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[large]Renaissance Man[/large] Lenny Kravitz learned to navigate the industry to become a master of his game by Ericka Blount Danois 
Sharon Haywood knew that she and Lenny Kravitz would be on the same page. After all, his mother was a sista. Haywood leaned in close, looking directly into Lenny’s face as they shared a joint. “We are not rolling into the urban world on this rocker shit. Listen, if we roll through on an R&B tip, you gotta change up these clothes.” Lenny just laughed good-naturedly. Haywood was charged with promoting Lenny’s second album, 1991’s Mama Said, to the Black market for Virgin Records. When they went to Washington, D.C., to promote the record to urban radio executives, Lenny left the boas, big sleeves, and flared pants behind, emerging from the hotel room in a salmon-colored three-piece suit. Radio executives bought the toned-down Lenny. The mid-tempo, undressed love ballad “It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over”—featuring Lenny playing all of the instruments except Earth, Wind & Fire’s Phenix Horns, who appear at the end of the song—would be the first single to hit the charts on the Black market, soaring to number two. “He was frustrated that Black people weren’t hearing his music. It was important to him to stretch those boundaries,” says Haywood, who broke Paula Abdul and Soul II Soul to the urban market. “I’m still not sure if Black audiences are as aware of him as they should be,” says Quincy Jones, on the phone from California. “He reminds me so much of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley because they both told me that their biggest regret is that their people didn’t know them.” “I thought he was blessed to be able to jump around in different genres,” says good friend and funk doctor Bootsy Collins. “To be Black, that was one of the hardest things to accomplish—was to play in different genres and have radio stations play your music. It was pretty much unheard of when we were coming up.” When Lenny signed a record deal in 1989, Virgin Records America was a fledgling boutique label spun off from its older brother, Richard Branson’s British label that rocketed to fame in the 1970s with its first release, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. Lenny would join other Americans like Paula Abdul and Warren Zevon, who played a significant part in building a solid American repertoire for Virgin. There were few boundaries creatively, and the label was able to nurture Lenny. “He broke big in France and Australia,” remembers Jordan Harris, who was co-president of the label at the time. “He did well in the States, but he did really well outside the States.” Virgin executives thought his sartorial choices just weren’t affecting the Black market. “There were times when I was like, ‘What the fuck are you wearing on your head?’ ” recalls Jeff Ayeroff, co-president at Virgin at the time. “It would be some leather bag on his head. He was getting too Super Fly for my aesthetic. He grew up with KISS posters on his wall, and he was all over the place with his physical aesthetic.” Flamboyant and eclectic, he sorted through his Hollywood mother Roxie Roker’s wardrobe to get ideas for a unique look and developed a penchant for fashion from family friends, like Miles Davis. There was his high school look—“Romeo Blue” was his sobriquet, and blue contacts, permed, spiked hair, and Armani suits was the fashion. Then there were his long dreads and a hippie aesthetic for the first album, Let Love Rule, but music executives worried that fans would think he was a reggae artist and decided to put his image on the back of the album. He would ride over to the office on a loud ’91 vintage Harley motorcycle with “Let Love Rule” painted in ’60s lettering on the purple fuel tank, riding with his wife Lisa Bonet and baby, Zoe, in tow. “It was the coolest thing. It was everything we hoped America could be,” says Ayeroff. “Lisa was the famous one at the time. They were in the tabloids. He was so handsome. People were like, ‘Who is this guy?’ ” Executives toyed with his name. “They thought, ‘What kind of a name is Lenny Kravitz for a Black guy?’ I thought it worked perfectly. They wanted to call him Lenny K. A lot of the other labels wanted him to be the next Luther Vandross,” says Ayeroff. In the end, what worked best was everything. His music, his style, and his persona were all interchangeable, a function of his creating. His commitment was to art for art’s sake. He turned down record deals, searched for and purchased vintage equipment to get a sound that gave him feeling, learned how to play dozens of instruments, and developed a stage show that would rival self-contained funk bands from the ’70s. There are incarnations of bands, and then there’s the incarnation of Lenny Kravitz. Lenny had always lived between many worlds. Before his mother, Roxie Roker, became well known as Helen Willis on the ’70s television sitcom The Jeffersons, she graduated from Howard University and became a Broadway actress who had studied at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. One of her first television appearances was as co-host of the WNEW show, Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, one of the first Black-oriented public affairs television programs in New York, where she interviewed icons like LeRoi Jones and Harry Belafonte talking about topics like Blacks’ misrepresentation in the media, poverty, and politics. Five-year-old Lenny, who was attached to his mother at the hip, would come on the set and be awed by the coolness. His mother’s day job was working as a secretary at NBC, where she met Sy Kravitz, a jazz enthusiast and promoter and a page for NBC who would eventually become a producer. He was a strict disciplinarian, a former military sergeant, and he and Lenny bumped heads often. Lenny spent weekdays with his parents in Manhattan and weekends with his Bahamian grandparents in Bed-Stuy. When his mother got the job with The Jeffersons, they moved to Los Angeles; Lenny was eleven years old. He would stand in the line that would stretch down Sunset Boulevard to Tower Records, surrounded by people in sleeping bags and tents, whenever a new album by Stevie Wonder or Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin came out. He would get home, open it, smell the new album smell, read the liner notes, and the special thank-yous. To him, it was an experience, a piece of art. He had learned basic chords on the guitar at the Harlem School for the Arts and learned everything else by ear. In L.A., he joined the school orchestra, playing drums in the marching and jazz bands. His mother wanted to keep him off the streets, so she signed him up for an audition to join the California Boys’ Choir. He ended up singing with the Metropolitan Opera and the L.A. Philharmonic, performed in classical operas like Carmen, The Magic Flute, Mefistofele, and La Bohème, and recorded with Zubin Mehta for Columbia Records. Lenny’s first professional concert was in 1981 at the Hollywood Bowl with Mehta conducting Mahler’s Third Symphony. He balanced the discipline he learned as a classical singer with a working-class work ethic handed down from his Bahamian-born grandfather, Albert Roker, who taught him to always start the day at 6:00 AM, no matter what happened the night before. But if Lenny adhered to a physical and mental discipline, his spirit was carefree and whimsical. Like Holden Caulfield, the main character from his favorite book, The Catcher in the Rye, he was most comfortable rebelling against any sort of convention, holding a mirror up to phony people, living a bohemian lifestyle, doing what he wanted to do. In one moment, he belongs to everyone. In another, he belongs only to himself. Like Holden, he yearned to be the world’s most celebrated outsider. While still in high school, Lenny left home after a fight with his dad about whether or not he could go to a Buddy Rich concert. He slept anywhere he could, on friend’s couches and floors, in recording studios, or in his $4.99-per-day rented pea-green Ford Pinto. He roamed around for years, coming home for a few weeks here and there when he got in a jam. “My grandmother was like, ‘Chile, you need to get a job and take your butt to the post office,’ ” Lenny says with a chuckle. But one day, a woman named “Lady T.” took him in. Teena Marie, a self-contained multi-instrumentalist, cooked for him, gave him instruments, and took him to studio sessions. “A big reason why I am here is because of this sister,” Lenny says. He still went every day to Beverly Hills High School, mostly for his mother who was the first college graduate in her family. Daniel “Zoro” Donnelly, a recent graduate of Beverly Hills High School, wanted to pursue music and thought he could find like-minded musicians at his old school. He decided he would go hang out on the lawn, blast his boom box with Earth, Wind & Fire tunes and see who came over to him. A sixteen-year-old Lenny Kravitz was the first person to come over and start talking to him. By the time Lenny was seventeen, he and Zoro were going to jam sessions all over town and had started a rock and funk group they named Wave, with Zoro as the drummer, Lenny as the lead singer, and a fourteen-piece band. During the day, they were inspired by listening to Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, the