Let Love Rule - Lenny Kravitz Page 0,7

about my musical talent. It began at the Waldbaum’s supermarket on DeKalb Avenue. She was paying for her purchases and I was standing next to her when I started singing a melody. The cashier recognized it as Tchaikovsky. He wanted to know how in the world this little kid knew Tchaikovsky. Surprised, Grandma turned to me for the answer. I said it was something I’d heard on my Show ’N Tell, a plastic TV with a record player on top. It was a melody that had stuck in my head. The cashier told my grandmother it was a highly complicated melody for a child to memorize. I just shrugged. It didn’t seem like a big deal.

Broadway show tunes, pop songs, symphonic themes—they all stuck in my head. They gave me pleasure. But there’s a difference between pleasure and passion. Musical passion didn’t really kick in until the Jackson 5. The J5 were the game changer. They came storming out of the gate in 1969, when I turned five, the same year I was haunted by those stuck-in-a-tomb nightmares. Their early run of smashes—“I Want You Back,” “ABC,” The Love You Save”—had me mesmerized. Those hits opened my mind and heart in a way that no other music had ever done. It’s one thing to say you like a band; it’s another to say that a band changed your life.

LENNIE JACKSON

Some called the Jackson 5 bubble gum music. It was anything but. Their hits were complex melodies and sophisticated arrangements. Even as a kid, I recognized that: the bass lines, the rhythm guitar, the percussive nuances. But beyond the music, they wore brilliantly patterned psychedelic-styled clothes and executed pinpoint-precise super-sharp choreography. At the center of it all was Michael. He was eleven but looked younger. I related to him.

In my parents’ apartment, I had already been listening to great voices coming off their records. Mom and Dad loved soul music. I knew Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, Otis Redding, and all the others. That’s why I can say that I knew that Michael, even at his young age, was as great as the greatest.

When I listened to the Jackson 5, I’d follow the conversations among the brothers and their musicians. I was right there. I heard how Michael was responding to the rhythm section. I understood how all the elements hung together—the strings weaving through the funk, the harmonic punctuations of the brothers’ background vocals, Michael’s lead vocal sailing over the top.

My response to their music was instinctual. I’d run to the closet, put on my black rubber galoshes (which I pretended were leather boots), drape myself in a few of Mom’s scarves, grab a Magic Marker to use as a microphone, and join the lineup. Mimicking the brothers’ moves, I became the sixth Jackson. At school, this is what I wrote in my notebook:

Lennie Jackson

Lennie Jackson

Lennie Jackson

* * *

It was October 16, 1970. I was six. I was surprised when Dad met me at school that day and said he was taking me somewhere. We walked a block over to Fifth Avenue and my dad hailed a cab. He told the driver, “Madison Square Garden.”

I asked him, “What’s at Madison Square Garden?”

In my mind, I was thinking, Is it the circus? The Ice Capades?

He wouldn’t say.

I became uncontrollably curious. The more I asked, the more he wouldn’t say. All he did was smile back at me with a sparkle in his eye. I had seen my dad happy and charming around his friends. But this was a first. Never before had I felt him this happy around me and me alone. When we finally got out of the cab and walked toward the Garden, my curiosity reached a boiling point.

The Garden was packed, everyone dressed to the nines. Men in leather maxi coats. Women in hot pants. Afros, wild hats, turbans, dashikis—you name it. Soon, as we settled into our seats, which were really close to the stage, a massive commotion broke out. The Queen of Soul was entering the arena. Flashbulbs popped. Heads turned. People cheered. Aretha Franklin, swathed in white mink and dripping in diamonds, had entered the arena. She and her entourage took their seats right behind us. Even before the music started, even when I still didn’t know who we were about to see, the proximity of the Queen gave me goosebumps.

Moments later, the lights dimmed. A band came onstage and started playing. It sounded good. I started moving. I