Let Love Rule by Lenny Kravitz

Author:Lenny Kravitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

* * *

On the home front, things between me and my father had gotten worse. He continued to harp about my bad grades and my messy room. He had a point; he was right on both counts. So, I was always being grounded, but also always finding ways to sneak out anyway. All this was going on while Dad’s attempt to make it big in Hollywood was falling flat. His already short temper got shorter.

* * *

It was my junior year. I’d just turned sixteen and was leaving the Beverly campus when I spotted this guy blasting Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland” on a boombox while beating out grooves on a drum pad. He was dressed in a designer suit and fancy Gucci loafers and wearing a gold watch with a mother-of-pearl face and Porsche sunglasses. His hair looked like it had been groomed by Vidal Sassoon. He was no student. I figured him for a professional musician. Naturally, I had to approach him.

He was a friendly dude: Dan Donnelly. He had just moved back to L.A. from Eugene, Oregon. At eighteen, he’d already graduated high school and figured that by setting up camp on the lawn of Beverly High and blasting out funk, he’d get noticed. His drumming chops were off the charts. When it came to R&B grooves, he was already a virtuoso. His Mexican mother had raised him and his seven siblings by herself.

From that first day on, Dan and I were inseparable. I introduced him to my friends. I talked my music teacher into letting him sit in with the school bands. I acted like his agent. We were both eager to form bands and get our music out to the world. The hustle was on. Dan had me drive his butterscotch-colored Olds Omega so he could beat out grooves on the dashboard until that damn thing was destroyed.

Dan and I soon started up a business based on a model he had developed: a disco/deejay company catering to private parties. Dan supplied the sound system—four Yamaha PA towers—and I learned to deejay. I was up to date with disco and knew which records to buy. I also knew the party scene in Crenshaw, Ladera Heights, and Inglewood. I wasn’t shy about soliciting business. We called ourselves GQ Productions, after the men’s fashion magazine, and printed up fancy business cards.

The gigs came. We booked everything from sweet sixteens to house parties to cotillions in the ballrooms of fancy hotels. If we were driven to begin with, now we were doubly driven. We were making connections left and right. One of those connections seemed a sure bet.

He was a shady character called Smokey. He claimed that he played drums for the Gap Band. The Gap Band was huge and one of my favorite groups. One night, Smokey heard us jamming—Dan on drums, me on guitar—and he flipped out and said we were gonna be stars. And he was gonna help us form a band. We’d be the leaders, he’d find us sidemen, and we’d soon be touring the world.

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