I Am the Warrior: My Crazy Life Writing the Hits and Rocking the MTV Eighties

by Holly Knight

Overview

Holly Knight’s singular music career included crafting a good part of the soundtrack to the MTV eighties with mega-hits for Tina Turner (“The Best”), Pat Benatar (“Love Is A Battlefield”), and Patty Smyth (“The Warrior”)—songs that celebrated female empowerment and shaped pop and rock for years to come.

“Holly Knight wrote some of the best and toughest songs for female artists. Her songs helped pave the way for women in rock. Not to mention a few dudes.” —Patty Smyth

As a writer and musician, Holly Knight worked hard and played hard with the likes of KISS, Rod Stewart, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, and Heart. She showed the boys how it was done when many women were still struggling to get a foot in the door. Starting in the late 1970s in post-punk New York, Knight, a gifted keyboardist, joined the band Spider—which quickly ascended to buzzworthy status before things began to disintegrate. Fortunately, her song “Better Be Good to Me” found its way to Tina Turner and became the second single on her landmark solo album, Private Dancer, launching Holly into rarified air. Soon she was being sought out to write for other artists in search of the big hit or their lead single. Coinciding with the birth of MTV, Knight’s powerful lyrics, hooks, and melodies became a staple on the channel as it exploded into a cultural force.

“People who grew up in the eighties tell me that MTV was the soundtrack to their lives. Holly Knight deserves much of the credit. Few songwriters have written such a diverse collection of songs for such a broad range of superstars.” —Alan Hunter

But it was an often lonely journey to success. Not only was Holly a woman in a male-dominated industry that didn’t welcome women warmly into the inner sanctum, she carried with her the baggage of a difficult childhood and a fraught relationship with her mother, the substance of which informed the themes that made her songs so anthemic. I Am the Warrior is a story of survival, perseverance, and triumph laced with ample amounts of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. Backstage, onstage, in the studio, and on the road, this book is a revealing, bang-bang tale that welcomes you along for a look back at one of the most adventurous and colorful periods in music history.

“I Am the Warrior takes readers on a wild ride through the eighties world of rock ’n’ roll from a strong female’s perspective. Songwriters Hall of Fame-inductee Holly Knight delivers the goods and stands out as a creative, gutsy woman who made her way through a field dominated by men, ultimately coming out on top. If you love music like I do, this is a must-read!” —Cassandra Peterson (AKA Elvira, Mistress of the Dark)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781637584408
Publisher:	Permuted Press
Publication date:	11/29/2022
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	844,716
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Throughout the 1980s, singer/songwriter Holly Knight composed anthems that became the soundtrack for millions of people’s lives. She created and crafted empowering odes to independence, liberation, and equality.

Defiant, purposeful, and ultimately triumphant, her work with Tina Turner, Pat Benatar, and Heart, among others, also helped pave the way for the next generation of defining female musical masters including Amy Winehouse, Adele, and Lady Gaga. It was the music and words she wrote. But it was also the visual representations on MTV that helped define Holly’s work for the masses. She was inducted in the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2013, standing side by side with the likes of Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, and Foreigner.

Her songs have also appeared in countless films, TV shows, and commercials. Not one to rest on her laurels, Knight is still as passionate and driven about music as she was in her late teens.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Prologue xi

Chapter 1 My Arrival 1

New York City, 1956

Chapter 2 In Film Noir (Spider) 13

New York City, 1977-1980

Chapter 3 The Demon, the Joker, and the One with the Star on His Eye (KISS) 25

New York City, 1979

Chapter 4 In Fujicolor (Spider) 48

Los Angeles, 1980-1982

Chapter 5 I Want My MTV 68

New York City, 1981

Chapter 6 Learning to Make Paper Airplanes (Pat Benatar) 70

Beverly Hills, 1983

Chapter 7 A Night in Heaven ("Obsession") 81

Los Angeles, 1983

Chapter 8 Bang, Bang, I Am the Warrior (Patty Smyth) 87

Los Angeles, Malibu, 1984

Chapter 9 "We Fell Out" (Divinyls) 93

Los Angeles, 1985

Chapter 10 How I Met the Acid Queen (Tina Turner) 99

Los Angeles, 1985

Chapter 11 Night of the Thirty Toes (Heart) 112

Las Angeles, 1985

Chapter 12 "Well Done, Young Lady!" (Rod Stewart) 127

Los Angeles, 1985

Chapter 13 We Will Be Invincible (Pat Benatar) 147

Los Angeles, 1986

Chapter 14 22B3 (Device) 154

Los Angeles, 1985

Chapter 15 Living In a Haunted House (Elvira, Mistress of the Dark) 162

Los Angeles, 1986

Chapter 16 So You Wanna Be a Cowboy? (Bon Jovi) 167

Los Angeles, 1986

Chapter 17 I Love a Man Who Takes Charge (Don Johnson) 176

Los Angeles, 1987

Chapter 18 We Got a Soul Love (Hall & Oates) 186

New York City & Los Angeles 1987

Chapter 19 Why I Put My Dress on Inside Out (Steven Tyler) 197

Los Angeles & Vancouver, 1987

Chapter 20 Slow Burn (Ozzy Osbourne) 211

Los Angeles, 1988

Chapter 21 Simply the Best (Tina Turner) 219

Los Angeles, 1987-1990

Afterword 235

New York City, 2013

Songs I Wish I Had Written 239

Discography 246

Song Permissions 253

Acknowledgments 256

About the Author 258

Editorial Reviews

"Backstage, onstage, in the studio, and on the road, this memoir is an impressively revealing life story by an articulate woman who welcomes her readers to take a look back at one of the most adventurous and colorful periods in music history.

Midwest Book Review