[large]Q&A: Lenny Kravitz[/large]
[small]by Marc Spitz 12:00 PM, AUGUST 19 2011[/small]


[small]BY MATHIEU BITTON.[/small]

For more than two decades, Lenny Kravitz has remained a difficult artist to pin down: too flamboyant and good looking to be regarded by some critics as a serious singer-songwriter, and too talented to dismiss outright (his Greatest Hits album, which actually contains great hits, has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, four and a half here in America). Now 47 (!), Kravitz is building a side career as a sought-after supporting actor (he was recently cast in the highly anticipated adaptation of The Hunger Games) and show-business patriarch (daughter Zoe recently starred in the film X-Men: First Class). Recording the upcoming Black and White America (out next month) and a recent support slot on U2’s 360 tour finds him returning to music in top form. Here, Kravitz discusses race, fame, fashion, aging, and why he’d like to try a comedy next (he was in Zoolander, you know).

Marc Spitz: This isn’t the album you’ve been rumored to be working on for a few years, is it? [Kravitz was reportedly set to release a long-in-the-works funk record.]

Lenny Kravitz: No, it’s all brand-new.

So you were working on that album and at some point you decided to try something new.

I didn’t decide—it decided. I follow where the creativity goes, and it just started coming.

It’s been a relatively long time since we heard anything new from you.

You’ve got to remember, three years between albums: I’m on the road for two of those years. You make an album, you tour, and then you’ve got to chill. You’ve got to make music again. There’s no race. I just wanted to make an incredible record that really represents exactly where I am today. I was recording in the Bahamas in seclusion. It was a very relaxing and satisfying experience, so I dragged it out as long as I could. It’s where my mother’s side of the family is from, and I like being in that environment.

Your albums aren’t grounded by a sense of place in time. I was wondering if you habitually shut off all the TVs when you’re working.

There’s absolutely no TV in the studio. Absolutely not. Most studios have that TV hanging in front of the console. I can’t do that at all.

You’ve taken a lot of shit over the years for your vintage penchant.

I think that was just because the generation had changed. When I first came out, a lot of people from the 60s were interviewing me and critiquing me. Rock writers had a very you’re-on-our-territory attitude. Ten years after I did what I did, bands were being praised for the same things I was torn apart for. It’s just a matter of generations.

I always suspected the critical prickliness was because of the way you dressed.

It was a whole lot of things.

And you’re a really good producer, too. I just love the Vanessa Paradis record [her 1993 self-titled English-language release]. That’s a lost classic.

It is! I kind of like it that way. This underground record. People that know it, know it. I just had someone in L.A. talk to me last week about it. They said, “I was just listening to Vanessa Paradis in the car!” That’s something you have to really find if you’re not French or European.

The new album’s title track is remarkable in that I don’t think fans have ever heard you so explicitly autobiographical.

Obviously I am black and white America. That’s how I grew up. It’s what I know. It’s what my parents dealt with. [Kravitz’s father, producer Sy Kravitz, was white; his mother, the late actress Roxie Roker, famous for playing Helen Willis on The Jeffersons, was black.] In the beginning they took a lot of shit for it, and it’s also where we are right now.

What inspired the song was a documentary that I was watching. I was flipping the channels, and there were these people who were completely disgusted by what they thought America has turned into. Completely disgusted that there was an African-American commander in chief, and “this was not the America they built.” And I thought, Who are these people? And the chorus of the song is the rebuttal to the documentary. The verses deal with Martin Luther King and what his whole purpose was and then my parents and what they dealt with.

I think people know you’re a gifted musician, but your public image is that of the quintessential “rock star,” so it’s interesting to get this sense of pain from that song, and your sense of the suffering and anxiety that your parents went through.

It’s really interesting how an image, like you say, can overshadow one’s personality and how it can just become part of the pop-culture fabric, because I’m not that guy. It looks like I could be a certain guy, but if you came home and lived with me, you’d say, “You’re completely the opposite of how I thought you were.”

With the film and TV success of your daughter, Zoe, you’re now part of a three-generation show-business family.

Right, yes.

She’s entering the public eye at a very different time in terms of fame and celebrity. It’s not like when you and her mother, Lisa Bonet, were first famous. Can you share what you might have said to her about navigating it?

Zoe’s very much of the new generation, but she’s rooted in the past because of myself and because of my mother. She was seven years old when my mother died, but she got a piece of her and she got a good piece of my grandfather before he died. She’s very new school but she has old-school values within her core. She balances them well. She can be racy. She can be a rebel and march to her own drummer. It’s what I did. It’s what my mother did. While still being a rebel and being herself, she’s got serious limits and knows when to pull back. She never wanted to be famous for the sake of being famous. She wanted to be a singer and an actress. There’s part of her that probably doesn’t like a lot of things that fame brings, but she’s doing her art.

Fame probably doesn’t have the same mystique, having grown up around it.

No, she grew up in the house with her mom and myself and lived with me from age 11 to 19.

Did you teach her to play?

Here and there. I would sit with her, but not too much. I never wanted to be the pushy father, but she was around and she traveled with me and had access to whatever she needed to find her own voice.

I can’t believe you’re 47. You look exactly the same.

It’s kind of weird, yeah. Kind of weird.

Do you have a trick?

It’s a Dorian Gray thing. No, my grandfather had incredible longevity. When he died, at 93, he looked 63.

It’s a good asset for rock ’n’ roll.

It’s kind of weird but I don’t think about the age thing.

The very recent buzz about you hasn’t been about rock ’n’ roll but rather about you being cast as Cinna, the stylist in the adaptation of The Hunger Games. What can you talk about?

Not too much. They’re keeping it under wraps. You know the book. I’m really excited. The world that they portray in the book is quite amazing. I am looking to see how [director] Gary Ross puts it together. He called me personally. He had seen Precious and was impressed with how I played the role. How I pulled it back. It’s a very understated role And Cinna is a kind of caretaker.

Do you want to do more acting? Would you ever do a comedy?

Completely! When you see this video to “Stand,” my first single, it’s a comedy. People tell me that I’m funny.

Merci FLOWER!!

merci ;-) Il se prend au sérieux en tant qu'acteur avec son clip 'Stand' ;-)