Headliner Lenny Kravitz SD7 April 2015

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I N T E R V I E W
LENNY KRAVITZ has to be the
coolest rock star on the planet. Not only is he
a multi-Grammy-winning, multi-platinum selling
artist, he’s also a multi-instrumentalist, whose
musical talents extend off the stage and into the
studio, where he not only engineers and produces
his own records, but finds time to put pen to paper
and finger to fader for the likes of Madonna, John
Legend, and, posthumously, Michael Jackson. And
if that’s not enough to whet the appetite, there’s
his movie career: two sterling performances as
Cinna in the excellent Hunger Games movies,
and two supporting roles in Lee Daniels’ highly
acclaimed 2009 and 2011 films, Precious, and
The Butler, have proven he’s no slouch on the
big screen.
I first saw Lenny perform at The Bercy in Paris in
2011, and he was electric: the ultimate showman,
with an obvious love for his music, and more
importantly, his fans; and now, nearly four years
on, I’ve just absorbed his tenth studio album, Strut,
for the second time in as many hours, and I have to
say, I’m equally impressed. It’s fresh, it’s edgy, it’s
bluesy, it’s riffy... It’s Lenny. Excellent. Now I guess
I’m as ready as I’ll ever be to find out more about
the man behind the music (and the sunglasses)...
Right off the bat, I decide to ask Lenny a series of questions about
his 1991 release, Mama Said. Why? It was the first Kravitz record
I ever heard, and it’s my favourite to date. We talk a little about the
John Lennon-esque slap-back delays that he used so effectively
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on the album, especially on the brilliantly raw All I Ever Wanted, which, funnily enough, features
John’s youngest son, Sean, on the piano.
“I love that track,” Lenny reflects, softly. “We didn’t necessarily have the intention of getting that
sound, but it just kind of happened. Sean and I wrote it together, actually, and it was all very quick;
the lead vocal was done in just one take.”
It’s a great vocal performance, too, though for me, Lenny’s voice, much like Paul Weller’s, has got
even better with age. I put that to him, slightly nervously.
“I believe it has, yes. Some peoples’ voices change tone over time, but I have really tried to take
care of my voice; I’ve worked on it, and by growing, you know, it’s gotten better,” he concurs.
“Musically, I have never followed the trends, so I am very grateful to still be here, especially
because I have stayed true to what was inside of me at the time I have made each record. I am not
good at faking my creativity; if I am not feeling it, it’s not organic to me, so if it’s not authentic, I
can’t really do it. I am very much a creature of the moment.”
LIFT ME OUT OF MY HEAD
And creative he is, particularly in the studio. Since he started, he’s had a passion for performance,
and to this day, Lenny still plays most of the parts on all of his records.
“I made my first album without a record deal, so I couldn’t afford not to play everything myself,”
he smiles, as we liken the situation to Bruce Springsteen’s struggle to keep his E Street Band afloat
during the early part of his career. “But I’ve gone on doing that with all my records. On many of
the tracks, I’m playing everything, and if I’m not, then Craig Ross is playing [guitar] with me.
Sometimes I want to be playing the drums with the guitarist, so I can set the groove properly, and
Craig is the best guitar player in the world for me to work with when I want to do stuff like that; he
is a big part of me making my records, and provides an extra dynamic.”
Lenny hints that it can be a lonely place, working without any collaboration, which is one of the
reasons he enjoys working on film sets. He won’t make his next movie until the end of the year, as
touring comes first, but it is another means of expression, and one he clearly treasures, though he
didn’t necessarily see it coming.
“When I started working on The Hunger Games, I didn’t expect it to be all that, you know? And
then it turned into this monster! [laughs] But I have been so very fortunate to have made four
really great movies in a row, and they’ve all done really well; it’s another medium that I am using
to express myself, and I really do enjoy it because it enables me to collaborate in a way that I don’t
with my music,” he explains. “Music-wise, I work a lot by myself, or with a very small group of
people, and it’s about me and my expression, what I want to do, and how I feel, but when I am
making a film, I am serving a director’s vision, and I am serving a character... And it’s refreshing! I
really do enjoy the collaboration, and the amount of people that I am collaborating with... It takes
me away from myself.”
FIELDS OF JOY
And talent clearly runs in the Kravitz family. Lenny’s daughter, Zoe, made her movie debut
in 2007 in No Reservations, and starred in six episodes of the hit TV show Californication before
landing the mega-role of Angel Salvadore in the X Men: First Class movie in 2011. When she’s not
on a movie set, she’s touring the world with her band. Sound familiar? Proud dad springs to mind.
