Lenny Kravitz and Craig Ross opened with a three-and-a-half-minute
Are You Gonna Go My Way is the title track and first single from Lenny Kravitz’s third studio album, released 8 February 1993 on Virgin. Kravitz wrote it with guitarist Craig Ross and produced it himself. The cut runs 3:32: dry drums, a circular hard-funk riff, and a vocal that asks the question before the second chorus finishes. No ballad softener, no guest feature. Just the band locked.
The lyric frames Kravitz as a chosen messenger who still needs the crowd onside: love, not slaughter, dance instead of kill. It lands as rock sermon without choir padding. Ross’s guitar figure is the engine; Kravitz’s vocal sits raw on top. On US rock formats the single owned Album Rock Tracks and sat near the top of Modern Rock. Australia gave it a No. 1; the UK took it to No. 4.
Mark Romanek directed the video: Kravitz and band in a circular arena ringed with balconies of dancers, under a chandelier of nearly a thousand aquarium light tubes that Michael Keeling programmed into patterns. Cindy Blackman appears on drums on camera even though she did not play the studio take. VEVO later remastered the clip in HD; the silhouette still reads in a second.
But what I really want to know is, are you gonna go my way?
(Lenny Kravitz, Are You Gonna Go My Way, Virgin, 1993)
The album followed the single into multi-platinum territory and fixed Kravitz’s early-nineties image: dreadlocks, Flying V energy, retro-soul clothes, modern rock radio. Live, the riff still starts rooms before the lyric arrives. Covers and sync placements kept the question in circulation long after the chart peak.
Return to the Virgin mix and Ross’s guitar still refuses polish. Beside Believe and Heaven Help on the same album, Are You Gonna Go My Way is the open door: three minutes of hard funk asking whether you are coming in.
