Lenny Kravitz

00:00:08 Speaker 1: Pushkin. In the opening lines of his New York Times best selling memoir Let Love Rule, Lenny Kravitz writes that he is deeply two sided. His young life was all about opposites and extremes, black and white. He grew up between his West Indian grandparents home in Brooklyn and his parents' home on the Upper East Side, where he was surrounded by his family's famous friends, legends like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. When Lenny was eleven, his mother, Roxy Roker, landed his starring role on the iconic sitcom The Jeffersons, moving the family out west to Los Angeles, where Lenny fell in love with classic rock, funk, and skate culture. It's also where Lenny and Rick Rubin eventually became fast friends in the late eighties. In this conversation, Lenny tells Rick candid stories about his relationship with Lisa Bonne and talks about how writing his memoir helped him finally find peace with his overbearing father. They also talk about the time Lenny, Rick, and Johnny Cash were all roommates, and the day Lenny received the most devastating news of his life. This is broken record. Liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmonds. Here's Rick Ruben and Lenny Kravitz. For some reason, I didn't realize that you grew up in New York City. I had no idea. For some reason, I thought you were a California kid. So I was born in bed Sty, and for the first five years in my life, I lived in bed Sty on the weekdays and then lived on the Opper east Side with my parents on the weekends. My mom was doing theater, my mom was working at NBC, my father was at NBC, and so they were real busy, but I saw them every day. They'd come from Rockefeller Center over the bridge to Brooklyn, have dinner with me, play with me, hang out for a bit, put me to bed, and then my mom would go to a play. My dad would go to a jazz club or do whatever because he was also promoting jazz. And then when I turned five, I moved to the Upper east Side, which was eighty second between Fifth and Madison, across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I lived there on the weekdays. But that was my life, going back and forth between Bedstein the Upper east Side, which was a very interesting contrast. Yeah, do you know. Do you know how your parents met. Yeah, they met at Rockefeller Center. My mother was a secretary working for some you know, big cat there, and my father was an assignmon editor for NBC News and they met. My father started out as a page worked his way up, was there for many years, and he met my mom at work. I think they bonded over, you know, theater and music and the arts, and they started dating and then he asked her to marry him, and they got married. Yet, beautiful, do you have any brothers and sisters or just you? I have two sisters from my father's first marriage, so half sisters, but you know they're my sisters, don't We don't do the half and the whatever. They're my sisters. But it was really nice to find out that I had sisters. When did you find out? I was small. I remember being like, I don't know, three or something when I met them. They lived up state in New York. They lived in Monroe, about an hour and twenty minutes outside of the city. I was an only child, and I always kind of wished I had brothers or sisters, and then all of a sudden, I had these two sisters, and it was it was cool, and then they started, you know, spending more time with us. They started going on family holidays with us. My mom insisted that my father, you know, men in this relationship. I think he wasn't so close to them at the time that they got together, or just that he was you know, you know, taking his time or whatever from whatever breakup he had had before. But my mom let him know that she could not marry him and be with him if he hadn't if he didn't fix that and he didn't get tight with his family. That's the kind of person that my mother was, as you know personally, you you knew her, and so that's how that happened. I understood your mom was a strong force, yeah, and all about family and love. I think I only met your dad one time, if I remember correctly. We were I can't remember where it was, but we were next to a tour bus. I remember we were outside. Really yeah, we were outside of a tour bus, either coming before or after a show, and we just talked for a little bit. But I remember he seemed like a cool cat. No, he was cool with all of our dynamics you know that were interesting and tough and beautiful. He was a cool person. And you know, in writing this book that I just wrote, it helped me to understand and love him even more because for the first time I saw him as a character. I saw him as a person, as a man living his life, dealing with whatever demons and things that he had to deal with. And I realized that he was operating on what he had, what he experienced with his parents, what he experienced in the military, all the things that he went through. He was dealing with what he had and he did the best he could with it. And for the first time, as I said, I was able to see him as not my dad, but as this person, and it was really freeing. Even though we made peace before he died, there were still things I realized that I was holding onto, and in writing this book, it all vanished and I loved him and liked him more than I ever had. And that was beautiful. That was the gift and the reward and the success of writing this book. Beautiful, beautiful. What motivated what motivated to do the book? I never thought I would write a book. I wasn't interested in writing a book. A mutual friend introduced me to David Ritz, who is an incredible writer and has written all of these books on everybody from Ray Charles to Marvin Gaye to woul Rita Franklin. And I met him at a dinner. We were at a Japanese restaurant in New York, and he said, you should write a book, and I want to help you write it. And I basically told him that I really never thought about it and wasn't interested in it. But by the time the dinner was over, he convinced me. I thought he was really interesting and smart, and I took it as a challenge. I thought, well, why not. And then he and I started hanging out, and then I spent a lot of time on my own, and then we'd hang out again. And you know, it took a few years to slowly put together, and it took me a while to actually find my