“Oh absolutely. I mean, I’m just proud that she’s a beautiful person, that she follows her path,
and that she’s being creative at all times; it’s wonderful,” says dad, enthusiastically. “She is on a
movie set right now, in fact, and in between making films, she’s on the road. She’s got off tour now,
but she was playing in Australia, Europe, across the States... It really is wonderful to see.”
When Lenny takes to the stage, he is dynamite, and the ultimate showman, but none of this would
be possible, he says, without a super-strong working relationship with his touring team.
“I work closely with the front-of-house engineer (Laurie Quigley) to get the character of the
music where I’d like it to be. Balance is very important; you change the balance, you change the
character,” he insists. “That’s the main part, and then there is the technical part and the equipment,
which is equally important. I tend to experiment with different things in rehearsals with Laurie,
and get it the way I want to hear it.”
I linger a little on the technology, after recalling a discussion I had with Laurie Quigley at FOH
position at the Kravitz show I attended in Paris a few years back, where he said, “Lenny can never
have enough speakers out front”. I ask Lenny to divulge.
“Yeah, that’s kinda true, and I do know my multicores, too,” he says, with a chuckle. I ask if he’s
ever tempted to get his hands on Quigley’s DiGiCo console at FOH, considering how adept he
is in the studio environment. “I could do that, but I choose to respect Laurie and his job as engineer, so I’ll just say what it is that I am looking for, and let him work it out. It actually took me a
while to get used to digital consoles, as I always
preferred analogue desks, but where they are
now, they are sounding so much better than
they were when they first came out.”
STRUT
Lenny’s new album, Strut, is the tenth of his
career, and the first to come out on his own
label, Roxie Records, which he named after his
mother. I’m curious as to why he’s chosen to go
independent after all these years working with
majors, and wonder what it says about the state
of the industry?
“I’ve always had the idea to do it, but this is
the time; I was free from a record label, and I
decided to do it on my own, and to work with
a distribution company that would assist me,”
Lenny explains. “I have more responsibilities,
but I’m enjoying it, and it’s working well. I
mean, how many majors are really doing it, you
know? There are only a couple of labels left,
because the way it is today, artists have so
much more direct contact and can reach their
audience directly, so in the years to come, you
will see most people doing it this way.
“A real concern I have is to make sure that artists
are paid fairly. Music is something that should
be paid for when an artist puts their time,
creativity, blood, sweat, tears, and money into
it; and of course, people are getting paid in
different ways today. It’s more a collective thing;
once everyone’s streaming, they pay a fee, and
each month or whatever, they can listen to this
amount of music. It doesn’t seem to add up to
me properly, but this is the world we’re living
in now, and it’s gone on for so long. The music
industry didn’t fight this in the beginning,
which is why we are now in this position.”
Lenny’s purist mindset extends to the
recording studio, and the equipment he uses.
To him, it’s all about the old school:
“I have a great collection of analogue
gear in my studio; it’s pretty much a vintage
museum! I have an incredible Helius console,
wonderful compressors, three Fairchilds, a
bunch of LA2As, UA compressors, different
mic pres, different EQs from different boards.
It’s an eclectic mix of vintage gear that gives
me all the different colours that I need to
play with.”
LET LOVE RULE
Conversation turns to guitars, and Lenny is
particularly modest about his own musical
ability, particularly with axe in hand, which
I find astounding, yet humbling at the same
time. Then he lands this bombshell:
“You know that famous Beatles performance
on the roof? The legendary one?” I remain
silent, picturing the fab four’s final public
performance, blasting out Don’t Let Me Down
on top of Abbey Road Studios in January 1969
(yes, I Googled the date). “Well I actually had
John Lennon’s stripped down Epiphone guitar
for many months. Yoko and Sean lent it to me,
and they kind of forgot I had it, so I called them
and had to say, ‘hey, come pick this thing up’.”
Gobsmacked, being a lifelong Lennon fan, I
find myself asking myself two questions: ‘what
was it like to play?’ and, ‘why the bloody hell
did you tell them you still had it?!’ I only ask
one out loud...
“I had it for a looooong time. I’m not sure
I wrote anything on it, but I used to sit down
with that thing and just feel it. I mean, it was
just... [pauses] well, pretty incredible.”
After I close my mouth (with my hand), I
decide to leave Lenny with a bit of a curveball:
if he was starting out today, how would he go
about it? He pauses for thought, and knocks it
out the park with this soulful gem:
“It’s interesting... I watch my daughter, who’s
doing this with no assistance from me or
anybody other than her core group. These kids
are just pumping music out, and being really
authentic to themselves - and they know how
to use social media - so I am actually really
inspired by watching them. I remember last
Christmas, she and her band were recording in
the kitchen of her shack that she lived in – and I
mean a shack, this was no house! Anyway, they
worked on this music, and at the end of the
holiday, we all got back, and the music was out!
