Rock legend, Lenny Kravitz, revealed a lot about his parents’ marriage in a prior interview with The Telegraph. For those who didn’t know, his mother is the late actress, Roxie Roker, best known for her role as “Helen Willis” on “The Jeffersons” and his father, Sy Kravitz, was a TV executive for NBC back in the day.
Lenny detailed what it was like watching his Mom deal with his Pops’ cheating ways when she was at the height of her career on “The Jeffersons”…and let’s just say that Roxie was no “Helen” and Sy was no “Tom” in real life…
LENNY: ‘MY MOM STEPPED TO MY DAD LIKE A SCENE OUT OF GOODFELLAS’
Lenny described the incidents that oftentimes went down when his Pops got caught with his hands in another cookie jar, so to speak. And sometimes Lenny was smack dab in the middle of it. Turns out, our beloved Roxie Roker had some gangsta chick in her, bless her soul.
In other words, she didn’t just sit around and quietly accept her man’s cheating ways, she confronted him and his mistresses (yes, mistresses, as in many) head on. This drama occurred during the era when we were watching Roxie on “The Jeffersons.”
LENNY TOLD MOM ABOUT DAD’S CHEATING…AND SHE TOOK ACTION
Via Telegraph: When he was 20, Kravitz became aware of some of his father’s secret lives and alerted his mother. “I brought it into the light,” he says. “It was quite intense and heartbreaking. But she knew about things all my life that I didn’t know about. She would tell me stories about having me in her arms – it reminds me of the scene in Goodfellas – and she’d go to another woman’s apartment and ring the bell: “Tell him he has to come down. Stuff like that.” Soon afterwards, his parents split up.
DAD’S JEALOUSY OF ROXIE’S AND LENNY’S SUCCESS TOOK A TOLL
Lenny Kravitz also revealed how he believed his Dad was a tad bit jealous of his and Roxie’s success. Although he had success of his own:
“His wife and son ended up being that thing that he wanted to be. I could understand what it was with other women, because he felt he needed to be The Man. Although he already was the man, and my mother treated him as the man. But in a superficial world, she was the star, and he was not.” – Lenny Kravitz
ROXIE’S & SY’S MARRIAGE STARTED OFF ROCKY WITH MUCH FAMILY TENSION
Lenny said that from the beginning, his parents’ marriage was rocky because his Jewish side of the fam’ didn’t even show up to their wedding:
Via Telegraph: ‘My dad was a sergeant, a Green Beret – the most hardcore, above the Marines. He was a very hard man.’ He fought in Korea, as did his younger brother, Leonard. Sy came home alive. Leonard did not. ‘He got blamed for that. His parents. Just the fact that his little brother followed him to war.’ That blame hadn’t eased by the time Sy married Lenny’s mother – ‘there wasn’t a white person at the wedding,’ Kravitz says. ‘And I had a great relationship with my Jewish relatives, and I knew nothing of this until I got older.’
Like we always say at ILoveOldSchoolMusic, celebrities have accomplished great things, but neither they, nor their lives, are perfect. They’re simply perfectly flawed human beings, just like the rest of us and that is A-okay. We all live and we learn.