voice how I wanted to tell the story. And then in writing the book, I realized that I only wanted it to be about the first twenty five years from my birth to the release of the first album and and the beginning of that tour. So the album came out when I was twenty four. Actually, yeah, that's that's right around the time we met. If I remember correctly, we met. We actually met before the album came out. I met you at the Roxy. No, yeah, I remember I did that. I did that showcase at the Roxy, and you were there after the show waiting to talk to me, and I was like so excited to meet you, and we hit it off right away. It was just very natural. You felt like a brother, and then we never stopped hanging out. It's true. I remember. I remember being at a music convention where all of the different labels were talking about their new upcoming artists, and I remember thinking everything was terrible, like all the everyone's presentation was like all this new music and nothing was interesting. And then there was a clip of you and it was like, oh, there's one good new artist. It was like I was so excited that there was one new good artist. And that's what got me to come to see the showcase at the Roxy, just based on seeing a little clip at a record event and thinking this is you know, this stands apart from everything. And then I saw the live performance, which was unbelievable. And you probably met my mother that night because she was there. I can't remember. I mean I met her plenty of times. He was there, Lisa was there. We were all there. Yeah, but you and I hung out for a while. I remember it was in the It was in the audience. Everybody had left and there's just a few people around and you and I were just out. I remember you were wearing the audience You're wearing kind of a winter over. Yep, it was long. I remember it was kind of like an old pimp coat to be to be honest. So funny the details that we remember. Yeah, Man, in the in the process of working on the book, did you remember pieces of stories that, over time and thinking about it, came back to you in a way that you didn't know that you knew them. I was quite surprised at how much I remembered, But I tend to have a really good, you know, long term memory. I remember things from my childhood from you know, when I was three years old with detail. Wow. But then you know, don't ask me what you know happened yesterday or where I put something, you know. But for some reason, you know, I didn't have to dig as hard as I thought I would have to. And I think it's also a time in my life that I really cherished, like I understood somehow that I had a really good childhood. Whatever it was, like, the ups and the downs, whatever, I enjoyed my childhood. I enjoyed, you know, growing up in New York City in the late sixties as a very small child and the seventies at a time where music was so incredible. I mean, all you had to do was turn on the radio and everything was there. I remember listening to w ABC and my father's VW Bug and you'd hear Simon and Garfunkel next to Aritha Franklin, next to Jimmy Hendrix, next to Led Zeppelin, next to you know, whomever. You know. It just was all over the place. And my mother was an actress. She was in the theater doing avant garde theater. She was in this incredible theater group called the Niger Ensemble Company. So I was going to plays. We were going to operas and ballets and symphonies in Central Park and Shakespeare in the Park and the Jackson Five at Madison Square Garden and James Brown at the Apollo and you know, Miles Davis and you know Duke Ellington at the Rainbow Room and wow, Sarah Vaughan, and I mean it was so colorful, and my parents had so many wonderful characters around. I thoroughly enjoyed my childhood and then growing up on the Upper East Side and having the Metropolitan Museum as your backyard. I'd go in there by myself and get lost and look at the art. And I even had a notebook. I mean, I must have been nine years old. I had a notebook, and I would take notes on the art that I saw and what I liked, and I would buy They had postcards in there that you could buy with pictures of the art, and I would get postcards, and you know, I was a member of the chess club, played chess, and and then I'd go to bed Sty and have that whole life. I got to see the birth of hip hop, which of course Brooklyn was one of the spots, right absolutely. And I remember the first time seeing a guy in the front of his house in the in the yard in front of his house with two turntables and these big old speakers that he had built, and he was mixing and doing this whole thing. And I didn't understand what he was doing. Like he's like, I'm playing music, right, but I didn't. I didn't understand it. I was like you're playing records like but then I it caught on quickly and I saw what they were doing, and you know, guys started break dancing and bringing out the linoleum floors, you know, onto the sidewalk and it. You know, I got to see all that, and then I moved to LA when I was eleven, moved to Santa Monica. Went to school in Santa Monica John Adams Junior High. It's nineteen seventy five when my mom started the Jeffersons and I got to see the birth of Dogtown and Z boys incredible. I went to school. I had English class with this guy named Mike Humpston. His big brother was West Humpston, and I remember him bringing in a Dogtown board that was hand drawn with the cross and the Dogtown and the whole thing, and he brought it in and showed, yeah, this is this is what my brother's doing. This is Dogtown. So I got to see so many things happen as a as a child that were so exciting and cultural, groundbreaking, historical InCred It's funny. It's funny you talk about Dogtown and seeing the birth of hip hop and how cool is that? Right? No, it's unbelievable, and it's they're almost the same thing. You know, they're both Yes, they're both examples of counterculture movements. You know, we tend to think of hip hop as a music movement. It's a counterculture movement. When I saw the Dogtown documentary, I watched it not looking at it as this is about skateboarding. I thought, Oh, this is the Deaf Jam story, except they're riding skateboards instead of making music. It's it's a it was a counterculture rebellion story, and you got to witness two in a row that, even though they looked different, we're really tapping