Let Love Rule - Lenny Kravitz Page 0,14

Fly cemented his hero status for me. My parents owned the gatefold album whose cover featured Curtis’s face and, just below, the long-haired, white-suited Ron O’Neal, the “super-fly” Youngblood Priest—arms crossed, pistol pointed upward while sexy Georgia, played by Sheila Frazier, lies at his feet.

Like Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, Curtis’s album was funky but subtle: Marvin moaning “Mercy Mercy Me,” Mayfield embodying “Pusherman.” The songs and films of that era were telling the real-life news. They were voicing the fantasies and frustrations of their fans.

Films like Five on the Black Hand Side dramatized the deep divisions in the Black community: the conservative, uptight Black father; the taken-for-granted, overworked Black mother; the rebellious daughter; the militant son. Stories of Black life intrigued me, especially those with a strong father-son conflict. I related.

I also was into movies like Shaft, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Across 110th Street (with a theme by Bobby Womack that became one of my favorite songs), Hammer, Trouble Man, The Mack—and songs like Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City,” the Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There,” Bill Withers’s “Lean on Me,” and the Pointer Sisters’ “Yes We Can Can.”

* * *

After seeing the Jackson 5, my second life-changing moment came when I was eight years old and Mom took me to the Apollo to see the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. We had all his singles and a half dozen of his albums at home, but they hadn’t prepared me for the Apollo. Mom thought it was important that I have the experience, and, as usual, Mom was right.

We rode the subway uptown. Walking down 125th Street, R&B blaring from the record stores, we saw folks stepping out in their finest. I felt good all over. I felt even felt better when we got to our fifth-row seats. The air inside the Apollo was thick with smoke. The color of the curtains and the stage lights were dark magenta and rusty red. There was no stage set. Bare bones. When James slid out and hit with “Super Bad,” the crowd got up and never sat down.

James never stopped moving. He wasn’t creating rhythm; he was rhythm. He sang; he hollered; he fell to his knees; he did the splits; he handled the mic like a magician. He hit us with “Soul Power.” He hit us with “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine.” Bootsy Collins, his new nineteen-year-old bass player, had a big, lopsided Afro. That was the coolest look ever. The whole thing knocked me out.

After the show, Mom and I got to go backstage: musicians packing up their instruments, technicians packing up their gear. We went right up to James’s dressing room and peeked in. His shirt was off, his body covered in sweat, his hair all a mess. Mom waved hello. James waved back. She considered going in and introducing me, but the small room was already overcrowded. We walked out the back door and into the night, James Brown’s music still ringing in my ears, my feet still moving. Harlem was alive.

* * *

As a preteen, I could take the A train by myself down through Manhattan, under the East River, and into Brooklyn, where I got off and caught the bus that dropped me off at Throop and Kosciusko. Manhattan was majestic, but Bed-Stuy was my bedrock. By the end of the week, I couldn’t wait to get back to Brooklyn.

I’d go with Grandma to the houses she cleaned.

I’d go with Grandpa to the public library, where he’d check out an armful of books on history and philosophy.

I’d run the streets and hang out at block parties.

I also saw sex. The boys started early. Girls started having babies at thirteen. I caught my nine-year-old buddy Tommy humping a girl by the front door of his house. After they were through, he turned to me and said, “My dick needed something to eat.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant. I didn’t know anything about sex.

Years passed before I lost my innocence.

* * *

As a kid, my Afro was a big deal. It was a big part of my identity. In addition to the Jackson 5, it had been inspired by eleven-year-old singer Foster Sylvers, who had a hit record I loved. I couldn’t catch the name when it came on the radio, but I memorized the melody. One Saturday morning in Bed-Stuy, I ran over to the record store on DeKalb Avenue and sang the song for the man behind the counter. He