Lenny Kravitz talks to Apple Music about finding acceptance, the pre-internet 90s, and his famous friendships

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Lenny Kravitz sits down with Zane Lowe at his home in Paris for a wide-ranging interview discussing his recently released album ‘Blue Electric Light’. Lenny talks about finding acceptance for his unique sound, saying, “I’d been told for so many years that I couldn’t do what I was doing. When I would bring that music around, it was always the story of it’s not black enough, it’s not white enough, it’s too rock, it’s too funky. People recognised my talent but didn’t want me to do what I was doing.”

He reminisces about the pre-internet 90s, when he first realised he was famous, the two things he bought with his first record label advance, and first becoming a parent to daughter Zoë. He also talks about how his songwriting inspiration comes to him in the middle of the night, and shares his favorite memories from his close friendship with Prince and working with artists like John Paul Jones, Slash, and Michael Jackson.

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Video | Lenny Kravitz: ‘Blue Electric Light’, Songwriting & Prince

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Lenny Kravitz talks to Apple Music about finding acceptance for his unique sound, and feeling at home in Paris

I’d been told for so many years that I couldn’t do what I was doing. When I would bring that music around, it was always the story of it’s not black enough, it’s not white enough, it’s too rock, it’s too funky. People recognised my talent but didn’t want me to do what I was doing. Take your talent and do this. This is the form. This is how it works. This is what a black artist does. These are the radio hits. This is the sound of what’s going on. Anyway, back to Paris, I got the download of ‘Let Love Rule’. I’d been shopping it. I was granted a five minute meeting at Virgin with a woman named Nancy Jeffries, who was A&R there. She came in, played the cassette, played ‘Let Love Rule’, played that song, and then she said, hold on a minute, I’m going to go get somebody. She went and got Jeff Ayeroff, played the song. He said, hold on, I’m going to go get somebody else. He brought in Jordan Harris. The three of them are sitting there. Then they asked me to play a few other songs I did. They kept listening and they were writing notes, passing them back and forth. I’m just sitting there. I’m like, this is going to be another one of those situations. I sat down and they said, we want to sign you, do you want to be with us? And that’s how it happened after being turned down time and time again. So then when the record was done and mixed and it was time for promotion, what box was I going to fit in? How were they going to promote me? It was a bit confusing. So, they sent me to Europe, and so I went to London for the first time. I went to London, Paris, Hamburg, Germany and Amsterdam, and that’s when I came to Paris for the first time, and I absolutely fell in love with this place.

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Lenny Kravitz tells Apple Music new album ‘Blue Electric Light’ was the most fun he’s ever had making a record

I don’t think I ever had more fun making a record as ‘Blue Electric Light’. There was a few things going on. COVID was happening, the world was shut down, and I was in The Bahamas. After a few weeks, this whole feeling of I don’t have to be anywhere, I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to turn something in or show up. It was like, what’s going on? I got into this place of really living in the moment. We all talk about living in the moment, not thinking about what we’ve done and what we’re going to do, but living in the moment, which is this place that I think so many of us want to be in. And I got to exercise that because there was no past or future. It was like, here I am now. Don’t know what’s going on. I just have to be here. And I’m in the middle of all of this beautiful nature. This music started coming. We’d be in the studio every day.

Lenny Kravitz talks to Apple Music about what life was like when he first became a father

Lenny Kravitz: Zoë was born at home in the bedroom and the moment I saw her, I’d never felt love like that before. So, it comes from different places.

Zane Lowe: It’s a crazy time. You become a parent and then all of a sudden your dream start to come true.

Lenny Kravitz: Yeah, it all happened at the same time, marriage, a child and this career starting all happened at the same time.

Zane Lowe: When you think back to that particular time, while we’re there and we’re talking about the first few albums, new fatherhood, marriage is running its cost in whatever way it’s going to do that. What was really that time about for you as a person, as a human?

Lenny Kravitz: It was life coming at you full speed and it was exciting and these were all new experiences, being married, having a child, getting this record deal that I’d wanted since I was a young teenager and then my band was living with us. We were living in this loft on Broome Street in Soho, and there were eight people on just little pads and mattresses. It’s like a commune and pillows just living all over. It was, it was just living all over the floor. Crazy with my wife, with my child, all of us in one place, probably about the size of this room. It was a trip. I mean, we were just in it. Zoë’s mom was filming the television show at the time with Cosby, and she was just so down and she was there for the mission supporting me, and it was a beautiful time for all of us.

