Home > Let Love Rule(35)

Let Love Rule(35)
Author: Lenny Kravitz

Except for Tony, my bandmates went their own way. Tony and I stuck together. If a Black Duran Duran didn’t fit our style, we’d find something that would.

Up stepped Benny Medina, a music exec I’d met years earlier at the Gordy mansion, where as a teenager he ran errands for Berry. A sharp guy, Benny had worked his way up to become A&R head at Motown before switching to Warner Bros. Records. In fact, Will Smith’s character in The Prince of Bel-Air was based on Benny and his early life.

When Tony and I played the demos we’d made, Benny thought we had serious potential. He saw us as a funkier version of Hall and Oates. We took that as a compliment. Benny gave us a development deal that allowed us to go back into the studio and cut more tunes. Warner Bros. also put us up at the Oakwood apartments, where out-of-town musicians and actors stayed while working in L.A. We each bought a motorcycle—Honda Rebels, poor man’s Harleys—and we were off and running! The songwriting went well. We were cranking out demos on a regular basis. We switched off on vocals, switched off on instruments, and generated some material. So far, so good. Then Sly Stone came to town.

Sly actually moved into the Oakwood. I was thrilled to meet him. He was one of the titans. I’d watch him coming out of his apartment dressed to the nines, with a woman on each arm. Both Tony and I idolized Sly. But Tony took it even further. He wanted to embody Sly; he wanted to be him. I was cool just seeing Sly around the complex, but Tony started seeking him out, and then hanging regularly in his apartment. Then Tony disappeared for days, which turned into weeks. Come to find out, they were bingeing on crack together. Our production came to a screeching halt. Eventually, though, Tony showed up to do some work.

Then came another problem: a beautiful girl named Sonia. I’d met her in Nassau when my cousin Jennifer got married. Sonia was smart, gorgeous, irresistible. I fell hard, really hard. I ran up a huge phone bill keeping in touch with her, until I finally convinced her to come to L.A. to stay with me at the Oakwood. She met Tony and, for a few days, everything was cool. Then came the afternoon when Tony and Sonia hopped on his bike to grab food. I was fine with that—until they didn’t return that night. Or the next night. Or the night after.

I was really scared that something had happened. Did they get in an accident? Were they alive? I didn’t think in a million years that Tony would steal my girl. But that’s exactly what he did. When they finally showed up three days later, their lame explanation was that they’d been exploring Malibu. I was heartbroken. I really loved this girl. But to Tony, she was just a plaything. I told Sonia I couldn’t do this. She had to leave. I booked her a flight back to Nassau and rode her to LAX on my bike. Saying good-bye hurt.

But music is a powerful force—so powerful that, in spite of his stealing my girl, Tony and I stuck together. I hung in with him. We went back to making demos. We put together a live showcase that I co-produced. I played bass and backed Tony while he sang lead. Sheila E., who had hit it big with “The Glamorous Life” and was the opening act for the Purple Rain tour, told Prince about us. Prince signed Tony, who wanted me as part of the deal. Prince told Tony that although his shit was funky, the recordings didn’t sound like professional records, and that he’d need a producer. I completely disagreed. The rawness was one of the chief elements that defined Tony.

Prince had a vision of Tony that was smoother and more synthetic. Thus, he hired producer David Gamson. A multi-instrumentalist, Gamson was one half of British duo Scritti Politti and composer of most of their massive hits. He was king of the synths. Look, I loved Scritti, I had their CD, but to me that sound had nothing to do with Tony.

Still, Tony drank the Kool-Aid. His funk got diluted. He was convinced cleaning up his sound would mean commercial success. Desperately searching for a smash, he rushed into the synth pop era directed by a man who helped define that era. When Tony’s Gamson-produced album on Prince’s Paisley Park Records was released, I was still rooting for him. I genuinely wanted him to succeed. The album was clean and professional and Tony sang his ass off. But when the record didn’t sell, and the songs, caught in that techno bubble, already sounded dated, I realized one thing for sure: you can’t fuck with your musical DNA without losing something sacred. I was still looking for the sacred. And not even a figure as imposing as Prince could convince me it was there when my heart said it wasn’t.

A few years later, while working on a second album, Tony died in a tragic accident on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. That broke my heart. For all that had gone down between us, I still thought of Tony as my brother and a man of enormous talent. I only wish the world had the opportunity to hear the pure musical spirit that I knew lived deep within his soul.

 

 

COLLEGE

 


I didn’t go to college, but I did. That is, on a regular basis, I’d go visit my friends at college. Eliza Steinberg and Jane Greenberg were back east, calling and writing about how they loved their schools. I had to see for myself.

It was the mid-eighties. Jane was at Bennington, in Vermont. The whole setting appealed to me: the kicked-back campus, the leafy trees, the coeds in tie-dyed skirts, the professors in tweedy sport coats. It was great being back with Jane. It was also great jamming with the local musicians. It was at Bennington where I met Bret Easton Ellis, whose novel Less Than Zero was all about the drug-crazed children of the idle rich. A few months later, I was at Bret’s publication party in Manhattan, where I met, for the one and only time, Andy Warhol. The pop art painter made a grand appearance with two statuesque African models. Blond-wigged Andy was the king, and they were his queens. I secretly wished that one day I’d be featured in Andy’s Interview magazine, but it never happened. I saw Andy as a rebel who’d defied tradition. Jane said that he actually had a degree in fine arts from Carnegie Tech. Andy Warhol had gone to college.

Deep down, I had some feelings about not having gone to college. After all, my folks were college graduates. Walking around Bennington, seeing the kids with their backpacks stuffed with books, I knew I was missing something. I knew there was something invaluable about a formal education. By skipping college, I wondered if I was shortchanging myself. At the same time, I knew I could never focus on academics. I couldn’t sit still long enough to get even a semester under my belt. I was too restless, too eager to make it as a musician.

I loved Bard as much as Bennington. Bard was where Eliza was studying—and also where Donald Fagen had met Walter Becker and eventually formed Steely Dan. Eliza let me sit in on her classes, took me to parties, and introduced me to her beautiful friend Ming See Lau, nicknamed Mitzi.

Mitzi spoke with a soft, enchanting Chinese British accent. She was worldly, sensuous, smart, and deep into music and fashion. Though she was the daughter of a wealthy businessman, she wasn’t spoiled or pretentious. Her charm was as natural as her love for the arts. From that first night we met at Bard, we couldn’t see enough of each other. We fell into a whirlwind romance. And it all started at college.

Soon, our lives became intertwined. When she wasn’t at school, she stayed at her apartment, in a doorman building at 200 East Fifty-Seventh Street, off Third Avenue. She invited me to move in, and suddenly I was back in the vicinity of my early childhood, affluent Manhattan.

Mitzi took me to a boutique that carried clothes by cutting-edge designers: Charivari, on West Fifty-Seventh. Given that I didn’t have much of a wardrobe, she sweetly clothed me in the latest fashions. We were young and genuinely in love, but Mitzi became somewhat of a benefactor. I had mixed feelings about that. Part of me would rather have paid my own bills, but another part liked having a girlfriend who was happy making me happy. Mitzi had no qualms about helping me pursue my musical dreams.

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