How Lenny Kravitz Keeps Flying: 'Success Is Just Doing the Work'

Deep within the hills of Southern California’s Topanga Canyon, on an estate overlooking the Santa Monica mountains where wind chimes ring softly in the breeze, is explaining the concept of an opium bed to me. When he was living in New York in the late 1980s, working on his debut album, he didn’t have much bread, he says in his rock-star parlance, but knew he wanted his home to be an artistic sanctuary, a place that could invigorate and hold his music. It was the first time he took his creative instincts seriously. He decorated the columns of his SoHo loft with broken mirrors he found on the street and painted the walls to look like wallpaper. One thing he did spend money on was the sleeping area, as crucial an element of the apartment’s vibe as the birds and snakes and lizards that also li