Virgin Records offered Lenny Kravitz his first record deal within five minutes.
The 54-year-old rocker was only granted a five-minute meeting with record executives but they were so blown away by his music that he was quickly offered a deal.
He told Variety: "I didn’t make ‘Let Love Rule’ on a label. I borrowed money, went to the cheapest studios I could find. I was into a very psychedelic phase. ‘Let Love Rule’ had an old-school quality while having a new-school quality. So I recorded the record, and then I began to take it around. At one point everyone except Virgin had heard it. I had five minutes on a Friday afternoon before people were going home [there]. When I left the building, I had a record deal. They did not know how to market it — they admitted it. But we believed in the music, and that’s why it happened."
However, Lenny experienced disappointment before his big break as he was turned away from record labels who claimed his music wasn’t "black enough".
Lenny – who is known for his brand of psychedelic funk rock – said: "I just knew that I was singing and performing my truth. This was a time right after everybody in the music industry was telling me that I couldn’t do this sort of thing. I would take my music around to the labels, and I would get the whole ‘It’s not black enough’ [response].
"So people were not into the music that I was making or didn’t know how to sell it or how to market it. I was offered deals if I would simply change my music. I never took the deal. I wanted to do my thing. I was living in my car. I had no money. I’m young and in my late teens and who wouldn’t take the money, but there was just something inside of me that wouldn’t let me do it."
Lenny Kravitz’s five-minute record deal
