It's always fun when aging rock hitmakers go public with their decades-old beefs. Case in point: Neil Giraldo, husband and creative partner of Pat Benatar, believes that he's the source of the drum pattern from Don Henley's "The Boys Of Summer," and he wants Henley collaborator Mike Campbell to acknowledge it.
Neil Giraldo and Pat Benatar started working together in 1979, and they got married in 1982. Giraldo had a hand in producing many of Benatar's biggest hits, including the immortal 1983 smash "Love Is A Battlefield." In 1984, Don Henley released "The Boys Of Summer," another big hit. Henley co-wrote and co-produced that one with Mike Campbell, best known as the guitarist for Tom Petty's Heartbreakers. Campbell, who has said Petty passed on the song before Jimmy Iovine suggested bringing it to Henley, programmed the drum machine. He talked to Stereogum about its genesis in his We've Got A File On You interview.
In April, Neil Giraldo went on Bob Lefsetz's podcast and brought up the similarities between "Love Is A Battlefield" and "The Boys Of Summer."
He says he showed Henley how he put together the "Love Is A Battlefiend" beat on a LinnDrum. "You know the song 'Boys Of Summer'? How similar is that to 'Love Is A Battlefield'?" Giraldo asked Lefsetz. "You can say what you want about Don Henley [but] that guy is an honest guy. ... He said, how did you do 'Battlefield'? [because] I wanna steal it."
You know the song 'Boys Of Summer'? How similar is that to 'Love Is A Battlefield'? ... You can say what you want about Don Henley [but] that guy is an honest guy. ... He said, how did you do 'Battlefield'? [because] I wanna steal it." Giraldo said he told Henley how he programmed the modified Bo Diddley beat on a LinnDrum. In effect, Henley had Giraldo's blessing. "I explained it to him and he went out and he did it. Cool. But Somebody else that was part of it doesn't say the same story ... In music, it's important to be true. People can smell when it's not the truth. It's important. And I think if you're going to go on social media or something like that, tell the truth." He never says Campbell's name.
Last week Neil Giraldo went on the New York classic rock radio station Q104.3's Out Of The Box program and again insisted on the similarities: “I hope somebody out there can take those two songs and dissect them and show them how much alike they really are," he said to Jonathan Clarke. "Because ‘Love Is A Battfield’ 1983, ‘Boys Of Summer,’ 1984. And it sure sounds exactly the same. And I know who said they were gonna steal it. … There’s so many similarities."
@q1043ny Neil Giraldo believes someone copied his "Love Is a Battlefield" drum machine beat and used it for "Boys of Summer"! Same drum machine, same feel, released just one year apart. The evidence is at the Rock Hall ?
♬ original sound - q1043
Way back in 2012, Giraldo also apparently told Knoxville.com, in a no-longer-online interview, that he gave Henley permission to steal the "Love Is A Battlefield" beat. This interview was referenced on "The Boys Of Summer" Wikipedia, but that portion was myseriously deleted sometime around 2018.
"I had a friend named Roger Linn who used to work over at Leon Russell's house," Campbell said in a 2021 video on his Facebook. "[LinnDrum] had a bunch of live sounds that you could mix together like a drum machine and make your own patterns – it was pretty revolutionary at the time. ... I had borrowed an Oberheim OB-X synthesiser and I was playing around with the drum machine one night. I stayed up all night, just typing in tambourines and claps and hands and drums and snares. I got a little pattern going."
Our own Scott Lapatine fell into the research deep-dive on all this. Mike Campbell has yet to comment on Giraldo's claims.
