Lenny Kravitz on Love, Anger, and Music

After the pandemic began spreading in early March, Lenny Kravitz left his Paris home and decamped to his retreat in Eleuthera, a small island in the Bahamas. Rather than touring the world and promoting his new memoir, Kravitz has been living the simple life, growing his own food and using trees as makeshift workout benches.  Kravitz has been in a reflective mood thanks to the memoir, titled Let Love Rule. It’s the first of two planned volumes, covering his life up until the release of his 1989 debut album. With little rock-star hedonism or stereotypical tales of excess to speak of — expect that in Volume 2 — you’re allowed to be skeptical. But the memoir is a fascinating look at Kravitz’s lifelong dualities. A biracial kid, the son of an NBC News producer dad (Sy Kravitz) and TV actress mom (Roxie Roker, of The Jeffersons), he shuttled between Manhattan and Brooklyn before moving to Los Angeles, where he felt equally at home in a Beverly Hills mansion and in goth, New Wave, and stoner/skater subcultures.    “I’ve always said that I love the extremes,” Kravitz says. “It’s the middle that I don’t do very well. Of course I can do it, but it’s not as appealing to me. I don’t get an energy from that. I feed off of the extremes.” The 56-year-old artist spoke to Rolling Stone from the Bahamas about the memoir, the pandemic, and slowing down.    Do you find it easier or harder to find creative inspiration during quarantine? It’s been a really quiet, creative time. To be honest, when we are not in this situation and I’m down here creating, I realize that I’ve been quarantining my whole life. When I come down here, that’s kind of what it is. You’re around just a few people. The only difference is that you can go into the village [and] into the settlement and hang out with folks and go sit at a bar or restaurant and talk with the people. I miss that. But otherwise, this is kind of how I live all the time when I’m here.  Do you find it harder to find inspiration as you get older, or does age not play a factor? I don’t deal with this aging thing. The numbers go up, but I’m still just as hungry and motivated and inspired as I was in the book. When I walk into that studio, it’s still magical to me. I never take it for granted. Being here enables you to hear yourself in a very clear way because you’re in nature. Because it’s so quiet. Because you’re somewhat isolated. It’s always been a great place for me to be creative. But, yes, I’m still in that place, man, thank God. I wouldn’t do it otherwise. I do know artists that as they continue doing this for years, I’ve seen folks get jaded [and] tired. They don’t want to be in the studio so much, and I have not experienced that.   Why a memoir now, and why break it up into two parts? Well, I never thought about writing the book. I don’t think that my life is that interesting. [But] I’m glad that I did because writing this book was the best form of therapy I could have ever taken. This was a story about me finding