Jacksons, Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, Jeff Lorber Fusion’s Wizard Island and Water Sign, and funk bands like Con Funk Shun and the Gap Band. They hired a horn section and held their first concert on December 3, 1982, at Beverly Hills High, complete with dry ice. “It was like Earth, Wind & Fire on steroids,” remembers Zoro. Lenny talked his father into giving him the money he had put away for college so the band could record a full album at A&M Studios in Hollywood, the label of the Police and Janet Jackson. On the day they planned to record, in 1983, Karen Carpenter died from heart failure. The studio she was using became available for the band. Next door, Frank Sinatra was recording “L.A. Is My Lady” with Quincy Jones. The demo garnered them a lucrative offer, but record executives wanted to turn the group into another Shalamar. Broke, but undeterred, Lenny turned them down and the group disbanded. “It went against all logic,” remembers Zoro. “It was God talking. He had that conviction. It showed him that what he really wanted to do was music.” “I remember everybody hating me, because we didn’t have a deal because I wouldn’t sign,” Lenny says. “If I would have said yes, I would be done. I would be working at the grocery store. I wouldn’t be here. To this day, I don’t know what made me say no; I guess it was a spirit thing. My friends were like, ‘What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re living in a car and you won’t sign?’ ” It would be another seven years—a few of them couch surfing and sleeping in his car and homeless, working as a shoe salesman and at a fish store—before he would get another chance. There was always music, even when everything around him was swirling in circles of stagnation. In the years following the thwarted offer from A&M Records, his father thought that he had wasted his college money on a son who seemed content to live like a bum. But Lenny continued to play and master new instruments—drums, bass, Fender Rhodes, Minimoog, congas, Mellotron, guitars, timpani, among many others, even as he searched for a place to sleep every night. And, unwavering, he continued to absorb music. Jheryl Busby, who was working at MCA at the time, became interested in having Lenny make a record. “It never happened, because they said I wasn’t Black enough,” Lenny says. But he did parlay his connections into an opportunity for his high school buddy, Zoro. When Busby told Lenny that New Edition was looking for a drummer, he told him he knew just the guy. Zoro passed the audition, and in 1985, he started touring with New Edition. Lenny, however, was still no closer to a record deal. But he was one step closer to something else. When New Edition toured that same year, Zoro invited Lenny to the show at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. Backstage in the amphitheater, he met rising starlet Lisa Bonet in the elevator. “She was with some guy. I said something like, ‘I like your hair,’ some stupid shit. Some line,” Lenny remembers. “We ended up backstage, exchanging numbers, and the rest is history.” Even though this was the same year his own parents had finalized a bitter divorce, love suited him. “I was completely in love. I don’t know if I have ever been in love like that since,” he says. In 1987, they eloped on her twentieth birthday in Vegas. That same year, she spun off her Cosby Show character to star on A Different World and took a controversial role in the horror film Angel Heart, gaining Bill Cosby’s ire with an infamous sex scene with Mickey Rourke. She quit A Different World and was fired from The Cosby Show. A year later, Lenny and Lisa’s daughter, Zoe, was born. Both Lenny and Lisa were born to one Black parent and one White parent, one Jewish parent and one Christian parent. They acted out the Beatles youth vibe, invoking the rebel sentiment of Yoko and Ono—they rebelled against 1980s buppie and yuppie culture. They rebelled against Reagan’s harsh, relentless conservatism, against artistry that required polished perfection. They rebelled against staid rules. “They were two of the most beautiful and talented people I had ever met. A real power couple,” says Sean Lennon, who met them when they were in their honeymoon phase. Lisa would become the perfect muse for him, inspiring Let Love Rule, an album they would create without a record deal. But for now, he was known as “Mr. Bonet,” a struggling musician in his superstar wife’s shadow. The record label worked hard to not have them seen together so Lenny could establish his own identity. After they married, they drove back from Los Angeles to New York in a camper loaded down with amps, drums, guitars, and basses, preparing for a new life outside of