My dream is to become a farmer. Just a Bohemian guy pulling up his own sweet potatoes for dinner.
Lenny Kravitz
It's very important to vote. People died for this right.
If I were white, I'd get less criticism.
We weren't put here to be miserable. We were put here to do the best we can, and we should take our energy and improve our state of being.
Music is my life, it is a reflection of what I go through.
You can be around 100 people and be completely alone. People don't realize what it's really like.
You're never promised your next breath.
I identify with women more than men. I guess I have a strong feminine side.
I just need to know that I did the very best I could and that I was true to myself.
We're getting so pulled in by computers and technology, and our kids have their face in the computers all day. The human relationship is being diminished by this.
My first guitar, a Fender Jazz Master, I traded it in for a Les Paul Deluxe.
For the last few years, it's been so chic for everybody to be miserable. Like if you're in with the cool crowd, you can't be happy.
Change is growth. For me it has been a very spiritual and musical rebirth.
I always try to keep the circumstances in my life fresh. I like to change the physical environment I live in, change the people around me and try to experience things for the first time. I think that keeps one on their toes, creatively and spiritually.
People don't realize it, but no one lives that rock and roll life 24-7. They think it's hundreds of bottles of champagne flowing and private jets and money. But there's a lot of time when you're traveling - time to think, time to be lonely. Sometimes it gets to you.
If you look at the guys in the '70s, like Led Zeppelin, they had bigger planes than we do, they had more money. But they weren't singing about it.
I made the record that my life had me make. Each one is like a diary.
It was amazing to me that, all of a sudden, I was hearing my music on the radio and coming out of cars.
I feel like I'm only in the beginning of my career. I've only made five albums. It's not a lot.
People see my photos and think I labor over my image and I'm this cool, brooding artist. But I'm just having fun with it.
The story that I wanna tell is pretty much about the way I grew up. Being bi-racial, growing up in a big city and being an artist.
I think it'd be a real nightmare to put a record out and sell 20 million copies and then that's it.
Today, people are more into the glitz and the glamour of everything. We don't even read the inside of records anymore.
They think I'm being serious when actually I'm a very big clown. But you have to know me to see that. I'm constantly cracking up and cracking everybody else around me up.
The image is an image.
I was taught by my grandfather that anything that your mind can conceive, you can have. It's a reality.
I am not trying to change the world. I am just offering my gift that God gave me, and if somebody is moved by it, that's beautiful.
The loyalty rate isn't that high. I could have a big hit, then put out the next single, and they say, Oh yeah, who are you? Prove it again.
People always accuse me of being motivational in a way, like it was a bad thing, but that's just how I was raised. My mom raised me in a positive environment, with lots of love in my heart, and that reflects in my music.
If you listen to a lot of old funk records, the drums are really small. But you don't perceive it like that because the groove is so heavy.
Race in this country is still the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss.
When I was a kid and I bought a record, I ripped that thing open, I wanted to know who was playing what, what studio it was cut at, who was the string arranger, who was the engineer.
That's a big gift when people say to you that a song helped them or brought them to some place in their life where they needed to be.
Oasis are not just influenced by the Beatles; they actually take stuff. Then they get praised.
A dramatic thing, the first time you stand up to your dad.
My mother gave lots of good advice and had a lot to say. As you get older, you realize everything she said was true.
If I had to associate myself with one song, it would probably be Let Love Rule. It's so simple and to the point. It speaks for itself.
The image that the public gets is whatever they perceive it to be. Everybody has an opinion, everybody has their own vision, so I don't know what my public image is. I have no idea.
I've had to work very hard, and I don't really have a category or fit into any niche, so each time I come out with a new record, it's like, I'm a new guy.
It's like a dream to come to Spain and stay for a couple of years and get somebody to teach me Spanish music.
I'm half Jewish, I'm half black, I look in-between. I dress funny. I play all these different styles of music on one record. It's like, What is he doing?
Confusion makes people uncomfortable. They can't put their finger on me.
God is always in my life, and that's the most important thing to me.
I'm always sort of reflecting on what I do on what I've done. Usually before I make a new album, I'll listen to the previous albums just to see where I've been.
I knew what I wanted to do from the time I was 5.
A lot of people pretty much only listen to the chorus.
I am trying to get closer to God.
I don't play the tuba.
I wouldn't play together with someone who likes to control everything like me.
I have a great time with my band and on the stage we get along well.
