His other musical influences at the time included Fela Kuti, Bill Withers, Marvin Gaye, Pharoah Sanders, and Miles Davis. It was in Los Angeles that Kravitz was introduced to rock music, listening to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Kiss, Pink Floyd, and the Who, and he said he was "attracted to the cool style, the girls, the rock 'n' roll lifestyle." During his junior high school years, he was also introduced to marijuana he has stated that he was a "pothead" during his youth. He took part in Mahler's Third Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl. At his mother's urging, he joined the California Boys Choir for three years, where he performed a classical repertoire, and sang with the Metropolitan Opera. In 1974, at the age of 10, Kravitz relocated to Los Angeles with his parents when his mother landed her role on The Jeffersons. His father, who was also a jazz promoter, was friends with Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Short, Miles Davis, and other jazz greats Ellington even played "Happy Birthday" for him on his fifth birthday. He said, "My parents were very supportive of the fact that I loved music early on, and they took me to a lot of shows." Around the age of seven, he saw The Jacksons perform at Madison Square Garden, and they became his favorite performers.
He grew up listening to the music his parents listened to: R&B, jazz, classical, opera, gospel, and blues. He began playing the drums and soon added guitar. He decided that he wanted to be a musician at the age of five.
Kravitz began banging on pots and pans in the kitchen, playing them as drums at the age of three. 6 for elementary school, and spending weekends at his grandmother Bessie's house in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Kravitz grew up spending weekdays on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with his parents, attending P.S. After a spiritual experience when he was 13, he started attending church and later became a non-denominational Christian. ĭuring his early years, Kravitz did not grow up in a religious environment. Kravitz, a private first class who was killed in action in the Korean War at the age of 20, while single-handedly holding off a Chinese attack, enabling most of his platoon to escape. Through his mother, Kravitz is a second cousin of television weather presenter Al Roker as their grandfathers were brothers. Kravitz has always stated that his father was of Ukraine-Jewish ancestry.->Ukraine-Jewish ancestry. His mother came from a Christian family which was of African-American and Bahamian descent. Leonard Albert Kravitz was born in New York City, the only child of actress Roxie Roker (1929–1995) and NBC television news producer and Green Beret Sy Kravitz (1924–2005).