Hollywood’s painted flawlessness. There was always music, even when everything around him was swirling in circles of stagnation. In the years following the thwarted offer from A&M Records, his father thought that he had wasted his college money on a son who seemed content to live like a bum. But Lenny continued to play and master new instruments—drums, bass, Fender Rhodes, Minimoog, congas, Mellotron, guitars, timpani, among many others, even as he searched for a place to sleep every night. And, unwavering, he continued to absorb music. Jheryl Busby, who was working at MCA at the time, became interested in having Lenny make a record. “It never happened, because they said I wasn’t Black enough,” Lenny says. But he did parlay his connections into an opportunity for his high school buddy, Zoro. When Busby told Lenny that New Edition was looking for a drummer, he told him he knew just the guy. Zoro passed the audition, and in 1985, he started touring with New Edition. Lenny, however, was still no closer to a record deal. But he was one step closer to something else. When New Edition toured that same year, Zoro invited Lenny to the show at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. Backstage in the amphitheater, he met rising starlet Lisa Bonet in the elevator. “She was with some guy. I said something like, ‘I like your hair,’ some stupid shit. Some line,” Lenny remembers. “We ended up backstage, exchanging numbers, and the rest is history.” Even though this was the same year his own parents had finalized a bitter divorce, love suited him. “I was completely in love. I don’t know if I have ever been in love like that since,” he says. In 1987, they eloped on her twentieth birthday in Vegas. That same year, she spun off her Cosby Show character to star on A Different World and took a controversial role in the horror film Angel Heart, gaining Bill Cosby’s ire with an infamous sex scene with Mickey Rourke. She quit A Different World and was fired from The Cosby Show. A year later, Lenny and Lisa’s daughter, Zoe, was born. Both Lenny and Lisa were born to one Black parent and one White parent, one Jewish parent and one Christian parent. They acted out the Beatles youth vibe, invoking the rebel sentiment of Yoko and Ono—they rebelled against 1980s buppie and yuppie culture. They rebelled against Reagan’s harsh, relentless conservatism, against artistry that required polished perfection. They rebelled against staid rules. “They were two of the most beautiful and talented people I had ever met. A real power couple,” says Sean Lennon, who met them when they were in their honeymoon phase. Lisa would become the perfect muse for him, inspiring Let Love Rule, an album they would create without a record deal. But for now, he was known as “Mr. Bonet,” a struggling musician in his superstar wife’s shadow. The record label worked hard to not have them seen together so Lenny could establish his own identity. After they married, they drove back from Los Angeles to New York in a camper loaded down with amps, drums, guitars, and basses, preparing for a new life outside of Hollywood’s painted flawlessness. In October 1988, in Los Angeles, Lenny walked past a 1966 3.8S Jaguar parked on Highland Avenue and knocked on Stephen E. Smith’s door. Smith had worked as a director for The Jeffersons, as a music supervisor on A Different World, and an associate producer on Square Pegs. Lenny played him the completed album of Let Love Rule. Smith was blown away and took him the next day to meet with Brian Loucks from Creative Artists Agency. They set up meetings, and within three weeks, Geffen, Warner Brothers, Elektra, Capitol, and Virgin were in a bidding war. Lenny and Smith, who was now his manager, chose Virgin because it offered the creative freedom he needed. There would be no one telling him what to do; after all, the album was already a finished product. But the label wanted to keep up with the changing times—slick-sounding production, synthesizers, technologically advanced sounds were dominating the airwaves in the 1980s. Group acts like New Edition, Boyz II Men, Shalamar, and Guy were making a comeback with a slicker presentation and sound than their predecessors from the 1960s. New jack swing was the new sound for urban youth. It was the dawn of hip-hop and heavy metal. Lenny thought the mechanical sounds lost the connection to the heart and soul. He was playing real drums, not drum pads. His A&R, Nancy Jeffries, thought that he had to change the drums because they sounded like cardboard boxes. To some of the executives at Virgin, Let Love Rule sounded too small. “Radio didn’t want to play it. But MTV got it and played the hell out of it,” says Smith. Still, MTV only