Lenny Kravitz Let Love Rule LP 1989 Original Rare VINYL Virgin Records sleeve

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Lenny Kravitz ~ Let Love Rule
1989 Original, 1st pressing Virgin Records - 91290-1
Vinyl is VG+ to NM, mostly VG++ to NM, some light, visible marks
Cover is VG+, saw mark in upper left
Includes custom inner sleeve
Rare Album

".The Guess Who's most successful LP, reaching number nine in America (and charting for more than a year), has held up well and was as close to a defining album-length statement as the original group ever made. It's easy to forget that until "American Woman," The Guess Who's hits had been confined to softer, ballad-style numbers -- that song (which originated as a spontaneous on-stage jam) highlighted by Randy Bachman's highly articulated fuzz-tone guitar, a relentless beat, and Burton Cummings moving into Robert Plant territory on the lead vocal, transformed their image. As an album opener, it was a natural, but the slow acoustic blues intro by Bachman heralded a brace of surprises in store for the listener. The presence of the melodic but highly electric hit version of "No Time" (which the band had cut earlier in a more ragged rendition) made the first ten minutes a hard rock one-two punch, but the group then veers into progressive rock territory with "Talisman." Side two was where the original album was weakest, though it started well enough with "969 (The Oldest Man)." "When Friends Fall Out," a remake of an early Canadian release by the group, attempted a heavy sound that just isn't sustainable, and "8:15" was a similar space filler, but "Proper Stranger" falls into good hard rock groove. In August of 2000, Buddha Records issued a remastered version of this album with a bonus track from a subsequent session, "Got to Find Another Way." Ironically, American Woman was the final testament of the original Guess Who -- guitarist/singer Randy Bachman quit soon after the tour behind this album; the group did endure and even thrive (as did Bachman), but American Woman represented something of an ending as well as a triumphThe title is a tip-off: Lenny Kravitz is a hippie, something that was commonplace 20 years before his debut, Let Love Rule, and was familiar five years later when he scaled the charts with Are You Gonna Go My Way, but was practically unheard of in 1989 when the Grateful Dead were reaping the benefits of hippies turning into establishment. Kravitz had yet to become a classic rock caricature and he could still surprise on this unformed, endearingly unwieldy first record, where he split the difference between John Lennon, Curtis Mayfield, David Bowie, and Prince, sometimes exhibiting too clear of a debt to his idols but more often getting by on a combination of chutzpah and pastiche, something that winds up as an enormously appealing guilty pleasure. Kravitz has a tendency to overreach lyrically, striving to speak deep truths about big themes from world peace to child abuse, but the winning thing about Let Love Rule is how it plays as sheer sound, evoking memories of the paisley-drenched '60s and the lush sounds of '70s soul, all filtered through the multicultural flowering of the late '80s. Remarkably for an album that's essentially the work of a one-man band, Let Love Rule never feels stiff or insular -- it feels roomy and open, testament to Kravitz's talents as a producer -- but the record remains one of his best because it also has one of his greatest collections of songs, chief among them the stately, psychedelic march of "I Build This Garden for Us," the hippie-funk of "Sittin' on Top of the World," the Hendrixian riffs of "Freedom Train," the urban groove of "Mr. Cab Driver," and the surging "Let Love Rule," songs that created Kravitz's sound and persona and remain among his most engaging work."

-ALLMUSIC.COM