There was a video done, and people already
knew the songs. It was amazing to me that they
were doing this from their bedrooms, putting it
out to the world. So I say, just be yourself, and
follow your heart... Things will happen.”
www.lennykravitz.com
www.digico.biz
Headliner descends on London’s Wembley
Arena to have a chat to the guys behind the
audio and visuals for rock and roll megastar,
Lenny Kravitz. First up, we meet sound man,
LAURIE QUIGLEY, who has been riding the
faders for this New York-born showman for
over a decade now, and says working for Lenny
not only keeps him on his toes, but makes him
a better engineer, though it’s hardly a walk in
the park.
WOR D S PA UL WAT S O N
I first encountered Laurie at a Lenny show at The
Bercy in Paris in 2011. With a gargantuan PA system
in tow - “it’s what Lenny wants,” he assured me at
the time - and his trusted DiGiCo SD7, the mix was as
impressive as the artist himself. It’s not often that
you hear stories of major stars speccing their own
audio kit, or coming out to front-of-house to check
the sound in rehearsals, but then again, Lenny
Kravitz is no ordinary artist.
“I have a great relationship with him, and I have
learned so much working with Lenny, but it’s very
difficult at the same time - and I mean that with no
disrespect,” Quigley smiles, adding that any artist
that can record, engineer, produce, and mix his own
records gets his vote. I concur. “He’s very particular
about all of his sounds, and he wants to replicate the
sound of his records, so I’ve got to be on the money
all the time, which has definitely made me a better
engineer, because Lenny literally is that good.”
Combined, Lenny and his trusted guitarist Craig
Ross have more than 17 channels dedicated to
their guitars for the live show, which calls for some
seriously organised mixing at front-of-house.
“On stage, Lenny has eleven guitar amplifiers, all
of which he uses. He and Craig are really switched
on, and Craig actually engineers a lot of Lenny’s
stuff in the studio, too,” Quigley reveals. “All of
that takes a reasonable amount of time to get your
head around as an engineer, and then you need to
program a board to snapshot it all; these guys
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were responsible for getting the sounds in the studio in
the first place, so they really do know what they’re
talking about!”
And getting those sounds out front is made that little
bit easier thanks to his console. An analogue man for
so long, once he got his hands on a DiGiCo, he never
looked back:
“When digital boards first came out, they sounded like
junk, then DiGiCo came out with the D5 and it actually
sounded good! At the time, I was with Aerosmith, and I
had two [Midas] XL4s out front, but the guys at DiGiCo
said they had a prototype board, which I went out and
tried. It not only cut down my footprint, but the digital
format was a lot faster. I worked with that for about five
years, and then when the SD7 prototype was available, I
took that out too, and that’s what I’m working on today.
According to Quigley, the SD7 does everything he
wants it to do, and more:
“You can run a few hundred channels off this
console, and everything at 96kHz, so you can use plugins
to reproduce any of the old effects that you’ve ever
wanted to; and I have all my channels right underneath
my hands, so I don’t have to hunt for them! I’m still very
hands-on as a mixer, and I love to mix, but having the
snapshots available is a Godsend. There are so many
channels on stage that aren’t being used on particular
songs, so you have to write all the snapshots, but the
facilities on the SD7 are fantastic for doing that; they’re
very simplistic, and the only thing I snapshot are his
mutes and faders, so I’m not changing the effects sends
on every song. You’ve just got to make sure you don’t
snapshot yourself into Hell; in other words, you have to
remember sometimes that you’re still an engineer, not
a programmer!”
On a Lenny show, there’s too much going on not to
get hands-on, and although the bells and whistles are
important, Quigley insists that the overall sound of the
console is still the most important thing:
“I get very argumentative with some engineers who
debate which board has the best plugins, which has the
best effects, and so on. I have said for years now: plug a
microphone into a board with nothing going into it, and
how does it sound? And to me, my DiGiCo board sounds
far, far better than any other board on the market. The
other reason I go with DiGiCo is that you can page it;
you don’t have to switch the whole board from page to
page, you just switch sections from page to page. And
it reacts far more like an analogue board than it does a
digital board.”
Much in line with Lenny’s love of analogue kit, Quigley
still uses a plethora of classic outboard at FOH, mainly
for the lead vocal chain.
