Lenny Kravitz has dedicated a song to late country icon Johnny Cash after revealing he comforted him after his mother died.
In Johnny Cash, which will appear on his new album Raise Vibration, Kravitz recalls how the late legend held him and whispered in his ear as he struggled with the loss of his mum, actress Roxie Roker.
Lenny flew to Los Angeles after learning his mum was losing her battle with breast cancer and arranged to stay at record producer pal Rick Rubin's home only to discover the music mogul was working with Cash on the album American Recordings II: Unchained.
"I got off a plane from Tokyo and I went straight to the hospital," Kravitz tells the BBC. "My mother was alive, but she was slipping. I thought she maybe had another couple of days in her (so) I went home to take a shower and get some food. I was going to go back to the hospital but as I was going from the hospital to the house of Rick, my mother passed."
Lenny blurted out the sad news to fellow houseguest Johnny and his wife June and they immediately rallied around Kravitz to offer him their support.
"I got the phone call when I was in the house, and I'm standing there with the portable phone in my hand, just taking this in and Johnny and June are walking down the stairs," Kravitz recalls. "So Johnny said to me, 'Hi, you're back. How are you?' And I said, 'My mom just died'.
"I was a bit fazed and out of it and the two of them just came up to me and surrounded me and held me. The two of them. We weren't lifelong friends. I didn't know them that long. We were flatmates. But they decided at that moment (to) treat me like they would treat someone in their family. It was a beautiful moment of humanity and love."
Kravitz reveals he didn't plan on writing about the touching moment, but it kept coming back to him while he was in the studio working on new music.
"I heard the melody, I heard the music, but I did not understand why I was getting the words Johnny Cash," he says. "It obviously is something that impacted me and has been sitting within my spirit. They were beautiful, real people - and I guess that might have been the last time that I was consoled in that way."
