Rocker Lenny Kravitz looks back to when he found his voice
Lenny Kravitz is a man of extremes — as he readily admits.
“I am deeply two-sided: black and white, Jewish and Christian, Manhattan and Brooklynite,” he writes about his first 25 years alive in his new memoir “Let Love Rule,” released last week and named after his 1989 debut album.
“The book is about me finding my voice and finding my path and walking into my destiny, whatever that is,” he tells The Associated Press.
The 270-page book written along with David Ritz explores his very special childhood and ends with Kravitz on the verge of stardom and deeply in love with actress Lisa Bonet.
“I had such a childhood and experience growing up. That’s what I want to spend my time on,” he says. “So let’s stop there. And then we’ll see if they’ll be a second book in the future.”
He’s not exaggerating about that childhood. He alternated between the thentough Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford—Stuyvesant and in a swanky building with carved cherubs on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He ate chopped liver on matzo as well as fried fish coated with cornmeal.
The extremes continued during his life. For his sixth birthday, he was serenaded by Duke Ellington and his band at the famed Rainbow Room. Years later, his home was a Ford Pinto, which he rented for $4.99 a day.
Kravitz, 56, dedicated the book to his mother, actress Roxie Roker, who was best known for her role in “The Jeffersons” as Helen Willis, half of one of TV’s first interracial couples. TV producer Sy Kravitz, his father and a former military man, was strict with the younger Kravitz.
“Part of this book is about me accepting myself as Lenny Kravitz, as this halfblack, half-Jewish kid that had this experience,” he says. “One of the wonderful gifts that one could give themselves in this life is to accept yourself.”