Growing up,
•
musician
father, TV producer Sy Kravitz, and a
Bahamian mother (Roker) who was
Christian, Kravitz was exposed to life
in New York's ritzy Upper East Side
and in the grittier streets of Brooklyn's
Bedford-Stuyvesant. He went to church
and synagogue, to seders and midnight
masses.
No direction was closed to him, and
Kravitz chose his path based on expe-
riences rather than preconceptions.
"I did just as many Jewish things as
I did Christian things," he says. "I had
both sides of the thing." But his brief
experience in Jewish education was,
he says, "a bit too much to handle, be-
ing black, because the kids in my class
never saw a black kid walking into He-
brew school before.
I was like this novelty, and that
didn't sit well with me," he remembers.
Kravitz's upbringing also exposed
him to a wide array of arts, particu-
larly music. At home, he heard every-
thing from soul to classical, rock to
gospel. His folks took him to see the
Jackson 5. Duke Ellington would
come to visit.
He started "banging on pots" when
he was 3, Kravitz
says; after the family
Lenny Kravitz:
moved to Los Angeles
"It was a bit too
when he was 10 —
much to handle,
being black,
where he attended
because the kids
school with one Saul
in my class never Hudson, later to be
saw a black kid
known as Slash of the
walking into
hard-rock group Guns
Hebrew school
'N Roses — Kravitz
before."
joined the California
Boys Choir.
He went on to teach himself to play
guitar, piano, bass and drums. Kravitz
left home when he was a sophomore in
high school and bummed around Los
Angeles, working odd jobs and sleep-
ing in cars. He first entered the public
eye not through music, but through his
relationship with actress Lisa Bonet of
"The Cosby Show." They married in
1987 and had a daughter, Zoe, now 6,
but split up in 1991 — the pain of which
fed Kravitz's second album, Mama Said.
Throughout his musical career, Kravitz
has been slammed as a derivative hippie
wannabe. He does not deny the influence
of '60s and '70s music — Jimi Hendrix,
Sly & the Family Stone, Parliament-
CC
>-
CD
Lenny Kravitz
went to church and
.
.
.
synagogue,
to seders and
"
midnight masses.
GARY GRAFF
SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
•
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76
o one should be sur-
prised by the deep spir-
itual vein in Lenny
Kravitz's rock 'n' roll.
As far back as his first
album in 1989, he was
urging listeners to "Let
Love Rule." With his dreadlocks, bell
bottoms and sloe-eyed expression,
Kravitz may look the part of hippie in-
fidel— "like he just stepped off the run-
way at a Woodstock fashion show" is
how Rolling Stone magazine put it —
but peer closer, and you'll see the look
of the shaman, of someone who's found
a transcendent, ecstatic power in the
music he creates.
Much of Kravitz's latest album, Cir-
cus, mines that spirituality. Some of it,
he says, has to do with the death of his
mother, actress Roxie Roker ("The Jeffer-
sons"), last year. Some was prompted by
a personal crisis he encountered as he tried
to strike a balance between the creative
and business aspects of his career.
"I believe in God," says Kravitz, 32. "It's
something I do more on my own; Fm not
GOD IS LOVE
HE'LL GET YOU THROUGH YOUR PAIN AND SORROW
GOD IS LOVE
part of any particular church — not
that there's anything wrong with it.
I just have a hard time with that.
Religion is something I like to do
personally."
Kravitz comes to his beliefs — in
all things — by way of a multicul-
tural upbringing. Born to a Jewish
HE'S COMING BACK MAYBE TOMORROW
GOD IS LOVE
AND IF YOU ARE READY
r_/