Lenny Kravitz on Prince: ‘I Feel Like a Piece of Me Died’

Lenny Kravitz not only cites Prince as one of his biggest influences, but also one of his dearest friends. They met for the first time in 1990 right after Let Love Rule hit big and over the years have hung out all over the world, playing together at many late-night afterparties and Paisley Park jam sessions. Kravitz spoke to Rolling Stone to share some thoughts about his friend a few days after Prince’s unexpected death.

My first memory of ever hearing Prince is when a black radio station I used to listen to in Los Angeles began playing “I Wanna Be Your Lover” in 1979. I remember hearing the song and liking it, but I didn’t really identify with him until the following year when Dirty Mind came out. That was a pivotal moment for me. Just seeing the album cover opened up my imagination. Here was an African-American cat, skin color like mine was, playing the guitar like I wanted to play. Obviously I would have been into Jimi Hendrix as that prime example, but this person was alive. This person was doing his thing right in front of me. So he had a very deep impact on me. I was able to see where I could go.

The music, the vibe, the color, the hair, the band members, everything, was amazing to me. And Dirty Mind is still one of my favorite recordings of Prince just on a sonic level. It’s a really tight, punchy record that is funky with elements of rock and punk. It just really drew me in. Then it just kept going with Controversy and 1999 and Purple Rain.

The fact that he played all or nearly all the instruments on his albums himself was a great example for me. I was in high school playing guitar, bass, drums and keyboards and that was such a great influence on me, as was Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney on his first solo record, and Todd Rundgren too. People who play all the instruments communicate in such an amazing way. The beauty was that it sounded like a band.

The first time I went into Virgin Records with my demo tape I was granted a five-minute interview. I’d been trying to get a record deal and I’d already written “Let Love Rule.” Jeff Ayeroff, Jordan Harris and Nancy Jeffries gave me a five-minute meeting since it was a Friday and they were leaving. They were writing things back and forth as they listened and I later learned one of them wrote, “Prince meets John Lennon.”

“He was a mentor … When he left, a part of me went too.”

It was the first time somebody had made that connection between me and Prince. Of course, I was a black multi-instrumentalist and people were going to pick up on that. And even though we did things differently, there is a chord we both have. It’s one of the reasons we became friends. He called me after Let Love Rule came out and asked me to come over to his studio in L.A. We had a friendship ever since.