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Lenny Kravitz talks to Apple Music about coming up as an artist in the pre-internet 90s

Zane Lowe: Let’s look at the nineties real quick, because a lot of younger artists and people are fascinated with the nineties right now. It’s a time that I think because it’s just pre-internet and everything is loud and fame is real and success is big, but there’s no internet to divide it up into this kind of democratic opinion. It’s a crazy combination of exceptional noise, but no one can kind of reach you or touch it. We’re all just passively observing it.

Lenny Kravitz: It was beautiful, man. It was beautiful. I didn’t know it while I was in it, of course, because when you’re in it, you’re in it. Of course, there was still the element of mystique, which I like. All the artists that I grew up listening to, watching had mystique. You only knew so much. Maybe they’d be in a magazine. I remember running to magazine shops because the group would be in the magazine, just to get a picture just to look at them, and then maybe they’d be on some television show if it was Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert or whatever it might be, The Midnight Special. So I grew up in that era. So here we are in the nineties now, and I’m thinking it’s not as cool as that time, but it actually was, was even just simple things like I was looking at some old footage again the other day of the audience. It was from this concert film and documentary I did call Alive from Planet Earth, which I love, and we’re playing and I’m looking at the audience and they’re so free. I forgot. They were so free and people were on each other’s shoulders and people were just grooving and dancing and celebrating, and there wasn’t one fucking phone that was before that time where people could just be in the moment to experience something and not have to prove that they were there.

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Zane Lowe: Most of us didn’t even bother to bring cameras. Like, who wants that in your pocket? Yeah. All you had was the ticket.

Lenny Kravitz: Yes, and MTV was the catalyst mean, there was the radio, and there was MTV.

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Lenny Kravitz talks to Apple Music about first realising he was famous

Zane Lowe: Do you remember when you realised that the walking down the street in New York was not going to be the same again?

Lenny Kravitz: During the second album. ‘It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over’. It became a big pop hit, and as I said, I was still taking the train to the studio. I remember walking down Broome Street, which led to the Holland Tunnel, so there’d be a lot of traffic there at certain times, and all the cars would be just sitting there in gridlock, and I started hearing my songs. Coming out of the cars was a very big moment for me to hear that. It blows your mind. It still blows my mind, actually. It’s like, wow, people are listening to this. Or I’d hear it coming out of a window of a building, and then I got on the train one day and people started to react, and that was sort of the end of that. And then I started taking a taxi, and then I got a VW van that I used to drive us to the studio in. But yeah, it was a transition because I grew up in the streets of New York and LA and I love the street, and I’m still in the street. I have to maneuver a different way and I have to be aware of things, but it was very strange to have to sort of curb the natural way that I manoeuver.

Lenny Kravitz Talks to Apple Music about his favourite memories of Prince and Michael Jackson

Lenny Kravitz: We spent so much time together. He used to call me late at night to meet him at a club to go play, just set up and go play. An audience would be there. Obviously, knowing that we were coming, those were really great nights that were just so free and fun just going to his house to watch funny movies or comedians. He was really, really funny. He had an amazing sense of humor hanging out with him here in Paris when he had an apartment before I had my house, and I was dating Vanessa Paradis at the time, and we’d go over there. Prince is very competitive. He’s a very good ping pong player. He’s very good at pool, basketball, everything. And we went over there one night and Vanessa was really good at pool and she kicked his ass. Oh shit. And that was a hard one for him. Going to visit Michael Jackson, he’d pick me up, we’d go see Michael in the studio and just mess with him.

Zane Lowe: Which is crazy because he stories were always that Prince and Michael were these kind of arch rivals in the arts.

Lenny Kravitz: I mean, I don’t know about that. I’m sure there was some kind of healthy competition, whatever. But it was more about having fun and sort of joking around with him. Let’s go fuck with Michael.

Zane Lowe: You must’ve been tripping out. There must’ve been a healthy level of imposter syndrome just being in that room for a second because of those two people

Lenny Kravitz: Being, I mean, those are two people that I grew up with and that I studied and that were my teachers and I was actually sitting between the two of them crazy and I kept going like this and this and I felt very normal. They were both in full drag, full makeup, full hair and I’m like this, and Michael was fascinated with my dreadlocks. He’s like, what do you do? What? Touching my hair? Crazy. But I was sort of the wild organic one and they were very done, but both of them were really beautiful people and Prince was very giving and very always speaking to me about certain things that he thought I should know and teaching me about the business. And he also cared about people’s spirits. I remember sitting in his car for two hours once he wanted to show me this purple car he’d gotten. It was this Prowler Chrysler Prowler or whatever. I think that’s what it was called, and he took me down to see it. He had just gotten it and next thing I know we’re sitting in the car for two hours having bible study, like he’s giving me a lesson and we had a lot of respect for each other as musicians and as human beings.

