My heart started racing. I didn’t know what to say, but I had to say something. I knew this chance meeting was my only opportunity. I couldn’t blow it.
“I like your hair,” I said to her.
It was a lame line, a stupid line, one of the worst lines in the history of bad lines. But I said it.
“I like your hair, too,” Lisa said with a smile. A smile! Lisa Bonet smiled at me!
A little later, while everyone was milling around the dressing room waiting for New Edition to emerge, I approached her. I introduced myself as Romeo Blue. We vibed immediately. Time stood still. Without a lot being said, there was magnetism. I’d never had an encounter like it before. We were from the same tribe.
Before I left, I got her number.
* * *
I started calling her, and we slowly built a relationship over the phone. After her long days on the Cosby set, we’d talk late into the night. I knew she had a boyfriend, or boyfriends. I had Mitzi.
Lisa and I saw each other simply as friends. It was a reemergence of my old pattern of platonic relationships with women. As an only child, the brother-sister dynamic had brought me comfort and companionship throughout my early life. In this case, it was an older brother–younger sister dynamic: I was twenty-one; Lisa was eighteen.
In the back of my mind, of course, was that moment when, pointing to Lisa’s photo on the cover of TV Guide, I’d told Alvin Fields that she was the girl I was gonna marry. But that was a fantasy. In reality, it was amazing enough just to meet her and feel the connection between us. I didn’t need to push it, and I didn’t.
* * *
Lisa went back to Kaufman Astoria Studios, in Queens, where the Cosby show was taping. I was back in New York City as well, with Mitzi and the band.
Lisa accepted me and knew I saw her for who she was. In her Norma Kamali and Betsey Johnson outfits, top hats, and psychedelic granny glasses, she was her own breed—brilliant, soft-spoken, and mysterious. I liked that she didn’t shave under her arms. I liked that she wore tattered old dresses from thrift shops. But, most important, I loved her mind and spirit. She was free.
Lisa Bonet was one of the most desired women in the world. But that didn’t matter to me. We’d established this instantaneously powerful rapport, and we understood each other clearly. The fact that we were each in a relationship with someone else only facilitated our friendship.
Mitzi seemed satisfied that Lisa and I were just pals. Between me and Lisa, there was none of the energy that comes up when a man hits on a woman or a woman pursues a man. For all her commercial success, Lisa was a pure soul who, like me, had adopted the peace-and-love ethos of an earlier era. She was willing to explore uncharted territory. She was daring and unafraid yet, at the same time, fragile and tough. She was a waif, but also a rock.
Our biracial backgrounds—Lisa’s mother was white and Jewish, and her father was Black—were another bond. We were both comfortable in different cultures. And the fact that I had grown up in the specific culture of sitcom TV helped me understand what she was going through on a daily basis. I knew that grind firsthand, and I knew the toll it took.
When Interview profiled Lisa—this was only a few months after we met—we were already close enough that she mentioned me, referring to her “brother Romeo.” It wasn’t long after that that I had a change of heart about that very name. Because it turns out what I was looking for was right there, the whole time.
BECOMING LENNY
There was nothing fake about Lisa. The more I thought about my made-up name, the phonier it felt to me. I wasn’t Romeo. I wasn’t Blue. I wasn’t some fabricated wannabe. I was a musician dead set on being real. It suddenly became clear that my pseudonym was getting in the way of that. It was the immature me looking to be cool. But coolness comes from within. You can’t fake it. You can’t name it into being. You have to grow it organically.
I had a lot invested in Romeo Blue. I thought of him as an alter ego, without any of the problems facing Lennie. When I first came up with this new identity, it gave me confidence. But now it felt false. Romeo Blue was out.
But what name was in?
At first, I thought I’d go to the other extreme and call myself Leonard Kravitzky (my grandfather’s real last name before he hit Ellis Island); I actually ordered business cards carrying that name. Looking at them, though, I felt it was just too classical, like “Igor Stravinsky.”
No, the easiest answer was the simplest: the real me, the real name. The only change was in the spelling: “Lennie” became “Lenny” because, on paper, I liked the shape of the y more than the ie. It looked stronger.
I was Lenny Kravitz. Despite the name I’d invented and the image I’d adopted, I’d always been Lenny Kravitz. But it took Lisa to inspire me to find myself.
* * *
It was Lenny who kept working with our nameless group. We played a high-profile gig at the China Club in New York that created some buzz. We felt we might be close to getting a deal. Lisa, who had an apartment on Mott Street, showed up and met Mitzi, who eyed her suspiciously.
Lisa had broken up with one boyfriend only to start dating another. Sometimes she invited me to her place, but always when there were other people present. We watched Taxi Driver on her VCR, we listened to Jimi Hendrix records, we walked around the Village—friends, just friends. Running from coast to coast, I maintained my engagement to Mitzi. I had no reason not to. Mitzi was aware of my fondness for Lisa, and that was fine. Or was it?
If it was my fate to simply be Lisa’s brother, then so be it. Lisa had her life, and I wanted to be around her, whatever form that took. I could put my stronger feelings aside; I had no ego in it. I’d do anything just to be in her energy. That’s how much I loved her. In the words of the Stones, “You can’t always get what you want.”
One weekend, Mitzi and I went to Idyllwild, California, with Lisa and a group of her friends. Later that evening, under the moonlight in the crisp mountain air, a bunch of us did shrooms. It was a mellow trip except for the vibe Mitzi was giving Lisa. I could feel the tension. It was indescribable but undeniable.
Another time, when Mitzi was back in New York and I was in L.A., Lisa came over to the downtown loft while I was having a small party. She was barefoot, seated in an easy chair, when I came over and, because it seemed natural, started massaging her feet. I am reminded of the famous scene in Pulp Fiction when John Travolta tells Samuel Jackson that a foot massage might seem innocent, but it ain’t. A foot massage can change everything.
* * *
In 1986, Lisa accepted a starring role in Angel Heart, a film with Robert DeNiro and Mickey Rourke. It was psychological noir that included voodoo ceremonies with chicken heads being cut off and a bloody sex scene. The entire film bothered Bill Cosby, who had carefully cultivated his wholesome Hollywood brand. Moreover, he had already committed to a spin-off of The Cosby Show, A Different World, in which Lisa, continuing in her role as Denise Huxtable, would star.
A fiercely independent spirit, Lisa was undeterred. She couldn’t have cared less about appearing on film nude. And she wasn’t about to be intimidated by Cosby. She shot the film; controversy followed. Later that year, she took me on a Disney-sponsored trip with her to Orlando, just to keep her company. We stayed in separate rooms.