The hit song Lenny Kravitz wrote “in five minutes”
In 1993, it was impossible to escape Lenny Kravitz and his ever-present hit ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’. A number four hit in the UK and a major radio smash in the US (the song was ineligible for the Billboard Hot 100 thanks to rules about commercially available singles), ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’ established Kravitz as one of the most exciting names in rock music. And it all happened in the blink of an eye.
“’Are You Gonna Go My Way’ happened in five minutes,” Kravitz told Jamie Dickson in 2019. “The recording happened in five minutes because there was another group getting ready to come into the next session – because even after making my third album, I still couldn’t lock out the studio all the time.”
“So the next group were already waiting in the hallway and getting a little pissed off because we were probably running over, like, 15 minutes and so we had to record that really quickly and run out and I had no idea what I had. No idea,” Kravitz claimed. “Took the cassette home, put it in and wrote the lyrics and the melody and then came back the next day and sang the song. Then, although I dug it, I still really had no idea what I had. I had no idea that it was going to be ‘that’ song, you know?”
“What I like about first takes is the person is not thinking too much yet,” Kravitz added. “It’s really instinctual. People say, ‘Oh, okay, well I could have done this or I could have done that.’ And I go through the same thing, but I find that when I allow the players – whether it’s myself or Craig [Ross, Kravitz’s long-standing guitarist] or a horn player – playing a solo to do it again, nine times out of 10 we always go back to the first take.”
“There’s just something about that first take. Something immediate. After that, like I said, they start thinking too much,” Kravitz concluded. “Guitarists laugh at me because they know, ‘Okay, you’re going to keep that first take, aren’t you?’ They really want to do it again and again and again and again to ‘perfect’ this thing. But I prefer the feel and the spontaneity of the first take.”
Kravitz’s preference for immediacy over complication comes through in ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’: the riff does most of the heavy lifting. But that’s exactly what the song calls for, so Kravitz didn’t waste any time getting it together.
