Did you know that Pat Benatar got her start in an off-Broadway sci-fi musical composed by Harry Chapin when she was twenty-two? It’s true. It was called The Zinger. After that, of course, Benatar put out a non-stop procession of Top 40 hits, among them “Love is a Battlefield,” “Heartbreaker,” and “We Belong.”

The gal with the four-octave voice grew up in Long Island, New York, and started singing in elementary school. At the age of nineteen, she married her high school sweetheart, then several years later divorced him but kept his last name (“Benatar” sounded slightly more rocking than her given name of Andrzejewski). In another fortuitous twist of events, she decided not to attend the Julliard School of Music, which, she reasoned, would just delay her career as a rock singer. After some stints in theater, including the aforementioned Zinger, she was discovered by a record agent while singing cabaret at the New York club Catch A Rising Star.