Let Love Rule - Lenny Kravitz Page 0,24

Jeffersons was even more fun for me than the first. That season the show moved to Metromedia, in Hollywood, at Sunset and Van Ness. That meant another long bus ride, but I didn’t mind. I had the run of the place and was able to bring my buddies along; the security guards waved us in. That lot was my playground, and I knew every corner. The soundstages were as big as airplane hangars. Walking through the complex, I passed the set for Good Times, whose stars, Esther Rolle and John Amos, were family friends.

I saw how Good Times and The Jeffersons presented flip sides of the African American experience in the 1970s. One side was stuck in the ghetto, while the other side had escaped. Good Times was about being stuck. When I first saw the show’s fake Cabrini-Green apartment in make-believe Chicago, it reminded me of the projects where my friends lived in Bed-Stuy. Meanwhile, The Jeffersons had escaped Archie Bunker’s lower-class Queens and moved to fancy Manhattan. Working class and elite—both classes I’d known as a kid in New York; now both classes turned into comedies I was watching being taped in Tinseltown.

On the set of Good Times, I got to know Jimmie Walker of “Dy-no-mite” fame and Ja’net DuBois. At Diff’rent Strokes, another show at Metromedia, I became friends with Gary Coleman, Todd Bridges, and Kim Fields from Facts of Life.

The Roxie Roker dressing room was my go-to spot. With Mom in makeup, I’d hang out, do my homework, and blast Stevie Wonder’s “Boogie On Reggae Woman.” Mom’s world was chill.

Dad’s, however, was not. After the move west, he had maintained his status as a news producer, moving from NBC to ABC, but what he really wanted to do was become a mogul; he wanted to make waves in show business. When that didn’t happen, he grew frustrated. And I believe he took that frustration out on me. His fury about my grades grew and grew.

Mom wasn’t happy about my grades either, but she understood what was going on. To keep things cool at home, she played down her prominence. Sensitive to her husband, she introduced herself as Roxie Kravitz, not Roxie Roker. When she learned to drive, she bought herself a plain old Buick and didn’t complain when Dad traded in his Honda 600 for a Rolls-Royce that had belonged to actor Walter Matthau. She knew her newfound fame was tough on him.

Mom had no interest in social climbing among the Hollywood elite. Instead, she volunteered her time helping underprivileged kids at an organization called ICAN, the International Council for the Abused and Neglected. She also kept her theater roots, performing at the Inner City Cultural Center in Leimert Park. When it came to giving back, she was her father’s daughter. She was also her father’s daughter when it came to practicality. Grandpa Albert had taught her that middle-class people with a solid income owned homes. The Kravitzes had never owned a home—until now.

MOVIN’ ON UP EVEN HIGHER

Moving from an apartment in Santa Monica to a ranch house in Baldwin Hills was a big deal. Our new home was a midcentury architectural gem, the kind of single-story glass-and-wood design reminiscent of Frank Sinatra in Palm Springs. Previously owned by a doctor, it had been featured in Architectural Digest. It wasn’t a mansion—three bedrooms, a living room/dining room/den—but to me, a kid who’d grown up in a tiny apartment, it felt enormous. There was a pool in the backyard along with a greenhouse and avocado, lemon, and orange trees. The view was crazy. The house was situated atop one of the highest hills in L.A., and I could see the Coliseum, the Hollywood Hills, and a range of snowcapped mountains in the distance. The whole city was laid out at my feet.

The address was 4061 Cloverdale Avenue. Some called the neighborhood the Golden Ghetto. Technically, it was Baldwin Vista, a section of a larger area called Baldwin Hills. When we moved there in 1976, the original white owners had mostly taken flight, selling their homes to upper-middle-class Blacks. Stars like Ray Charles and bluesman Lowell Fulson were neighbors. Our house cost $300,000. On the white side of town, it would have sold for a million.

Baldwin Vista was perched at the highest point. Below us was Black, working-class South Central, whose main thoroughfare was Crenshaw Boulevard. We were six miles west of downtown and ten miles east of the Pacific Ocean—smack dab in the middle of everything.

Dad liked