I stood and wept. As a new father, I couldn’t imagine how Jewel, a new mother, was dealing with such pain. All her life, her beauty had worked against her. She’d been horrifically abused. And now this. The resources of good people like Mom weren’t enough to save her. All I could do was pray to God that somehow, in the storm of her story, she’d be able to find shelter and solace.
NEAR COLLAPSE
Putting a record together is a maddening process, but during the final stages, I did have a sense of peace. I felt secure. I heard the full power of the soul I’d listened to as a child and the rock I’d experienced as a teen. The songs sounded new and yet classic, all sung in a voice I finally recognized as my own. The spirit informing the songs, the melodies, and the lyrics was inspired by the God I had learned to love that long-ago evening back at choir summer camp, and also inspired by my wife, whom I loved with all my heart.
* * *
But just when the album was ready for release, just when I felt so good about the whole project, everything almost crumbled. A few execs at Virgin didn’t like the final mix. They considered it too raw. They insisted that we’d be competing with the music dominating radio then—the massive hits, for example, by Bon Jovi and Van Halen. That made no sense to me. I wasn’t trying to sound like anybody else. I’d been doing this work precisely not to follow trends. Yet they employed the trendiest engineer to remix the record. Sure, it sounded professional and balanced. He was a great engineer. But Henry and I hated the results. My personality was gone. The intimacy was lost. The whole vibe was wrong, and worst of all, the album had lost the special sonic character I’d worked so hard to create. The before version had a soul that the after version had buried.
I’d chosen Virgin over Warner for less money because I was convinced Virgin understood me. Now I was pissed.
I decided to go to the top. I called Jeff Ayeroff. I said that I believed in being a team player. I knew that I needed his label’s marketing muscle to get this record out to the public. But I just couldn’t stand by and let it be released in this fucked-up form.
Jeff listened carefully. He didn’t argue. All he said was that he’d review both versions and get back to me.
It didn’t take him more than a few hours. He called to say that I was right. Trying to make me sound more contemporary was a mistake. The sound of this record couldn’t be manipulated. It would rise or fall on its own merits. Our original rough-and-raw mixes would stand.
Then Jeff asked a rhetorical question. “Will it be a hit? To tell you the truth, Lenny, I really don’t know.”
LET LOVE RULE
The rollout of the record was slow.
The Rolling Stone review said I sounded like Elvis Costello. That was ridiculous, but what could I say? I don’t believe in answering critics.
Virgin funded a video of “Let Love Rule,” the title cut. The label hired Matt Mahurin, whose haunting video for Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” had been a success. They wanted a production in that same style: a stark image of me in a room playing the song, highlighted in a field of darkness. Although I loved that video, it wasn’t the right vibe. It went against the spirit of the song. After all, the lyrics said:
Love is gentle as a rose
And love can conquer any war
It’s time to take a stand
Brothers and sisters join hands
We got to let love rule
Love transcends all space and time
And love can make a little child smile
Can’t you see
This won’t go wrong
But we got to be strong
We can’t do it alone
The one who understood the song best was Lisa. She was the spirit behind it. I suggested that she direct the video. I told Jeff that we needed a Magical Mystery Tour feeling: sunshine, rolling hills, blooming flowers, and green meadows with children at play. Lisa would be perfect.
And she was. Jeff gave us the green light, and on a summer’s day, we shot on a Super 8 camera at the entrance of Central Park at Seventy-Ninth and Fifth, the exact corner where I often played as a kid. The shoot was beautiful, highlighted by a moment of serendipity. Godmother Cicely Tyson, who lived in an apartment building overlooking that spot, happened to walk out on her balcony and heard music coming over loudspeakers. She was certain that she recognized that voice. Next thing I knew, someone was tapping me on the shoulder. I turned around to see Godmother’s smiling face.
I was shocked. “How could you tell it was my voice coming through the park up to your balcony across Fifth Avenue?”
“I know my godchild’s voice.”
We embraced.
Dad also happened to be in New York that day and came by the shoot. He had to see what all the excitement was about. Unlike Godmother, he didn’t say that he was proud of me, but I could see that he was pleasantly surprised. He was in good spirits. I took it as a sign of solidarity.
The U.S. promotional tour was a grind, but I had no complaints. New artists have to pay their dues. That meant driving all over the country, either alone or with a promoter, and going to radio stations big and small to play live acoustic sets and be interviewed. At first, the album itself languished, while the single “Let Love Rule” was getting some play on alternative and college radio. In an era when hip-hop was coming on strong, marketing me was tough. But I had a great radio team, led by Michael Plen, whose nickname was “the Attack Hamster.” When it came to getting me on the air, he was relentless.
When the label sent me to Europe, I was ready to go.
For six grueling weeks, I hit England, France, Holland, and Germany, just me and my guitar, doing radio promo and playing little clubs. Here and there, I got mentions in the press. It was a tough trip because Lisa and Zoë were back in the States.
It was on that tour where I made up my mind. Acoustic sets were fine, but I was always going to have a band. I was a rocker, not a cabaret singer, and I needed a full-tilt rock ’n’ roll show. I knew that to get over, I would need a smoking rhythm section and horns behind me to mirror the record. The bedrock of that band became Zoro on drums; bassist Lebron Scott, who joined me with the blessing of his boss, Curtis Mayfield; guitarist Adam Widoff, whom I’d met at Bennington College; saxophonist Karl Denson, who’d played on the record; Kenneth Crouch, nephew of gospel legend Andraé Crouch, on Hammond organ and keys; and Angie Stone, who played the first leg of club gigs on sax and sang background vocals.
Virgin booked me at France’s Rencontres Trans Musicales, a music festival in Rennes, in Brittany. Over four days, bands from dozens of countries performed in a variety of venues before eighty thousand fans. The festival was famous for launching the next rising star. I was told that the ratio of those who made a splash in Rennes to those who didn’t was one to a hundred.
I was twenty-five years old. My experience as a show performer was limited. I’d been locked up in the studio for the past four years. I’d forgone the usual route of putting together a band, touring for years, getting a deal, and then making a record. I’d reversed the process. The record was already made. Now the live show had to be formed, and in a hurry. I’m usually confident, but this time I was a little nervous. Foreign country, new band, no time for a sound check, no hit songs to play, and a lead singer who, in this international venue, was untested, not to mention unknown.