QUI GLEY
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LAURIE QUIGLEY
“I'VE GOT TO BE ON THE
MONEY THE WHOLE TIME,
W H I C H M A K ES M E A B E T T E R
E N G I N E E R , B EC A U S E L E N N Y
L I T E R A L LY I S T H AT G O O D . "
“I’m using real APIs, Distressors, and 901s on the vocals,
and I still have two Lexicon 960s,” he explains. “Also,
there’s some specialised effects: a Leslie effect on his
vocal, and a Vulture Culture, which is used for distortion
on the drum kit, and on his vocal for American Woman there’s all sorts of stuff going on, and to do!”
Although the record industry has changed, audio-wise,
Quigley believes it’s got better, and more consistent.
Another piece of kit that’s continued to come on leaps
and bounds over the years is the in-ear monitor, and
that, he says, is in many ways down to the brilliance of
Jerry Harvey.
“JH Audio is a phenomenal company, and the service
is outstanding; Jerry’s been looking after us for years
now, and his products have always been excellent. Lenny
uses JH16s, and I have a pair of Roxannes. I use mine for
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personal use when I am sitting on a plane; and in
rehearsals, I’ll take one of Lenny’s belt packs out
front, and listen to his mix whenever I want to, just for
reference, to make sure he’s getting what he wants,”
Quigley says. “He might say, ’I want it to sound like this’,
and I’ll listen to what the monitor guy is doing, and I
can actually hear it. If I turn a reverb on through a huge
PA system in a big reverberant room, I don’t get the
effect of the reverb he’s listening to in his ear, so I might
use a different reverb to get the same effect, hence I use
the Roxannes to listen to what he is doing.
“From Lenny’s perspective, he uses his JH16s for
pitch; it’s in your head, so it’s not like you’re hearing a
reflection, it’s crystal clear audio. It also means we have
far less wedges on stage, and no side fills at all, and
there’s not as much bleed in the vocal mics to deal with,
so it’s easier to get the vocal sounding just right, too.”
A Lenny Kravitz gig isn’t just about audio, of course.
The lighting show is crucial, and this one has a
seriously cool edge to it, thanks to a constantly
changing scenography, and a cool sphere centrepiece,
masterminded by renowned creative duo, Steven
Cohen and Bryan Barancik.
Cohen and Barancik have worked together for some
time now; they collaborated on the famous Star Wars
tour of 2010, and were responsible for illuminating
Lenny’s tour the following year – but the design for Strut
breaks new ground. Cohen describes the centrepiece
as, ‘one of the most unique touring scening lighting
elements in the world’, and he has a point. It’s
redolent of the global ‘super-discos’ of the 1990s, an
automated retro-style overhead sphere with unfolding
petals that reveal the light sources; and to bring it to life,
the complete family of GLP X4 impressions are called
upon: 12 X4 XLs, 16 X4s, and 32 X4 S, supplied by US
rental house, Atomic Lighting.
“I find the GLP X4 family to be my go-to LED fixture
these days,” says Cohen, who along with Barancik, has
become very familiar with the GLP platform over the
last few years. “They have an almost organic feel to
them, which is rare in an LED, and they’re as reliable
as it gets. Having this variety of sizes in a single sphere
gives me an almost cinematic theme of special effects
in a live setting.”
Programming the show happened initially at a Paris
studio before relocating to Amiens and going into ‘full
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trim’, where the possibilities of this awesome rig could
be explored in much greater detail.
“It gave us the chance to see how the system really
lived and breathed, creating focuses and other visual
elements that provided a foundation from which to
begin developing songs,” reveals Barancik, also the
operator for the show. “The X4 is the ultimate work
horse thanks to its superb dimming and colour, and the
new X4 XL has been a great addition; this was the first
time I’d worked with it, but once we had a profile built, it
worked fantastically well, and it now fits in perfectly with
the rest of the kit.”
During the show, the GLP fixtures are deployed
in several different ways: sometimes the complete
artillery goes all-out, resulting in a sublime symphony
of light; and at other times, it’s broken down into any
of eight individual moving petals. The cybernetic sphere
has the ability to transfigure at will, which really brings
the best out of the GLP fixtures, which is illustrated
very nicely indeed during some of Lenny’s high-octane
numbers such as New York City, Fly Away (during which,
the unfolded sphere transformed into a spaceship!), and
his all-time classic, Are You Gonna Go My Way?
“Yeah, all those songs certainly show the flexibility of
both the sphere and the fixtures, but the song Circus is
another really interesting example,” concurs Barancik,
with a twist. “When he puts Circus in the set, it all gets
very asymmetrical, with some very odd green and CTO
combinations, while strobing at different rates.”
And when the GLP family all shine together, you could
call it illuminated bliss:
“When all the X4 fixtures are working in unison, they
create such a superb daylight white and tungsten; and
that is totally key when you’re working on any Lenny
Kravitz gig. I can honestly say, those fixtures were a
cohesive aesthetic to the entire show.”
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