into the same kind of youth culture energy of changing the world. Super exciting, super exciting and inspiring. And then on top of it, I'm growing up between a so called black and white world, Jewish and Christian, both my parents, all these people not having any understanding of the problems with race. For the first six years of my life, I had no clue that any of this was an issue, because that's just the way it was. My mother looked like she did, my father looked like he did. Both sets of grandparents, aunts, uncle's, cousins, etc. Our house is full of every race and every type of person from every background, religion, you name it, and it was that was normal life. And then I went to first grade and uh me and my parents because we walked in this first day of school, your parents walk into school and as it seemed, everybody else's parents matched except mine. And this kid ran out in front of us and he pointed with his finger and he said, your father's white and your mother's black. And it was like this moment like what is what is that? What does that mean? What is that? And why are you making a scene? You know? And that's when my mother started to talk to me and explain, you know, what was what, you know, how the how society operated, you know, how the world was seeing things. So it was a really rich upbringing, you know, being able to have all of these contrasts and to be able to have, you know, both of these sides, to be able to spend your childhood in between two opposites like the Upper East Side and Bad Sty was phenomenal and taught me so much. And then what's funny is Okay, So I moved to la and I'm seeing the birth of all this skate culture. So then I go back to New York. Skateboarding hadn't reached then yet. So I'm I got my board and I'm explaining all this stuff. It's nineteen seventy five, seventy six, and they have no idea what I'm talking about. Nobody's in the street riding skateboards in New York, and hip hop hadn't reached the West Coast in that way yet. So I'm watching all these guys breakdance and they're they're getting together in their apartments and they're having these you know, get together. Everybody's showing their moves and what's going on. I remember hearing the bridges over for the first time, you know, Boogie Down Productions, KRS one, and I'm going back to LA and no one has a clue of what I'm talking about, you know. So I felt like I was on the I was on the inside of these things that the opposite coast had no idea about. Yeah, incredible, incredible timing, magic times, very very also in addition to hip hop, because I was I was there at that time too in New York. Well obviously you're you know, you're one of the pioneers, my brother, but there was also an incredible club dance music scene in New York that's revolutionary, you know, like the ESG and Bush Tetras and Conk all of the music that that, I guess now the closest version of it in the world would be LCD sound System. You know, they're they're sort of in the lineage of that New York club dance music that was so insistent and hypnotic and exciting. Yeah, and that didn't exist anywhere else. That was a real New York yeah vibe. And I didn't get that till later. Like I missed that early hip hop, like that club thing in New York. I was too young, But I started to party in New York when I was you know, eighteen, when I started going back to New York after high school, and it was beginning of the house music and the you know, the Paradise Garage and all those spots and all those great DJs, and yeah, but I missed. I missed that part of the of the clubbing. I was too young. Do you remember punk Rocotole or was that before you? My first introduction to punk was in Santa Monica, that that sort of West Coast version of what was going on there were like Black Flag black Flag, Circle Jerks, Circle Jerks. There was a band that my that my girlfriend's brother was in called Sin thirty four. But yeah, it was that whole LA thing was Red Cross. One of them absolutely, Red Cross had long hair and they had more of a sixties punk rock style. They were really cool. Yeah, they used to play, you know, on the pier in different places in town and you know, Santa Monica in Venice. So what else was going on musically when you came to California? In addition to the punk rock, they didn't have hip hop yet. Okay, So when I got to La, Okay, I in New York City, it was RMB, it was WBLS Frankie Crockery, so that was R and B and funk. You know. I was going to see things with my parents, So I knew about blues, I knew about gospel, I knew about you know, funk and R and B and soul. But rock was not around me so much then and my parents weren't so into it at that time. So I moved to LA. I come to Santa Monica and I meet all these kids who were skating and smoking weed and their parents or hippies, and I hear led Zeppelin for the first time, and I hear the Who, and I hear Cream and you know, Hendrix and everything and that, the Doors and everybody. That opened my head up and blew my mind. Yeah, it's interesting that for you rock music is your music as opposed to your parents music. Do you know what I'm saying. It's like R and B would have been your parents' music, and jazz of course that was in there, that was in their wheelhouse, you know, so you grew up always hearing that. But then when you heard I guess hard rock music, that was sort of yeah, that was yours. Yeah, absolutely, I discovered that on my own with my friends, and you know that all went together, skating and surfing and Zeppelin and smoking weed and you know, hanging out. That was all one thing. We'll be right back with more from Lenny Kravitz and Rick Rubin after a quick break. We're back with Rick Rubin and Lenny Kravitz. When did you start playing? Well, we had a piano in New York in our apartment. We had a little spin it upright piano in our little one bedroom apartment that I used to bang on. And then my dad had an acoustic guitar, a classical one with nylon strings that my mother apparently had bought him because he sort of expressed some interest in maybe learning how to play it, and I think she was into the idea of being serenaded by her husband. But he never he never quite got it. So this guitar used to be in the closet and I used to bring I used to take it out when they would go out. When I had, you know, the babysitter would come watch me, and