For someone who claims not to be concerned with the pleasures of wealth, then, his abode succeeds in very strenuously suggesting otherwise. But the singer-songwriter is adamant. All of this means nothing. He can take it or leave it. Why? Because the true value of existence, he says, thumping his chest with a clenched fist, comes only from within.

"I'm not attached to any of it," he insists. "It's just stuff to me, nothing more." He mentions his mother's influence upon him here, a famous television actress from the Seventies who, despite amassing great fame f and fortune during her lifetime (she died nine years ago), refused to employ a housekeeper because she herself came from poverty. Her pride wouldn't allow it, and so every weekend the future rock star watched mum on her hands and knees, cleaning the bathroom. It gave him terrific perspective on life. "That," he says, "is where I'm coming from."

So Kravitz scrubs his own bathroom?

"Oh no, no. I have someone who comes in. I don't actually have time to clean it myself ..."

Lenny Kravitz has a new album out, his seventh, entitled Baptism. A reliably solid hour of old-fashioned rock, Baptism, like all Lenny Kravitz albums, sounds like all Lenny Kravitz albums. There are touches of Jimi Hendrix here, lyrical nods to John Lennon there. Much of it is haunted by the ghost of psychedelia, and it boasts some quintessential Lenny Kravitz song titles, like "Minister Of Rock'n'Roll" and "SistaMamaLover".

While it may not attract a great many new converts to the Church of Lenny, it will probably make the faithful weak-kneed with joy. Judging by the sales figures for 2002's Greatest Hits, the Church of Lenny numbers somewhere in the region of 8 million disciples.

In many ways, Kravitz is the last of the great rock stars, a man, like Mick Jagger, driven by the force of his own outlandish personality. Meeting him in the flesh - and, naturally, barefoot (he doesn't do shoes if he can help it) - does not disappoint. He comes sashaying through the Lennon-esque living room in a pair of tight suede hipsters and tighter waistcoat, a walking, talking Seventies mannequin made flesh: 5ft 7in of Camden Market bohemia, a torso strewn with tattoos, jewelry draped across various bits of visible flesh. Gone are the famous dreadlocks (due to their "bad vibes", apparently), replaced by straight, flat hair that makes him look almost, but not quite, like a pretty girl. His image screams of a time before punk, grunge, electronica and, of course, postmodernism, making him seem both fabulous and foolish, a heady combination that has proved very popular with the opposite sex.