Until 48 hours ago the world's finest Lenny Kravitz interview was conducted by Rolling Stone's Neil Strauss in New Orleans.
In Strauss' 1995 cover story (that also appears in the writer's excellent memoir), Kravitz completely denies ripping off Led Zeppelin, while admitting one particular track - 'Rock and Roll Is Dead' - has "a Zeppelin-type quality". This outrageous declaration of self-confidence has taken nearly two decades to repeat... but it has now finally been beaten.
In an interview with this week's ES Magazine, focusing on his unique sense of style, Kravitz declares, "Yoko Ono once gave me one of John Lennon’s favourite shirts, straight out of his drawer, for a birthday."
For anyone else the anecdote would have stopped there: an outrageous Beatles' memorabilia brag, nothing more. But Kravitz goes one step further: "I wore it when I jammed with Guns N’ Roses in Paris in the 1990s. We did ‘Always on the Run’, which Slash and I wrote together."
This is the kind of statement that would cause even the most ardent Beatlesphobe cause for concern. Kravitz wore the Lennon shirt? To work with the band who sang 'My World' and 'Shotgun Blues'? A priceless keepsake once owned by a true musical visionary - worn simply to have something to talk about with Duff McKagan during a cigarette break? Is it significant it happened in Paris? Did Kravitz simply run out of shirts on tour and made the decision that dipping into Yoko's gift bag was preferable to doing laundry? We will never know.
Was it worth it? It's difficult to tell. Listen to 'Always On The Run' below - take a moment to imagine what Lennon himself would think...