I would go into the closet and it was this forbidden thing that I wasn't allowed to play with, but I was completely attracted to it. So I started like that. And then my father bought me my first guitar when I was maybe eight, took me to Manny's on forty eight Street and bought me an acoustic guitar. And that's how I started. And then I went I went to a I went to a summer camp upstate New York in Roscoe, New York. It was a camp called Lincoln Farm where kids learned how to live on a farm and deal with animals and deal with you know, planting and kayaking and you know, all the things you would do. And there was a guy there who was teaching kids how to play basic chords on guitar, and I learned how to play you know, country roads, Take Me Home, you know, West Virginia and all that, and learning how to play folk songs. Then when I went to LA, I got my first electric guitar, and my dad bought me a Fender jazz Master like Elvis Costello. I didn't know about Elvis Costello then, but and then I traded it in a couple of years later for a less Paul and that's where I started copying, you know, learning how to play Zeppelin and Kiss and you know, Jimmy Hendricks and trying to figure all that stuff out. And then drums came, and then bass came after that. What was the first band who put together or first band who played with They weren't bands at first. They were jam sessions. We used to have friends that we'd go to their houses near where I grew up, most of them in Baldwin Hills, and we would jam and we would sit there and just calm up on two chords for you know, five hours. Those those jam sessions in Baldwin Hills were like funk jam sessions. We're learning how to play Rick James and the Gap Band and you know, earth Wind and Fire and all that. And then I would jam with my friends in Santa Monica and we'd be playing the rock stuff, you know. Yeah, so I had two group of friends learning again. Everything was always like that. It was the yin and the yang, the contrast, and then I slowly figured out how to put it all together because I loved both sides. I remember going to your house in Baldwin Hills. You went to my mom's house, absolutely okay. And it's interesting too bringing up that, like Funk, Funk wasn't so big in New York, but Funk was really big in California. So it's it's interesting that you got to be in that world. The fact that you moved around the way you did really did expose you to completely different experiences culturally and musically, and it's almost like you lived multiple lives, even in even just going from Baldwin Hills to Santa Monica. In those two worlds, it's like most of the kids in each of those places only played in that one play, and you got to experience school. School was extremely clicky, like at John Adams the surfer skater kids sat in one area, you know when outside, you know, for lunch and whatever. The black kids were in one area. The Dungeons and Dragons kids are in hanging out in one group. And then you had the Mexican kids, which a lot of them came from Venice, and you had them and it was the whole V thirteen thing. And you know, then you had like, we even had guys that were like truckers. I don't even know how that happened, but guys who would wear like Peter Built hats and t shirts and they were into trucks. I mean, it was just all these groups of people. And then you had the musicians and the rock guys and then this guy's It was very clicky. And I had a really hard time figuring out who I was going to hang out with, because I dug them all. So I did that. I hung out with everybody. Do you remember any music shows that you got to see concerts or performances once you got to la that as a kid that really like caught you. The first one was Earthwit and Fire, Incredible seventy five went to the Forum. My godmother had tickets. I mean, I knew Shining Star. I knew like I'd heard a couple of tunes, but I wasn't into them. Went to the Forum to go see them and changed my life. So, uh, that was my first show. And then we used to go see a lot of jazz concerts in LA. I remember going to see going to Playboy Jazz. My parents used to take me every year to the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl and I, you know, we'd go see all their friends from Miles to Sarah to you know, Count Basie and you know everybody. It was. I remember seeing Weather Report, getting to getting to hang around with those jazz legends because they were frenzy your parents. What was it like being a kid being around most people? Could you tell they were different? And if they were, how were they different? See, that's the thing. The first person I met was Duke Ellington and I'm like five, so I don't know anything, but they took me to sound check because it was my birthday. My fifth birthday was a Duke Ellington concert at the Rainbow Room and they wanted to see him before the show sound check. They sent me on his lap and I remember him just being he had a white suit on head to toe and his hair was greased back. It was like salt and pepper, mostly mostly white, really elegant, soft spoken cat. And I just loved the fact that I was sitting there while this guy played piano and I misremember the energy coming off of that piano. And then during the show, the Duke Ellington Orchestra plays Happy Birthday for Me Wow, and his lead saxophonist, Paul all Gonzalvez was his name comes up to me right in my face, playing the melody to Happy Birthday, right while the orchestra's playing, you know the arrangement. And I didn't realize until I was probably thirteen, who Duke Ellington really was. I mean the American songbook, you know, the compositions, And it was the same for Miles. Miles was this really dark. When I say dark, I don't mean dark evil dark, just dark, interesting character. And he'd be around us because he was. He was around me my whole life because he was married to my godmother, Cecily Tyson, and she and my mother were like sisters. So I was around Miles my whole life and he was just this character, and I knew he was magical, and I could feel that energy. Yeah, but again, not until I became a teenager did I understand who Miles Davis was. And we're going to the you know, I remember that was during the time when he was turning his back to the audience and he would just play with his back to the audience because he liked the way it sounded. And it was also you