Let Love Rule - Lenny Kravitz Page 0,9

into one of the walk-in closets of the Bernsteins’ fifteen-room spread at 1000 Park Avenue. Each of the six Bernstein kids had their own bedroom and a private bath. The family dining room was as long as a bowling alley. Framed gold records lined the walls. There were nannies, cooks, and housekeepers. And then there was Sid himself, a big, loving man who took us to Patsy’s Pizzeria in Harlem, where he could devour three whole pies. Sid was full of life, full of fun, and free with his emotions. Every time he greeted his children—me included—he gave us bear hugs and kisses. It was the kind of affection from a father figure that I really craved.

Whatever my father lacked, he did do wonderful things for me. When I was seven, Dad took me to Manny’s Music on Forty-Eighth Street and bought me my very first guitar, a Yamaha acoustic with a built-in pickup with volume and tone knobs on the front. He also bought me a little practice amp. I’d been studying the Fender catalogue for months and was dying for a curvy sunburst Stratocaster. But Dad explained that this guitar was a more versatile way to start. I couldn’t complain—and didn’t.

My first attempt to actually write music came through my friendship with a guy who lived across the street from me, Alex Weiner, a lanky kid with long hair. Alex’s family had this cool apartment that belonged in Greenwich Village, not the Upper East Side. His mom was a hippie who believed in artistic freedom. The atmosphere in the Weiner home was moody. Some walls were painted black, some covered with scrawling graffiti. Alex’s mother actually encouraged us to paint on the walls. I loved this place! Better yet, Alex owned the exact Stratocaster I was dreaming of, and a Fender amp. Together we wrote something called, “I Love You, Baby.” At that age, what did I know about love? But I did know that “love” needed to be in the lyrics.

We might have written the song on a contact high because Alex’s apartment always smelled of marijuana. That aroma wasn’t new to me; it was all over Bed-Stuy, too. It was also a fragrance present at the parties my parents took me to as a kid. Mom and Dad didn’t smoke, but a whole lot of their friends did.

Pot seemed harmless, but that wasn’t true of other stimulants. I watched a mother of a close friend waste away on prescription drugs. They lived in an enormous apartment at 1010 Fifth Avenue, a landmark building off Eighty-Second Street, just two doors away from us. Their place was a disaster: plates piled high in the sink, dirty clothes scattered all over the floor, trash cans overflowing. When I told Mom about it, she rushed over to investigate and ended up washing dishes, mopping floors, and opening up windows to let in fresh air. She even bathed the poor woman and put her in fresh clothes. She convinced her to get professional help. That was my mother: a rescuer of lost souls.

* * *

Mom loved music as much as I did. Two of her prized albums, Imagination, by Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, became childhood landmarks. I used to love performing Gladys’s record for my mother. I’d sing along to “Midnight Train to Georgia,” and she’d sit attentively and watch every move. She’d let me get through the whole album and never once take her eyes off me. Even today, a half century later, the beautiful warmth of Gladys’s tone comforts me. Gladys gives voice to my mother’s soul. Mom’s soul and Gladys’s voice are forever linked in my heart.

Stevie’s album was a revelation. It was the first suite of songs I listened to where I focused on each overdub as a separate entity. This was my first conscious introduction to the meaning of a musical arrangement. Even as a kid, I saw Innervisions for what it was: a work of great art. There was a technical marvel to the whole operation. Beyond appreciating the intricate construction of each song, I was breathing in Stevie’s spirituality. Later on in my life, as I listened to this album again and again, I visualized Stevie sitting in the palm of God’s hand.

* * *

In the summer of 1973, Mom and Dad sent me upstate for two months to Lincoln Farm, a sleepaway camp in Roscoe, New York. I brought my Yamaha, and one of the counselors who played