Let Love Rule - Lenny Kravitz Page 0,10
guitar taught me how to play songs like John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Not wanting to be left out, I also joined the camp marching band. When Mom and Dad showed up on Visitors’ Day, there I was, playing acoustic guitar in a marching band. That had to have been a first. Mom and Dad called it the funniest thing they’d ever seen.
Once I was home from camp, Mom sent me to the Harlem School of the Arts for guitar lessons. I was nine. She taught me to ride the bus by myself up Madison Avenue and into Harlem. I loved that feeling of independence, and I was happy to be playing my guitar. I have to say that I wasn’t a natural when it came to reading music, but I could follow by ear. My ear always has been and always will be my saving grace.
ISLANDS AND ANCESTORS
BAHAMIAN RHAPSODY
Manhattan and Brooklyn—the first two locations that formed my character.
Then came the Bahamas.
They were, of course, Grandpa Albert’s roots. But once I saw them, once I felt them, once I breathed in that island air, they became my roots, too.
The first trip was the most thrilling. It was Christmastime. I was five. I woke up in our New York apartment, looked out the window, and saw that it was snowing like crazy. Mom had all the suitcases packed, and off we went! We took a cab through the storm to JFK for our flight to Nassau. In those days, air travel was not treated casually. You dressed up. Always properly attired for every occasion, Mom wore a bright blue ensemble. Dad was in a suit and tie. I had on a little sports coat and matching pants.
Passing by the TWA terminal was an adventure all its own. The building was straight out of The Jetsons, a futuristic piece of flying architecture designed by Eero Saarinen, with winged roofs and crazy-angled windows looking over the runways. Then, arriving at the Pan Am terminal, I saw our 707 as a time machine. Mom strapped me in my seat. My heart was hammering as we lifted off, piercing the clouds, climbing over the weather, watching the blanket of gray dissolve into radiant blue. I drank soda and flipped through Archie comic books. Dad read the New York Times. Mom studied her scripts.
Then, three hours later, the giant bird landed on an island bathed in sunshine. When the smartly dressed stewardess opened the door, a flood of sweet air filled the cabin. It was humid and smelled like flowers. We walked down the stairs, onto the tarmac, and into the terminal, where a steel drum band greeted us with welcoming sounds. The grooves were soft, the feeling relaxed. Mom’s cousin Esau, a handsome, laid-back Bahamian, was there with his twelve-year-old daughter, Jennifer: our beautiful Nassau family.
Sometimes Mom and I made the trip alone; other times, it was a bigger outing: Dad; Grandpa Joe and Grandma Jean; my sisters, Laurie and Tedi; and of course Grandpa Albert and Grandma Bessie. I also spent many summers there alone, living with Esau, Jennifer, and Esau’s mother, who we affectionately called Roker.
That first time, though, when it was me, Mom, and Dad, we stayed on Paradise Island. Nowadays, Atlantis has turned it into a Disneyland-like resort. But back then, it gave off an authentic old-school vibe. We checked into the Britannia Beach Hotel, the last holdout of James Bond sophistication, where men in tuxedos and women in gowns gambled in the casino and hung out in the TradeWinds nightclub to hear Ronnie Butler and the Ramblers. Great musicians, from Count Bernadino to Trinidadian Mighty Sparrow, performed all over the island. Peanuts Taylor, a percussionist who had once reigned supreme at the Tropicana in prerevolutionary Havana, ran his own club, the Drumbeat, where half-naked dancers breathed fire. As a kid, I got to see that heady combination of music, flames, and flesh.
Nassau wasn’t always paradise. The first time I stayed with Esau, I showed up with a huge Afro. Esau didn’t approve. It didn’t suit his conservative sense of style. Right then and there, he ordered me into the backyard and insisted that I sit on a stool. He then took a bowl, put it over my head, and sheared me like a sheep. I was enraged. But he was my elder, and I had been taught to obey my elders. Besides, I could never be angry with Esau for long. He was too beautiful a person.
Nassau had