Long before he was a well-known rock star, Lenny Kravitz was just a boy growing up in New York with his two parents, Sy Kravitz and Roxie Roker. Though Lenny says his mother, star of "The Jeffersons," was a warm and loving individual, he recently revealed that his father, an NBC News producer, had a very different personality.
On "Oprah's Master Class," Lenny opened up about his relationship with his father and what it was like being raised by a man who seemed to believe in tough love.
"My father had a lot of love and sensitivity in him, but he was really hardcore," Lenny reveals. "Super-heavy disciplinarian. He wasn't the kind of man to talk a lot... I was afraid of him as a child."
To better understand his father, Lenny looks back at Sy's own upbringing. "He had a father who was difficult with him, I think," Lenny says. "At a very young age, he went through the military -- he was a Green Beret, he ended up being a sergeant. He felt that he had to be this tough person."
Then, Sy experienced a family tragedy when his younger brother Leonard (whom Lenny is named after) followed him into the military and was killed in the line of duty. "My father was blamed for [Leonard's] death in the family," Lenny says. "So I think that was another thing that really messed him up. All of those sensitive qualities were just killed, and it completely changed him."
"Oprah's Master Class" airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on OWN.
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