know, a motherfucker of a move too, you know. But I think the beauty of my childhood and those experiences were the fact that I did not understand who these people were. Yeah. Of course, when your kid, it's like you go into every situation open, you know, you don't have, yes, you don't have a backstory to compare things to, and you're just experiencing the world and it's you know, anything we can do to maintain that state as long as possible or tap back into it as much as possible, keeps you alive and able to move forward and grow. Yes, And then it's beautiful to have been around them, to know them as human beings and then say, oh shite, he's like, oh my god, this guy had been around is like an alien, you know, just the most incredible you know. So I'm glad that it happened that way, you know, and there was nothing about fame or stardom or it was just like these were artists, you know. Yeah. So another another part of it that's interesting is the more you spend time around people like that. Yes, you can look back and step away and think about how incredible they are and that they're aliens and you can't believe it and they're the greatest of all time, right, But then also you realize they're just people too, you know, they really are just people. They're just regular people. They may be good at what they do, but they are regular people and everyone has that in them. You know, everyone has that, So it's not it's not we all absolutely everybody's. Everybody has a unique gift, absolutely, and it's just for finding it into it exactly. And my mother was always really good at explain teaching me that through example by example, because she was, you know, in her own right, extremely famous. During that time, The Jeffersons was a cultural phenomena. You know, eleven seasons of this historical TV show, the first interracial couple on primetime television, the first interracial kiss, and you know, the show was groundbreaking. But during this time where she was experiencing this new level of fame, because fame in the theater world in New York is a different it's a whole different thing. It's about artistry, and if you know, you know. But if you don't know, you don't know. If you're not a theatergoer, you know. And all of a sudden, she became extremely famous, very fast. She was already a grown woman, knew who she was, and was so humble and kept her feet on the ground. I mean, my mother during the height of her fame, we have no made we have no housekeepers, we have no assistance, there's no nothing. It's us. We're living together as a family, and we're taking care of our house. Saturday morning, my mother is scrubbing the toilet in her bathroom, scrubbing the floor, cleaning the house. I'm cleaning the house, I'm ironing, I'm vacuuming, I'm doing the laundry, I'm washing the cars. When you know, that's the way I grew up, and she was all She would always tell me, that's my job, it's my craft. But that's not just who I am, and that's not the only thing that defines me. I'm a person and She kept it real her entire life, and I'm so fortunate that. And I didn't understand it then, because you know, you're becoming fifteen and sixteen, and you know, my mom's driving Oldsmobile Cutless Supreme, and you know, I'm like, where's where's the roles, where's the Mercedes? Like what's going on here? You're on you're you're you're on the number one show in the country, and and she was like, I don't. I don't need that. I don't I don't require her that. I don't. You know, it just wasn't her thing, and she just kept it so real. And by the time I released my first album when I was twenty four, I had that in me. I had that base. You know. I'd be on tour, come home from a you know, sell out world tour, and uh, I'd come visit her and she'd be like, all right, I needed to take out the trash and do this and do that and do this and that. And it was wonderful, you know, because people are kissing your ass all over the planet and you come home and it's like reality, no, and I'm just and I'm just so thankful for that. All all of that stuff kept me on the ground. Yeah, what was it like for you having a mom who was so famous. Well, that was weird because I was not used to that. I mean, we were we lived our life lives as New Yorkers and you and especially you know, because we lived off a Fifth Avenue. So of course along Fifth Avenue you have a lot of rich folks that live in gigantic apartments, you know, pre war buildings, and so in New York City, if you were poor, if you were middle class, if you were extremely rich, you still took the bus. But that was New York life. You take the bus if you try to go down Fifth Avenue. So we moved around New York City. You know, no one ever came up to my mother, or very few people. Once we got to La and the Jefferson's broke, you know, all of a sudden, we're in Lucky Supermarket on Lincoln Boulevard, you know, and Pico and people are chasing my mother down the aisle while we're trying to buy groceries and people are freaking out and you know, autographs and it was just it was it was just a new thing, and she was really gracious about it. She was so good about it and took her time to deal with the people because she knew that these people were making her life. Yeah, you know, and you know, if they're not watching those Nielsen ratings aren't going anywhere, you know. But it was odd. It was odd for a while too, like whoa people like coming into your space and freaking out, you know, I imagine, tell me about the first album? How did you? How did the first album come to be? At that time, I was hustling. I was trying to play, you know, do studio work, which was sparse for me because I wasn't known. Then I found a gig that was pretty good. I would make demos for people if you if you had a song and you needed it produced and you needed a demo, you'd bring it to me. I'll play all the instruments, I'll arrange it, I'll put it together for you and then you you know, i'll produce your vocal and do and okay, you got a demo, you can go. So I used to do that. I played behind other people in bands that were trying to make it guitar player, bass player, drummer or whatever. And then I realized that I needed to make my own expression, but I didn't know what it was. I started trying, but it was labored and it didn't feel right yet. But I was searching. And then during the time when Lisa