came on board because of Ayeroff’s connections and his history of raising hell to have Black artists air on the music channel. In the end, the album was a moderate commercial success, selling one million records worldwide. “Lenny was disappointed in the sales,” says Ayeroff. “But with him, we knew it was going to be an evolution.” Though instant commercial success may have been elusive, he developed a following among purist musicians who welcomed his sound full of a wide range of influences. Slash, guitarist from Guns N’ Roses, told him as much during a chance meeting at the American Music Awards. Slash remembered him from their high school days at Beverly Hills High, though they never spoke at school. His first words to him were: “Dude, I love your album! Me and my girlfriend fuck to your songs!” “I was like, ‘Okay, nice to see you!’ ” Lenny laughs. When it was time to tour for the Let Love Rule album, Lenny started shopping for a band that would play the instruments exactly as he played them. The band he put together would include drummer Zoro—who left a lucrative career with New Edition to take a chance with him—funk and jazz saxophonist Karl Denson, bass guitarist Lebron Scott—who took time off playing with Curtis Mayfield—keyboardist Kenneth Crouch, and guitarist Adam Widoff. Most of them lived in Lenny and Lisa’s two-bedroom loft in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, then filled with crackheads, artists, and squatters. They were broke, sleeping on cots, couches, and in sleeping bags, with their wives and children. There was a drum set in the bedroom and clothes on the floor all over the place. “There was no money, but it was wonderful,” Lenny says wistfully. “We went to Europe, to the U.S., to Japan. It was the beginning, and it was wild.” It was out of this beginning that Lenny became himself. When it was time to record Mama Said, he and Lisa were separated, and the album was filled with the lyrics of heartbreak. His first collaborations with friends he had met along his journey happened on this album—Slash on “Always on the Run,” and Sean Lennon cowrote “All I Ever Wanted.” Some members of the first band bowed out on him, complaining that there wasn’t enough bread. Though being a rock star was all he dreamed about as he listened to Prince’s Dirty Mind on his Walkman during history class in high school, he was a reluctant convert to success. Lenny knew that the hard-driving “Always on the Run” was gold, but he considered leaving it off Mama Said. “I almost didn’t put it on the album,” he confirms. “Somewhere deep inside, I knew it was gonna be a big hit, and for some reason, I was running from that. It was about integrity, wanting to be part of the underground.” But he’s a rock star now. And a movie star. Even his daughter is a movie star. He sells out Radio City Music Hall. Crowds chant along to “Let Love Rule” as he lets the music take him like a tent revival. He has gone from listening to Dirty Mind to spending sleepless nights creating with Prince. He has worked with his idols Michael Jackson (who Lenny, as a child, wished was his long-lost brother), Robert Plant, James Brown, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, Madonna, Quincy Jones, Mick Jagger, Labelle, David Bowie, Vanessa Paradis, and the list goes on. He helped to launch the careers of Angie Stone, who worked as a saxophonist and background singer in his band; Cindy Blackman, famed jazz drummer and wife to Carlos Santana; guitarist Craig Ross; and Tichina Arnold and Tisha Campbell, who began with him as background singers. But he’s still the hippie that believes love can conquer all—that lyrics should be honest, rebellious, and vulnerable. Rock suits him, because he doesn’t seem to have aged at all. A blues-based rock guy with soul, he still uses vintage instruments and aesthetic. “When we were coming up, we had to find our own song,” says Bootsy of the old-school way of making music. “You had to remember what you created, because you couldn’t put it down until the next day. Lenny is holding onto that creative juice. He cuts into the fabric of our youth.” Now, Lenny’s back at the beginning with last summer’s double LP, Black and White in America. In his heart, he still believes that records never sounded better than they did in the ’60s and ’70s—the intimacy, the earthiness. And just like in the ’70s, people who buy his new LP will place the needle on the groove and feel the thud of old drums. “I make music that I make,” Lenny says simply, shifting in and out of the limelight, but forever sitting in the groove. Source: www.waxpoetics.com/features/articles/renaissance-man/ Photo: Stephen E. Smith |
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