Lenny Kravitz

Now 30 years into a multi-million-album-selling career, serial Grammy winner Lenny Kravitz credits his success with hits such as Are You Gonna Go My Way and Always On The Run to instinctive, from-the-gut riffing and a ‘first take’ recording philosophy. Here, he looks back on his lifelong love of guitar, the virtues of vintage Gibsons, being schoolmates with Slash and how his greatest riff was recorded with another band hammering on the studio door…

- Jamie Dickson

Early Inheritance

“I was five years old and my dad had this acoustic guitar in the house. I remember it distinctly. It was a nylon-string guitar that I think he’d gotten at Manny’s. It was in a soft canvas case, and it used to live in the closet. Apparently, my mother had gotten it for him, hoping he would learn how to play, I suppose, and serenade her. So I began to pick it up and just started banging on it. In our tiny apartment in New York City, there was that guitar and there was a little upright piano. It was really small. Pots and pans, that was how I started [laughs]. Banging on pots and pans, the guitar and the piano.”

Inner City Influence

“Curtis Mayfield’s Super Fly album was influential for me. I loved his music. I loved his songwriting, I loved his voice. Even as a kid, I understood that his voice really represented the inner city. It represented the street. His music sounded like the streets to me. I saw Super Fly when I was a kid and I loved all that music – Freddie’s Dead and Super Fly and all those songs. Yes, so Curtis Mayfield, definitely. A major educator.”

Team Slash

“Slash and I went to high school together, but we hadn’t seen each other since. When my first album was out, I went to the American Music Awards and Guns N’ Roses were getting awards [for Appetite For Destruction and Favorite Heavy Metal Artist, 1990] and they were sitting in front of me. He and I just kept looking at each other like, ‘I know you… Not ‘I know that you’re Lenny Kravitz and you’re Slash’ – but, like, I know you.’ Then we realised we knew each other from school. So we started talking and were excited to meet each other again, especially the fact we were both making music. I was doing some overdub sessions for