and I got together, we were having just an incredible, incredible relationship and a lot of magic and supernatural vibes around us and love, creativity. And I moved into her house in Venice at that time, and I put all my instruments in a room and just all came to me. Those songs started downloading, and it was from all my experiences that I had before that, everybody that I'd seen, everybody I'd heard, all the life that I'd lived, and then it was our life and our love that opened up that portal beautiful and let love rules spilled out. I had no idea what style I was going to do, what it was going to be, no idea, but it started coming and coming. And then I borrowed money from my dad, which he was good enough to lend me to go into the studio to try to get this stuff out of me, and I did. I went back to New York, watch it did New Jersey to Hoboken and hired Henry Hirsch, who became my longtime engineer for many years, because when I was working with him earlier, we realized that we had very similar tastes to music and also to recordings and recording techniques. Went worked with him put this stuff down. Wanted to hire a band because I wanted a band experience. I wanted to be in the studio like the documentaries I'd seen on all the great bands, the Stones and the Beatles and everybody, and you know, I wanted to have fun. I wanted people there, and I wanted it to be this hang and you're gonna have girls around and you're gonna be doing you know. And I didn't have the money to hire musicians, and the guys that would play for very cheap weren't cutting it. So Henry said to me, I heard you play keyboards, I heard you play drums, I heard you play bass, I heard you play guitar. Just do it, you know, do it like you know Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney and Prince and just just do it. I thought, well, that's gonna be boring. I want to be around people. I want to have this this vibe. But I had no choice, so I said, all right, I'll do it. And it's funny because I was so influenced and educated by people like Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney and Prince and you got guys like Todd Rundgren and you know who were one man bands. But I never thought of it. And once I started doing it, that was it. I fell into a hole, man, that was it became my sound. I had no idea. By the way, I never knew that you played everything on that record. I never knew that until now, what would be the order of events to put down a song when you're playing everything yourself. I'd start with drums, which was challenging because I'm singing the song in my head with the arrangement while I'm playing the drum track. So okay, shit, oh wait a minute, Am I on the second verse? Like you had to really know where the hell you were? Okay, now I'm on the bridge. Now I'm on the outro, and and I would just sing the song in my head, or Henry would play piano or Offender Rhodes or something and keep me. I teach him the arrangement, and now I had somebody to play too, to actually groove with. And then we would take that part off or keep it in a couple of instances, and then build on top of that. And then after I would normally have a drum, then I would do the guitar and get the chords and the rhythm, and then bass and then keyboards and then whatever else. Then if I was doing an orchestration, you know, I'd bring in the string players or whatever, and you know, just keep building on top. And then since the first album, you really haven't stopped. No, how many albums have you made. I don't know, twelve, wow, thirteen twelve? Yeah, and you've done at least at least one world tour for every one of those albums, I imagine. Oh no, absolutely. The reason that the albums were two or you know, most of them were three years apart, sometimes four. You know, I tour a lot, and I would go around the world and I would tour for two years, you know, and then I have to chill and I have to feel myself and see what's going on inside of me, and you know, before I can do another record. But yeah, I have not stopped. I have I have two albums in the can right now. What's the most fun part of the process for you? Would you say recording, man, I love the studio. I still love the studio as much as I did when I was a kid. I remember going to recording studios I was a young teenager with my dad in LA when he was producing folks and trying to do things in the music business. Just the magic of walking into this space where music is made with the console and the instruments and the equipment and the producer and the arrangers and you know, all these folks that used to hang out back in the day. And I still have that feeling when I walk into my own studio because it's a place where magic happens, and you don't know what it's going to be. You don't know when it's gonna come, you don't know how it's going to be until you finish it. Even if you have it in your head, A lot of times it comes out different differently then you had imagined it. And I love that process of painting with music and not knowing what you've got until it's done, and there are always surprises, there are always challenges. As you know. I love being in the studio. I can be in here day and night and I'm not I don't get tired of it. I've been doing this now professionally for thirty one years, and I was in studios hanging out, you know, during my mid to late teens. Not jaded, beautiful. And there's something also about being able to play all the instruments so I can come in here, you know, by myself essentially, and I can I can make something. There's something very satisfying about that as well. We're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be back with more from Lenny Kravitz. We're back with Rick Rubin and Lenny Kravitz. You've started doing creative work beyond music. What's the first thing you got to do outside of music? Design? That was my first thing. I didn't I didn't even see that really coming. But it started by just designing my own places and working, you know, working on furniture and interiors, which was which came because again not having any bread in the beginning when I lived in Soho, before Soho was all chic and all living on Broom Street, I used to go out and take the furniture that people have put on the side of the street for garbage, and I used to take it and fix it or change it. Or you know, recover it or