Lenny Kravitz has a unique charm and seems straight from the 1970s, with his brown leather jacket, turtleneck matched with flared pants and gold rings around his fingers.
A night owl, the rock icon lights up the dancefloor with ecstatic guitars and fiery saxophone solos that set
Blue Electric Light,
his new record, on fire.
The American singer, musician and songwriter's latest albums were all outward-looking:
Black and White America
(2011) celebrated the optimism of the Obama era and an American future beyond racial divides.
Raise Vibration
(2018) urged staying positive despite a country divided by Donald Trump's tenure.
Blue Electric Light
takes another direction and favors first-person narration.
It is the poignant testimony of a personal and artistic quest that Lenny Kravitz continues after pushing the limits of rock: “There would be no Tyler, the Creator (American rapper, Editor’s note) without Lenny Kravitz,” said said Jay-Z.
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Madame Figaro.-
Blue Electric Light
marks the end of the longest period of silence between your albums since your debut with
Let Love Rule
, in 1989. How were these new songs born?
Let Love Rule
was followed by ten more albums, each dropping at a steady pace.
Then I didn't record for five years.
Quite simply because I was in the preparatory work necessary for any artist.
Blue Electric Light
is the summary of thirty years of diligent work.
It began to take shape during the pandemic: isolation triggered a period of strong reflection and creativity in me.
Where have you been ?
In March 2020, at the start of a tour, I left for my home in the Bahamas with a small suitcase and clothes for the weekend.
I wanted to recharge my batteries at the beach for a few days.
But the tour dates were canceled.
I stayed there, on the island of Eleuthera, for the next two and a half years.
I bought land there with the money from my first recording contract, where I lived for a long time, in a caravan by the water.
I still have it, but I also built a real house, with a garden where I grow my own fruits and vegetables.
Next door, I made a music studio.
I feel at home in this place.
We don't need anything: no keys, wallet, money... We live to the rhythm of nature.
When I'm in Los Angeles, New York or Paris, I'm a night owl, going to bed at dawn and waking up at noon, but in Eleuthera, after a week, my body gets used to it to follow natural cycles.
But after all, I'm a rocker, so I've often evaded these rules.
Do you mean the song design was chaotic?
Very chaotic.
During this period of apparent stillness, music poured out.
Sometimes I barely slept.
I would wake up at all hours because I would hear melodies in my head and rush to write them down.
I actually wrote three separate albums during that time.
Blue Electric Light
is the first to come out, but I'm working on the others.
I first released the single
TK421
- which refers to the
Star Wars soldiers -
because I had played the album with Bono and U2's The Edge and they insisted that I release it first.
We have the impression that you have always ridden the wave of success, but your first album,
Let Love Rule
, received a mixed reception when it was released.
Why was it not immediately understood?
At the end of the 80s, America was in the midst of a hip-hop wave.
I looked like an alien landed on planet Earth: here was a 24-year-old Black New Yorker singing and producing rock using vintage recording techniques and retro gear.
At the time, the rock charts were almost entirely made up of white artists.
The sound I proposed was neither Black nor White.
He stood at the crossroads and the crossroads of race.
He was both brutal and twilight-soft.
My second album,
Mama Said
(1991), both squeaky and tender, challenged the codes even more.
It went platinum and the rock'n'roll world was suddenly curious.
Around that time I became close to Bruce Springsteen, Prince and Mick Jagger.
However, I remember corrosive and racist criticism.
I read in an article: “If Lenny Kravitz were white, he would be the next savior of rock’n’roll”…
Also read: Lenny Kravitz puts on his big scarf and becomes the king of autumn on TikTok
The music of this album, very mixed, evokes your identity and throughout the songs you have the impression of seeing your entire life pass by.
Is Blue Electric Light
the musical sequel to your autobiography
Let Love Rule
, published in 2020?
Yes.
I grew up in New York during the '60s and '70s as a mixed-race kid – my mother, Roxy, was black of Bahamian descent and my father, Sy, a white Jew, whose family came from kyiv.
I stood out as much in the predominantly white neighborhoods of Manhattan as in the predominantly black neighborhoods of Brooklyn, where I often lived with my maternal grandparents when my parents worked.
The latter had an apartment around the corner from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on 82nd Street.
I learned to tie my shoes on Madison Avenue, surrounded by white kids.
But I often had the impression of not belonging to any community and that is undoubtedly my wealth.
I was the target of a lot of attacks from older white men who saw my success as a danger.
But the Black media have not always been magnanimous either and have been slow to make space for me.
It was all discouraging at times, but I am very happy with how far we have come.