Long before he was a rock star, Lenny Kravitz was a little boy from New York with a ticket to see the Jackson 5. It was the first concert he’d ever been to, and it was at Madison Square Garden. “Those were rock stars,” he told People in 2024.
Years later Lenny was making his own records, and he got close to Prince. Prince would call him late at night to come play at a club, and they’d sit at Prince’s house watching funny movies. Lenny told Zane Lowe of Apple Music in 2024 that Prince had “an amazing sense of humor” and hated losing at anything, from pool to basketball.
Then there were the trips to see Michael. Prince would pick Lenny up, and the two of them would drop in on Michael Jackson while he was recording, mostly to joke around with him.
For years people called Prince and Michael rivals. Lenny saw it differently. He said there was probably “some kind of healthy competition,” but “it was more about having fun and sort of joking around with him.”
Lenny Kravitz tells the story to Zane Lowe
Lenny shares his Prince and Michael memories in this long, relaxed talk at his home in Paris. He gets to the studio visits with Prince at about 40:35, and to what Michael asked him about a minute later, at 41:36.
So what was on Michael’s mind when those two walked in? It was Lenny’s hair.
“Michael was fascinated with my dreadlocks,” Lenny said. Michael wanted to know what Lenny did to get them that way, and while he asked about them, he reached out and touched his hair.
Michael had worn some of the most famous hair in music, from the big round Afro of the Jackson 5 days to the long curls of the early ’90s. Even so, he was as curious as any fan, asking a friend how he did his.
The two of them did more than laugh together, too. Michael later asked Lenny to write and produce a song for him. “He said ‘you come up with it,'” Lenny recalled. He had only a few days and, in his words, “I had nothing.”
That song became “(I Can’t Make It) Another Day.” Lenny told TIME they recorded it at Marvin Gaye’s old studio on Sunset Boulevard, and Michael stayed for hours. In the booth, Michael asked Lenny to stop him whenever a line wasn’t right. Lenny’s first thought: “How am I gonna push this button and tell Michael Jackson to stop singing?”
The song came out on the album “Michael” in December 2010.
Lenny Kravitz on the song he made with Michael
Here’s Lenny on his own channel in 2010, talking about “Another Day” when fans were first hearing it.
Lenny’s memories of working with Michael are just as warm. “I laughed so much with him,” he said of Michael. “Super funny, and a perfectionist and a gift of an experience.”
As for his two famous friends, Lenny summed them up simply: “Both of them were really beautiful people.”