Lenny Kravitz: Are You Gonna Go My Way (2LP) [VIRGIN]

Why you'll love it

This 180g 2LP set puts the album on vinyl with rare bonus cuts, including "Sister" live at Budokan and an acoustic "Believe." It was Kravitz's first No. 1 album in the UK and Australia, and the title track topped the US Mainstream Rock chart.

This edition

• 2LP set
• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Bonus tracks
• Download card included
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Some guitar riffs walk into a room and the room simply rearranges itself around them. The opener here is one of those, a Hendrix-sized strut that Lenny Kravitz cut at Waterfront Studios in Hoboken, New Jersey, with engineer Henry Hirsch, playing much of the album himself and producing the lot. It came out in March 1993 on Virgin.

Kravitz's love of the classics is all over it, with nods to the Beatles, Curtis Mayfield, Prince and Sly and Robbie, and Craig Ross adds extra guitar. "Believe" is a big, soaring rock ballad, "Heaven Help" leans into warm R&B and soul, and "Is There Any Love in Your Heart" swaggers. "Sugar," "Black Girl" and "Eleutheria" show just how wide his range runs. The second disc gathers rarities: an acoustic "Heaven Help" recorded in Holland, "Sister" taken from the mixing desk in Tokyo, and "Believe" recorded in an Orlando hotel room on a little 3M Wollensak tape deck.

It became his first top 20 album in America and turned a cult favourite into a global headliner. The hotel room version of "Believe" is the room service we'd most like to order.

Also at Kops: more Lenny Kravitz on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Virgin / UMe, a reissue of the 1993 album.