Lenny Kravitz was viewed as a promising young talent when he debuted in the late ’80s, but by 1998 he was written off as someone who could emulate his multiple influences but couldn’t make anything new or distinctive out of them. Though his albums were selling and he was hob-nobbing with the glitterati, his last hit, “It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over,” had been back in 1991.
His luck changed as he finished recording his fifth LP, “5.” He was testing a new amp in the studio, he told Guitar World. “I was listening to the way different chords were ringing, just moving between A, C, G and D, and the next thing I knew I was telling the engineer to hook up the mics and record.”
The master tapes of “5” were already in the record company’s hands when he wrote “Fly Away,” and execs were reluctant to add it to the LP. They changed their minds once they heard it. For some reason they released three other singles from the album, all duds, before trying “Fly Away.” It reached No. 12 in Billboard and topped both the Mainstream Rock and Modern Rock Tracks charts and became a top 10 hit in various countries, No. 1 in the UK. You’ve heard it in a hundred commercials in the years since.