And it kind of started like that when I did my first loft on Broom Street back in the day when I was making Let Love Rule. And you know, I've always been into design as you have been. I mean I remember walking into your house for the first time on Miller and I was I was like, man, this guy, this guy's got some taste. I mean, you such such beautiful place and concepts and the way you put things together, so I mean your designer as well, bro. But um, then I ended up you know, buying places, fixing them up, selling them, buying them, fixing it, selling it up. And then I got to the point where it just got ridiculous. I was like, I can't keep doing this. So I started a company where I could do it for other people. So I started Kravitz Design and it's been really great. We've been working a lot and still working now even during this time, on several private homes, a hotel in Detroit, different products, working with different companies. And the last two years I was creative director for Don Perignon, so I did I did their photography, which is another thing I do. I shot their ads, I designed their products, redesigned bottles, labels, you know, their whole presentations. That's something that I do even when I'm recording, even when I'm on tour, I continue to work. If I have to be working on a project, say a hotel project that we're designing and making furniture and doing things, my team will fly out me when I'm on the road, hang out on the tour bus or the plane or whatever. The hotel will work and then they'll go back and you know, put that into play. But it's something that I continue to do no matter what I'm doing. It's it's interesting how the different creative avenues play off each other and how ultimately it really is just all about taste. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. I would assume that whether you're producing a record or designing your house, it's the same thing. It's the same energy, it's the same flow. You start with nothing, you start with an idea, a concept, and you start and you it just grows until it's finished. I mean, it's the same process. In fact, you influenced me a lot, actually, because the first time that i'd really what was actually it's actually you and Sean Lennon and Yoko, because you guys were the first people that I saw that had opium beds in their houses. And I remember getting into that whole thing and then starting to learn about Balini Asian furniture and furniture from you know, different places in the East, and but definitely you know, as people. We haven't talked about it yet, but for your listeners, I mean Rick and I lived together by virtue of his generosity and his kindness. I remember you just saying, you're saying, I just got this house, and uh, you know, when you're in La, you're you're you know, stay there. It's all good. Just you can stay there. It's a big house. I got room, and I remember moving in there actually before you did. Yeah, this was this was right at the time I was doing the Argument and Go my Way video, or right before actually because I uh, Cindy Blackman came. I flew her out from New York and she came and stayed in the house and auditioned and got the got the uh the gig in your house. It was actually in your girl in your it was like the gym, the gym downstairs. Yeah that's right. And uh, but I remember living in your house while there was plastic everywhere, it was dusty, they were still paying and plastering and doing and I loved it. I was like, yeah, construction, it was full, construction zone full and I had like a futon on the floor. But I was in heaven. I had this I had this place to myself and it was a really so very special time for me. Craig Ross was was was living there with me as well, and we were just having I remember having all these drummers coming in. Fact, River Phoenix had a friend that he knew from Florida that he flew in because he said, this is your drummer. And it actually got down to that guy and Cindy Wow, and we must have seen about fifty drummers that were coming through your place. Man. Yeah. But it was just a really special time where I was exploring La again during this time of you know, my success, which was very interesting. Yeah. I learned so much hanging out with you and just I mean you really treated me like family, bro. And I mean the whole story of you know, my mother and her going through her sickness and her passing with such a monumental song. There's a song on my last album I don't even think we've talked about this, but there's a song on my last album called Johnny Cash. You should check it out. It was on Ray's Vibration, and it's dealing with that with the day that I found out that my mother passed, I was in Japan touring for a month. I didn't know that my mother was going to, you know, die that quickly. We thought she had more time. I didn't want to go on the tour, but she and my grandfather made me go. My grandfather said, if you don't go, it's gonna kill her. You have to go do your job. So I reluctantly went. I flew home from Japan. I went straight to your house, went to my room, went to the hospital, went and saw her. We were there for hours, hours. My dad had flown from New York. The family was there, and it was time for everybody to take a break, go get something to eat. I needed to take a shower, do whatever. I drove to your house, and this was when Johnny Cash was living in your house as well, doing that classic album that y'all did. And I walked in the house and the phone rang. I don't remember who gave me the phone and they told me that my mom passed. And the time that I was driving from the hospital to your house. So I'm standing there by the staircase with this portable phone in my hand. Even though I knew it was coming, it was still a very hard moment for me. And Johnny and June are coming down the stairs and they looked at me and said, hey, Lenny, Like I mean, I didn't know them. We knew each other because we passed each other in your hallways, you know. That's the extent that I knew Johnny Cash. We were flatmates in Rick Rubin's house, right, And so they said what's wrong, and I said, my mother just died. And the two of them came to me and surrounded me and held me. I don't know these people. And by the way, it's Johnny Cash, right, and June Carter, and they held me and consoled me and just were saying the most beautiful, comforting