Lenny Kravitz: Mr Love
By Nick Duerden

With his famous girlfriends, Miami mansion, fast cars and yacht, Lenny Kravitz is the last great rock star. But, he tells Nick Duerden, he'd give it all up for the right woman.

Twenty minutes into our conversation, the hot Miami sun glinting off the outdoor Jacuzzi while noise from the kitchen suggests that his personal chef is dishing up lunch, Lenny Kravitz says this: "This place is hardly opulent. I mean, it's just home, that's all. I could leave it tomorrow and go live in a shack and not miss it, really I could. I'm not interested in material things, and I don't want to be defined by any of this just as I don't want to be defined by the lumps of metal I happen to drive."

While he may speak with conviction, albeit the kind that requires him to do so with both eyes closed, it is difficult to take what he says entirely seriously. There are reasons for this. I meet Kravitz, recognized these days more as an international love god than he is an international rock star, at his Miami mansion, a half-hour drive from fashionable South Beach. The place is enormous, boasting Gone With The Wind staircases, at least 10 bedrooms and the occasional crystal chandelier. The furniture throughout is classic retro and exclusively black and white because its interior designer (Kravitz himself) is "a monochromatic kinda guy". In the super-stylish living-room sits what looks like a priceless glass piano, while the cinema room is decked out in tactile satin and fur. But in place of the anticipated row of seats is a monumental double bed that suggests movie-watching in here is merely foreplay to the main attraction of, well, of sex with an international love god. There's more. Outside, beyond the well-tended garden and infinity pool, is a 60ft yacht bobbing gently on the waves, and the lumps of metal he refuses to be defined by are threefold: a Mercedes, a BMW, a vintage silver Ferrari.