Lenny Kravitz Talks to Apple Music about producing Michael Jackson

Lenny Kravitz: We recorded it for the Invincible album and at the time when we were done, they thought it was a bit too rock for that record for whatever reason. I don’t know because Michael always had a cool rock track for sure. Whether it was ‘Dirty Diana’ or ‘Beat It’ or whatever. Michael said, okay, I’m going to hold it for the next record. And he would call me all the time. Remember, he was in the Middle East living for a while and he’d call me just to talk and then we would talk about the song. He’s like, I love that song. I can’t wait to put it out. I’m going to put it on the next record. And then, he passed and then they made that Michael album and it got put on that record. But I’m really proud of the track. The track is beautiful. He sang his ass off.

Zane Lowe: Because he could produce himself. I mean he was that human being right who knew his way through every element of the creative process. So, to sort of be of any influence in that environment with him must have been…

Lenny Kravitz: He wanted me to write a song for him, produce it. He said, you come up with it. I had a matter of days to do it. I had nothing. And it came. I recorded it, finished the track, played the instruments, got it together. He came in, I wrote the words down for him and I had a dummy vocal on there that I kept playing to him and he went in the vocal booth and he said, “you stop me when I don’t do it right.” He just learned the song, so anybody would be not remembering everything at first. And I thought, how am I going to push this button and tell Michael Jackson to stop singing? But we got into it. We had a lot of fun. I laughed so much with him. Super funny and a perfectionist and a gift of an experience. What a life.

Lenny Kravitz tells Apple Music how John Paul Jones ended up playing bass with him at the MTV VMAs

Zane Lowe: Is it true? In fact, I know what it’s because this was brought up before, your bass player couldn’t make an MTV Awards once?

Lenny Kravitz: Not only could he not make it, he was missing. He was missing. Tony had some adventures. He even got kidnapped once by two women. Yeah, but that’s another story. But yeah, he was missing in action and we were getting ready to do the MTV Video Awards and we had no bass player, and I was just making a joke with Craig [Ross]. I’m like, yeah, we should call John Paul Jones. That would be really cool. He would nail this song. It was ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’. Craig was like, well call him. He’s like, he’s not going to do it. He doesn’t know me. He’s John Paul Jones. I had not met him before and I don’t know how I got his number, but somebody got it and I called him and I’m freaking out and like John Paul Jones. Wow. Yeah. He’s like, so what do you want? Well, I’m playing this award show and our bass player’s not around, and I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind playing bass for us, knowing that the guy was going to say no. And he said, of course I’ll do it. I’d love to do it. And I couldn’t believe it. He flew to Los Angeles. We did one rehearsal.

Zane Lowe: What was it like when he fired up in the first time in rehearsal?

Lenny Kravitz: There’s no footage of that rehearsal. I didn’t have cameras around a lot. And he’s nailing it and we get to the break and he comes in with the line. I was like, you learned the line. And it was amazing. It was so amazing for me to be playing with this giant and we won the award.

Lenny Kravitz tells Apple Music about reconnecting with high school classmate Slash

I was at the American Music Awards. This is after my first album, so I hadn’t started the second album yet, and Guns N Roses is sitting in front of me and I see this guy and I’m like, I know this guy. And I’m looking at him, I’m like, wait a minute. We went to high school together, we, and then we both realised, and so we exchanged numbers and kept in touch, and he was just finishing a tour in England and said he wanted to do something. He jumped on the Concord, which got into New York City at 8:30 in the morning or something, and came to my place. He had me search for a gallon of vodka and a bag of ice, which by the time he got to me, it was like 9:30 AM. Ended up going to banging on neighbor’s doors, got the vodka, got the ice. We took the train to Hoboken where the studio was with the vodka, couple guitars, bag of ice that was slowly melting, got to the studio and we just did it.

Lenny Kravitz tells Apple Music about the two things he bought with his first record label advance

The Bahamas was so natural for me, growing up in The Bahamas, going twice a year, my mother always set me down to The Bahamas. I’d spend Summers there. I’d spend winters there. So, after I got my record deal, when we used to get advances, I bought property in The Bahamas because I thought, well, if I ever make another dollar, at least I got somewhere to go. I can build a shack. And I bought a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

Those are the two things. I still have it though. Those are the two things I bought, and The Bahamas just means so much to me. It’s a place where I can just be me. I’m just a local, the Bahamian people are very special people, and my roots are there, and I’m very comfortable there. And I lived in an Airstream trailer for fifteen years. There was something I loved about getting off of tour and going to this place where it was this really limited space. You only have room for what you really, really need.