things and that they were sorry. And it was just a real moment of humanity, of just being human. And it was a monumental moment in my life because the only people that were there when I found out was them. Then you drove with me to the hospital, and you were the first. I mean, you came in there with me. We saw my mother there together. Remember you were with me. And anyway, So there's a song on the last album where I was going through a breakup and I'm writing to this person, and the chorus of the song says, just hold me like Johnny Cash when I lost my mother, whisper in my ear, just like June Carter, beautiful and though I fight these tears that I hide, just hold me tight for the rest of my life. And so it deals with me reflecting on the last time that I was comforted in such a way. What I needed from this person that I was singing to was that Johnny Cash held me when my mother died. It's it's deep, but it's yeah, this was all part of the adventure of the experience of living with you. Yeah. My greatest memory from that night. It's the only time I've ever been in the room with a body after the soul had passed. Yes, And I remember walking in and thinking and I had seen her much more recently than you did. I don't know if you remember this part of the story. I ran into her, I saw at a restaurant, I saw in a restaurant at a weird time, at a time when the restaurant should have been closed, an unusual time. I went to a restaurant that I didn't normally go to at a weird time of the day. It was empty. I sit down and it was like three thirty in the afternoon, which is like way after lunchtime. Most restaurants close, you know, usually they're open for lunch and open for dinner. And just felt like going to get something needed a weird time. Found that Angelie was open. Don't know why I went there because it was a restaurant I never went to sing. Sitting in there with my friend Fred, who was the designer who helped me work on my who built your house in Sutherland. We're sitting there and who comes in but your mom. And this is maybe I'm gonna say, three weeks before, so I was in Japan. You're in Japan, maybe two weeks before, very soon. And I remember the conversation we had because it was so different than any conversation we had had over the last few years. Because over the last few years, your mom was very defiant, and she was very clear that she was going to beat this and that she was going to do everything it took to beat it, and she would. And she was really strong and she was always doing well through this and would try everything and do every type of alternative therapy. Oh yeah, she went to Mexico, did the whole holistic thing. Yeah, And we would I remember we would research together for her and with her and share ideas all the time. And I saw her in the restaurant and she was completely different and in this state of peace that was unbelievable. And I asked her how things were going, and she said, everything is. It's like, it's wonderful. I know that I'm going to pass. I'm completely at peace with it. I'm ready and this is this is like, this is what happens now. And she was at one with the experience, ready for the experience. And then back at the house, you came from Japan, and I told you the story because I didn't know if she got to tell you this, I don't know. I didn't know if she didn't. So I got to tell you that she was ready to go, and it was okay. And as we're having this conversation, the phone rang because you need it felt like the energy of you fighting for her with her shifted when you knew that she was ready to go. It's like when you heard the story, the energy changed. She was she you now knew that she was ready to go, because she was. And then the phone rings and it's the hospital, And it was almost like energetically, once you knew the story, she could go because until then you she was fighting and she was obviously waiting for me to get off that plane, you know exactly, because by the time I got there that day, I mean, it was the last moment. And I remember when we went. You went to the hospital with me, but I thought you were just like like, Okay, you're gonna go to the hospital with me and you're gonna support me. And then I went in and you kept walking. I was like, you want to come in the room and you and you looked at me and you were like yes. Like it was like it was the most definite yes, Like yes, there was some connection. And I'm sure from your years of knowing her and also that that moment you guys had at that restaurant, but you you wanted to be there and you went in there with me, and uh, yeah, that was that was her send off. Man. Yeah, And what so My takeaway in that moment of seeing her was and having just seen her two weeks earlier, was whatever was laying on the table there was not her. That was just yeah, of course, and I've never experienced that before, but it was clear. It's like, that's just clothing, that's just bones, that's just flesh. But the vessel, it's a vessel, and it couldn't have been clear. That's where I learned it in that moment, was that's not her. Yeah, it's amazing all in all extraordinary memories and you know, the blessings that I've had thus far, and you being a big part of that story, that part of my life is I'm really grateful, man, I'm really grateful. Same. I love having you in my life. We've been good friends for a long time in their heart, their heart to come by and one day and we're gonna we're gonna make some music together. Great. I look forward, Yes, sir, well, I love you. I love you, brother. I'm so glad to see your face and uh, let's speak sooner than later. Man, I'm down, all right, my brother. Love love, love love. Thanks to Lenny Kravitz for sharing so much of his incredible story with Ray. You can hear all of our favorite Lenny Kravitz songs on the playlist at broken record podcast dot com and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast. There you can find extended cuts of our new and old episodes. Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Urtin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler and his executive produced by Mio LaBelle Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries and if you like Broken Record, please remember to share, rate, and review our show on your podcast. Daft our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond Bass