Andrew Fitzgerald
Critics often have drastically differing opinions on Lenny Kravitz. Some critics consider him to be a masterful artist who is quite diverse and creative, while others refer to him as a rip off artist who rides on the coattails of other artists by copying their style and sound. After reviewing one of his earliest albums “Are You Gonna Go My Way” I realized that he is in fact a little bit of both. Some of the similarities between his and other artists’ works were obvious, but Kravitz also effectively brought the sounds of older generations into his works to create somewhat of a “history of rock” album.
When I first started the album I understood the accusations that Kravitz is a copycat because the first track “Are You Gonna Go My Way” sounded almost exactly like something Jimi Hendrix would produce. There was a psychedelic distortion on the electric guitar and he was singing in the punchy distant blues style that Hendrix was notorious for. I will admit that Kravitz has a greater range and overall tone of voice, but it all boils down to the fact that this is significantly similar to Hendrix’s style without giving any credit or royalties to him. “Believe” seemed to also have a strong correlation to the psychedelic rock era because it also incorporated strongly distorted and reverberated guitar, with muted and distorted vocals. This leads me to believe that Kravitz wanted to take some aspects of the 70’s psychedelic rock era and make them his own. This reminds me of the situation depicted in Eric Davis’ writings “When Mountains Crumble to the Sea”, when Led Zeplin “cut and paste their way toward novelty in a genre”(158) by ripping off other artists’ (Memphis Minnie or Kansas Joe McCoy) song “When the Levee Breaks” by simply adding their own variations on the song and reaping all of the profit. Kravitz obviously did not directly steal some of Hendrix songs, but he did benefit by using his guitar and singing style for his own gain.
Here are two images that depict Lenny Kravitz (Bottom) wearing an almost identical outfit to what Jimi Hendrix (Top) wore during one of his performances. Which demonstrates that Jimi was definitely an inspiration for Lenny.
Some of Kravitz’s other songs throughout the album also reminded me of different artists, subgenres and even eras. For example “Come on and Love Me”, “Sugar” and “Black Girl” have some eerily similar vocals to the slow love rock that was popular in the 80’s such as Prince who was known for his high pitch slow seductive vocals, which Lenny seems to be emulating in these songs. He also gave off a Bob Marley sound in his closing song of the album “Eleutheria”, which gave off a strong Reggae sense by carrying out the one-drop rhythm that is the most common rhythm used within this genre. Many of these artists do not have the opportunity to say anything about it because many have passed away or the music is similar but not close enough to have a strong claim against him. I feel as if many of these artist were to hear how he emulates their types of music would possibly have a similar opinion to Big Mama Thornton who states “I’ve been singing way before Elvis Presley was born, and he jumps up and becomes a millionaire before me . . . off of something that I made popular.” (Mahon Pg. 9).
One other aspect that I noticed was that most of the artists that he reminded me of were African American performers. This made me think about Greg Tate’s “Black Rockers or Blackie’s Who Rock” because some of these names listed above are also referenced in his works and it makes me wonder whether Lenny was trying to be a stand alone rock star who just happened to be black or if he was truly trying to be a Blackie who simply follows the theme of black rock by copying what many of his forefather black rockers were doing. Tate says, “Rock and roll is black music and we are its heirs!” (20), and I am quite curious if that is the same way that Lenny Kravitz feels. I believe that this is true since he tried to follow in all of the famous black rockers footsteps.
Although he did seem to use the styles and sounds of other artists and genres, he did quite well at making them his own and still representing his style of music, which is primarily rock n roll. This follows what was described in Lena’s text “Music Genres: Hip Hop” because it showed that his style truly represented many of rock n roll’s predecessors by fusing the two styles and creating an authentic sounding transition between two genres. Although Lenny Kravitz was a rock star, he also effectively tied in rhythm and blues, reggae, ballads, funk, and other genres. “While genres need some degree of consistency for coherence, they also must change” (Lena Pg 7). He also effectively carried over many of Lena’s categories. Lenny definitely conveyed the traditionalist appeal of rock with his more traditional rock guitar shredding songs like “Is there any love in your heart” and “My Love” which followed the stereotypical sound produced by bands in the British invasion vs. American rock era. He also conveyed a more industry based style by using some slower and soft style which followed the appeal of the popular 80’s and early 90’s love ballad songs (around the time that this album came out).
Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way” flowed through various styles, artists, and genres in order to create a vastly unique arrangement of differing sounds to show that they can all fall under the category of rock. Although some may make the argument that Lenny Kravitz used the sound and image of successful artists before him to become popular, it can also be said that he is creating his own variations of these genres to form a historical retelling of how rock n roll has grown and changed over the years.
Below are two links to album reviews that I found interesting.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/mac-miller-go-od-a-m-20151015
http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/09/album-review-lana-del-rey-honeymoon/
Hip-Hop, Indie Rock & New Media 