Lenny Kravitz talks to Apple Music about how songwriting inspiration comes to him in the ‘Middle of the Night’

I mean, when I’m there making the records, most of the writing happens in my sleep. Yeah. I’m just an antenna. So, I’m being given whatever’s transmitted to me, and it tends to happen between 3:00 and 5:00 AM. Whatever vortex it is, it opens between those hours and I’ll just hear it and I hear it like a record playing in my head. So, it already exists. So then I have to wake up, grab the phone, grab a guitar. A lot of times I don’t even grab the guitar. I’ll just start humming the melody and then humming the chord structure. Sometimes I’ll grab a guitar and then hope that I put enough information down so that I’ll recognize it when I wake up. Sometimes, I wake up and I’m like, what the fuck is that? It’s horrible, but that’s how it works. And then I wake up, go to the studio, walk over to the studio and start to make this thing that I’ve been given.

Zane Lowe: Well, that’s super ego free.

Lenny Kravitz: It is, but it makes it so much easier and so much more magical because it’s not limited by a thought process. And I’ve fought with tracks. Sometimes this beat, it’s not what I wanted or the vibe or what is this style? And then, I’ll try to change it to make it hipper maybe in my mind, and then I’ll work on it, work on it where I’m like, Nope. And I’ll go back to what it was, even if it was odd to me. But I do have a new found acceptance of my music because when I’m done, I’m done and I go on to the next thing. And these last few months of listening back to a lot of the records and the master tapes, because I’m teaching musicians what I need them to learn, I’ve been sitting there going, wow, this is pretty good. That melody or that thing or, wow, I never thought about it. It’s a beautiful thing to listen back to something you did so many years ago and hear things you didn’t hear or appreciate it. You thought it was just whatever, but actually it’s very special. So, that’s a beautiful gift to be given at this point in my life, to really appreciate and see what it is and feel what it is.

Lenny Kravitz talks to Apple Music about collaborating with Mick Jagger

Zane Lowe: I think about you as a collaborator on records and for someone who can play everything yourself. You have had such a rich life of collaborating with people. Is there another one that really jumps out that you really felt was like a great turning point for you, a great learning for you?

Lenny Kravitz: Mick Jagger. God gave me everything. Yeah, he came to my place in Miami and I’d written the track. I had a little bit of melody, but I didn’t want to finish it. I wanted him to come up with the verses especially. So, I played him the track. I sang him the basic melody of the hook and he said, okay, I’ll be right back. He asked for a pad and a pen and he went into this little corner of my house for about 30 minutes. Comes back with the words. He’s got it. So I said, okay, why don’t you go in there and do a vocal? In his mind he was doing a dummy vocal. It was just a guide vocal. So he goes in there and I’m sitting behind the console. He starts singing it and Craig was sitting next to me and I looked over Craig and I said, holy shit. It sounds like Mick Jagger. All of a sudden it was a record and that was blowing my mind to hear his voice coming through the microphone into the studio on this song that we’re writing. And so he comes out, he kills it. One take, comes out and he says, yeah, that’s cool, but I’ll get the real vocal later. And I’m thinking to myself, are you out of your mind? That vocal was incredible. Feel, pitch, everything, rhythm. Day after day after day after day, he kept going in to sing it again and again and again.

Zane Lowe: Do you know what he was looking for?

Lenny Kravitz: Maybe it happened too fast. Sometimes, you think, well, if it just happened like that, I need to work on it or make it better. I don’t know what he was thinking. Maybe he didn’t like it that much and he and I got into it a bit and that’s my man. I respect him so much and love him so much. He’s been a great friend throughout all these years. But I said, this vocal is incredible. And finally, after doing it 10 times, he finally gave in and I thought, thank God. And that’s the vocal you hear on the record, one take done. Yeah.

Lenny Kravitz talks to Apple Music about why he works out in his street attire

I don’t care what I’m wearing. I’ve worked out in everything. If I’m doing cardio, no, I’m going to put on something that I can sweat in. Sure. If I’m lifting weights, I don’t sweat so much. I show up in what I show up in. And it’s funny because I also train with professional athletes, NFL players, major league, baseball players, wrestlers, boxers. They’ll see me come in some jeans and boots and one of those shirts that my daughter talks about that was brilliant, and they laugh. It’s like, we’re going to work out with him wearing that. And then, I destroy.

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