• Rating: VG
• Date: 1981 (release)
  
• Charts:
  Billboard #001
  Entered Jul 25, 1981
  On charts 54 weeks
  
• Album Releases:
  CD Chrysalis F2-21346
  CS Chrysalis F4-21346
  1981 LP Chrysalis 1346
  CD Capitol 21346
  Chrysalis 1346
  
• AMG ID: R000001672 (album inprint)
  
• Album Tracks:
  
  • Promises in the Dark
    Debuted 10/3/81 (Mary's birthday)
    Reached #38 on the Pop charts
    Spent 11 weeks on the charts
    Debuted 7/25/81, hit #16 on the Album Rock Tracks.
  • Fire and Ice
    Debuted 7/18/81
    Reached #17 on the Pop charts
    Spent 15 weeks on the charts
    Debuted 7/18/81, hit #2, and spent 4 weeks on the Album Rock Tracks.
    Highest debut in the Hot 100 on July 18, 1981 at #64.
    Biggest mover on the chart (to #44) the next week.
  • Just Like Me
    Debuted with "Fire and Ice" and hit #15 on the Album Rock Tracks.
    Co-written by Terry Melcher (Doris Day's son)
  • Precious Time
  • It's a Tuff Life
  • Take It Any Way You Want It
    Debuted with "Precious Time" and hit #32 on the Album Rock Tracks.
  • Evil Genius
  • Hard to Believe
  • Helter Skelter
• Album comments
• Rokin' Robin's Album Articles
• Album Personnel:
  Scott St. Clair Sheets - Guitar
  Roger Capps - Bass/Vocal
  Neil Geraldo - Guitar/Keyboards/Vocal
  Myron Grombacher - Drums
  Gary Herbig - Sax
  Keith Olsen - Percussion
  Alan Pasqua - Piano
  Joel Peskin - Sax
  Tom Scott - Sax
  Larry(2) Williams - Sax
  Pat Benatar - Vocal
  

Album comments from various places

PRECIOUS TIME

Myron: The atmosphere on that song was really great. The vocal and guitar performance were strong. We recorded it for Crimes Of Passion but it was too similar to other stuff on that album.

Neil: Like I'm Gonna Follow You and Hell Is For Children.

Myron: So we would keep it, and on the bus we would listen to it. We kept going 'Wow, this is great'. When we went back we played it again.

Pat: The guitar has a real watery sound.

Neil: I use to start solos at home just to have an idea, just to play around with it instead of spending hours in the studio trying to get something. I wanted to make sure to come on very strong, because if Patti stops singing at that point, if it ain't strong there's no sense doing it. So I always had to try to start it off strong and just go with it from there. The front of the solo, with the long echo on it--today you can buy a piece of gear and get echoes that long, but back then we had to take two tape machines and spread them out real wide just to delay the whang. Now you can get a 29 cent thing and plug into it. It was really funny. We had to struggle across the studio then, and if it wasn't long enough we'd have to push the little scooter machine farther.

PROMISES IN THE DARK

Pat: Sometime I really hate singing in the first person. First person is so personal sometimes, especially when it's about something. I mostly like observation lyrics. If it's directly from something that happened I can't stand to sing it in first person. I'd rather sing as "we" or "they" or something else.

Neil: She did a great job on that song. That's really a tremendous job. She writes great melodies.

Pat: I started that one on a plane. It's real hard when you are married to a person. You're always ashamed. You don't want show your lyrics. You can slip the lyric under the door and say, 'You can read this but wait 'til I go away.' When I write melodies that is when I'm the most embarrassed, because Neil writes great melodies. So I came to him with this song halfway done, I was dyiing of embarrassment.

Neil: She had the whole melody of the song except for the bridge.

Pat: Then I made him write the third verse. We switched. Okay, you clean it up. You write the last verse.

Neil: The melody shifted a little in the bridge to where she could get a little more testy coming out it.

Pat: He's always trying to make me sing stuff that I normally go for.

FIRE AND ICE

Pat: I rewrote the bridge on that song. The melody was pretty far out. When you can sing a lot of different ranges, you just keep trying to find stuff that keeps you interested.

Neil: Some days her voice is so bright that we used a Sony condensor mike on her for one song and it sounded great. We tried it the next day and it as thin as ever.

IT'S A TUFF LIFE

Neil: I was in a terrible state of mind at that point. I really hated everything that was going on. I saw this kid in the back of a Mercedes and he was playing this Telecaster and you could see he was bragging, so I got really upset about that. That just got me really angry. Raggae seemed to fit with the lyrics.

HARD TO BELIEVE

Neil: Myron started it. He had the lyrics and melody for it.

Myron: A lot of times when I write, because I am not a gifted guitarist, you just have to get a good enough idea that you get some kind of atmosphere or train of thought happening on it. The just come up with a melody good enough for Patti to want to improve on it.

Pat: That's our favorite thing, watching Myron sing.

Myron: The worst thing is singing the idea to her. Another thing is, very rarely would all three of us, even if we're working on the same idea permit more than two of us to be in the room at the same time.