On his latest album, Baptism, Lenny Kravitz offers a lament about the excesses that come with his line of work called "I Don't Want To Be A Star."
For an artist who has always seemed to relish the spotlight, this is one song that pushes the bounds of credibility.
On stage, Kravitz has always been a flashy performer whose colorful wardrobe and outgoing—even brash—persona live up to the definition of rock star. Kravitz also has been no stranger to tabloids that have reported and speculated on his jet-set liaisons: Natalie Imbruglia, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Naomi Campbell and most recently, Nicole Kidman.
While there's certainly a tongue-in-cheek element to "I Don't Want To Be A Star"—Kravitz notes that he got drunk with Bob Dylan and stoned with the Stones' Mick Jagger—there's also a strong element of truth to his desire for a simpler life.
"We all have different parts of ourselves," Kravitz says on an off-day after the first two shows on his current tour. "But you'd be quite shocked if you hung out with me away from all of that. I live a very quiet, different life than what you'd expect.
"First of all, I'm not into being a celebrity," he says. "I'm who I am. I'm a musician. I do have friends in the business, and I have lots of friends who have nothing to do with the business. But I live my life. You know, ["I Don't Want To Be A Rock Star"] wasn't a complaint. I'm not saying, 'Oh, poor me.' There are times in your life when you would like to be able to do things; take a walk, go to a museum, walk the streets, look at buildings, people-watch, whatever. Sit in a café, anything."
It's not that Kravitz can't indulge in such everyday activities, he said, but sometimes they come with complications.
"It just gets interrupted," Kravitz said. "You end up being chased off and being followed. You end up being hounded. And that's fine. It comes with it. But that song was written on a day where I just wanted to be Lenny."
These and other ponderings expressed on Baptism are apparently serious, as Kravitz (who has a daughter, Zoe, from a previous marriage to actress Lisa Bonet) has talked at length recently about his desire to settle down with the right woman. Not to say he's ready to forsake rock 'n' roll for matrimony.
"I think you can have both and balance your life out," Kravitz, 40, says. "I'll welcome that when it does arrive."
The self-probing material wasn't what Kravitz had planned for this, his seventh studio album.
Kravitz initially expected to make a funk CD his next project, an album Kravitz says he has worked on periodically for a decade. But it went back on the shelf in the fall of 2003 after Kravitz visited New York City, staying at a friend's loft in the West Village instead of his luxury SoHo apartment.
While there, Kravitz decided to go back to a more modest lifestyle, bicycling around, visiting his old haunts. He also found an acoustic guitar in the loft and after he picked it up, songs started coming out at a rapid clip—songs whose rock and pop flavor were markedly different from the funk he had been working on.
"Creatively, I just felt I was in a new beginning," Kravitz says. "It wasn't about going back to being a certain way. I don't look back."
Although it's a solid effort, Baptism has yet to return Kravitz to his million-selling ways. In fact, it has only recently gone gold, and his tour this spring will take Kravitz and his 11-piece band to clubs and small theaters instead of arenas.
Kravitz, though, says he chose the smaller venues for the change of pace.
"I haven't played theaters in years," he says. "I just got back from South America doing a stadium tour, so it's a completely different environment, a different feeling. But it's great. It feels like the old days."