We've never really taken to Lenny Kravitz over here in the UK. Wonder why that is? Maybe it's our innate suspicion of anything so unashamedly retro. I mean, we'd never fall for some chancer so obviously in thrall to the Sixties would we? Oasis or Weller or Ocean Colour Scene could never have been anything other than Yanks could they, us limey sophisticates would have laughed them right back to Carnaby St.
Which is probably the salient point. Lenny just looks too much like a k***head. If little old Noel had paraded up and down Burnage High Street in this clobber the Quality Street Gang would have had his b*****ks for love beads. It's one thing digging the Beatles but
dressing up like some extra from Hair is one vault of lunacy too far.
Lenny also remains of course the most pitiful lyricist ever to pick up a rhyming dictionary although 'Fly Away' is so poor, so bloody rank in all it's remedial inadequacy as to have obviously been written for a bet so that makes it ok.
What people tend to overlook though is that in his own quaint Bobby Davro does Hendrix way he's been responsible for quite a few not bad moments. 'Are You Gonna Go My Way' still blisters the paint from your skirting-board, the best air-guitar track since something overblown and twiddly by Queen. 'Let Love Rule' is Elvis Costello with a penis. 'American Woman' as meatily thrusting as it is silly.
Which leads us of course to the sweet soul of 'It Ain't Over Till It's Over'. Its tune might be pilfered from 'Patches' by Chairmen Of The Board but it's still beautiful and it still makes me cry for many reasons that you could never begin to appreciate unless you too have been very, very drunk once and been very much in love. Heartbreaking. You might have to excuse me actually, there's a few old photographs I need to thumb through…
