it, it would probably have been on that record. Instead we kept it for Precious Time.
“Patricia and I write in each other’s corners; we’re apart, and then we bring the idea in and ask, ‘What do you think of this?’
“She started the idea for ‘Promises in the Dark’ and came up with the verse and a little bit of the chorus. It was her idea — subject matter, the whole thing. She had the melody. When I heard it, I was like, ‘Wow, I love this. Let’s keep working on it.’”
At that point, the song was a ballad. But when they tried the still-unfinished song in rehearsals, it didn’t exactly catch fire.
“We rehearsed it as a ballad and it kinda was not going anywhere,” Giraldo says.
“My favorite idol in the rock world was Pete Townshend. So I thought, What would Pete Townshend do? He’d probably play some sort of three-chord riff
“So that’s where it changed into beginning with a ballad and then go into an uptempo thing. That riff divided the song. It made those next verses and the bridge and everything into a rock song.”
As Gerald explains, the guitar gave the song that necessary definition.
“Normally the song is complete written and the guitar is embellishment to where the song stylistically falls.
“But ‘Promises’ was a little different because that riff defined where it was gonna go.
“When we cut the song in the studio we didn’t have a last verse. I wrote the last verse while we were in the studio to finish the song, and then we had it complete.”
As for the solo, Giraldo says he set out to do something more than shred.
“I don’t really like soloing, but I like melodic stuff,” he explains. “When it’s time to solo I want to give people a chance to have something melodic to hold their attention while the vocal stops, so that when the vocal comes back in it can come back and not feel like there’s any kind of lag.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with the shredding people do; I just don’t do that.”
Given that he had to come in from Benatar’s last note and end by leading back to her vocal, Giraldo knew where the solo would begin and end.
“I always know what the beginning of a solo is and how it will end; I just don’t know the middle. I just wing it,” he says. “I usually start off on Patricia’s last note to lead into the solo — and if I don’t take that note I’ll take a fifth of whatever the chord is — and then I’ll mess around and just jump out of it.
“That’s what happened on ‘Promises.’ I don’t know any other way.
For the solo, Giraldo used his tobacco sunburst B.C. Rich Eagle, one his main guitars at that time. Although there was a hitch.
“I had my main Eagle on the stand while I was writing on the piano,” he remembers, “and all of a sudden the guitar — the one I used on everything — falls, and it breaks the top of the head off. And I went, ‘Oh damn, that’s not good!’
“Patricia was in the kitchen. I said, ‘You’re not gonna believe this. I think I’ve got something rad for ‘Promises,’ but my guitar just fell off and busted.’”
Given the Eagle’s history and importance, Giraldo had it repaired. “I still used that guitar,” he says. “It was what I used on just about everything on Crimes of Passionand then Precious Time.”
“Promises in the Dark” remains a staple in the Benatar-Giraldo set — the only song from Precious Times they’ve been playing live this year, in fact. Meanwhile, the grandparents of three are preparing for the September publication of their new children’s book, My Grandma and Grandpa Rock!, while Giraldo is working on three albums — a solo set, a collaboration with longtime Benatar band drummer Myron Grombacher and a holiday record — as well as a score for the film The Same Sky. He also has a memoir that’s in motion for the better part of a decade.
“Something’s gotta get finished, right?” he says with a laugh before acknowledging that, “the idea of letting go can be difficult. A lot of times I’ll start writing a song and get something going, and then I take another exit off and start another song.
“So I’m in the process of all these projects at once that I feel really good about. They’re not complete, but I know I can complete them because I did the heavy lifting already. I just have to do it.”
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