hit me with your best shot! pat's all fired up for nz

Since handing in her notice at the bank, the rocker’s been right on the money

With her short spiky hair, heavy eyeliner and toughcookie attitude, Pat Benatar spoke volumes to a generation of young women looking for empowerment in the 1970s and 80s.

Forty years later, the Love is a Battlefield hitmaker is still singing like a boss, even taking part in a series of Kiwi summer concerts next month. And just before her arrival Downunder, she’s marking a special milestone her 70th birthday.

“I’ve enjoyed every age I’ve been and each has had its own individual merit,” says Pat, who’s racked up a string of platinum and multiplatinum albums, plus top 20 hits in her long career.

“Every laugh line, every scar is a badge I wear to show I’ve been present the inner rings of my personal tree trunk that I display proudly for all to see,” she enthuses. Nowadays, I don’t want a perfect’ face and body. I want to wear the life I’ve lived.”

Born on January 10, 1953, young Patricia Mae Andrzejewski’s blue-collar Brooklyn upbringing included singing in school and church choirs. But the words rock star” didn’t appear to be written in her stars in 1972 when, aged 19, she married her high school boyfriend Dennis Benatar.

“My boyfriend, who I met when I was 16, got drafted, and I thought he was going to go to Vietnam and die,” she recalls with a wry smile. And

so, like an idiot, I got married. And he didn’t die and I became a bank teller.”