Clive Davis, hitmaking titan of music industry, dies at 94

NEW YORK – Clive Davis, the music executive who rose from a mid-level legal position at Columbia Records to become one of the industry’s most powerful and longest-reigning dons, guiding the careers of Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Barry Manilow and dozens of other stars, died on June 22 at his home in New York City’s Manhattan borough. He was 94.

His family confirmed his death. Davis had recently been hospitalised with respiratory problems.

One of the few non-performers in music to become a household name, Davis maintained a visible role as a starmaker for half a century. In the late 1960s, he propelled a reluctant Columbia headlong into the rock era with acts such as Janis Joplin and Blood, Sweat & Tears. He also encouraged jazz trumpeter Miles Davis to connect with the Woodstock generation.

Later, at the Arista and J labels, he championed R&B-leaning pop divas, including Houston, Alicia Keys and Jennifer Hudson; seized on the commercial potential for hip-hop; and orchestrated major career revivals for Carlos Santana and Rod Stewart, with their albums selling in the millions.

In the music industry, Davis, whose last position was chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment, was known as a relentless pursuer of hits, and as a symbol of continuity whose career survived numerous setbacks and corporate leadership sweeps.

When he started in the Columbia legal department in 1960, aged 28, he had no relevant background; he later described himself as a garden-variety striver who was most proud of getting full scholarships to New York University and Harvard Law School.

“I knew nothing about music,” he said in a 2017 documentary, Clive Davis: The Soundtrack Of Our Lives.

He worked to develop his business instincts – and his ear – by studying the Billboard charts and analysing what made a song a hit. He came to believe in the power of what he called contemporary music: the unabashedly commercial pop that results when a record executive plays matchmaker in the studio, connecting the right singers with the right material.

That process could take a while. For Houston’s first album, Davis and his lieutenants hunted for producers and songs for nearly two years. When the album Whitney Houston was finally released in 1985, it had three No. 1 singles – Saving All My Love For You, How Will I Know and Greatest Love Of All – and became one of the most successful debut albums in history, selling more than 25 million copies globally, according to Sony.

Davis’ longevity in the music world made him an institution in the business. Well past the point when most of his contemporaries had retired, he continued to hunt for talent. He could also draw headlines, as when he revealed, at 80, that he was bisexual and had been in serious relationships with men in addition to his two marriages to women.

Clive Jay Davis was born in Brooklyn on April 4, 1932, and grew up in the Crown Heights neighbourhood.

His epiphany in both music and business came at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967, where the line-up included Jimi Hendrix, The Who and The Grateful Dead. The affectionate antics of the flower-child generation charmed him, but the mass commercial potential of rock made an even stronger impression.

In 1974, he took over the foundering Bell label and renamed it Arista. He quickly scored a No. 1 hit with Mandy, by one of the few Bell acts that he kept on the label: Manilow. He promoted his acts lavishly and involved himself in the creative process. Artistes and producers under his watch frequently found themselves directed back to the studio for the umpteenth new mix or vocal tweak.

At the end of 1999, as Arista was celebrating a record sales year, BMG executives tried to force Davis into retirement. Artistes rallied loudly to his defence – “If Clive leaves, I leave”, Franklin told the Los Angeles Times – and a chastened BMG agreed to finance a new label, J, with US$150 million. Davis would own 50 per cent.

J got its name from Davis’ middle initial, which he shared with his three sons, Fred, Mitchell and Doug. They survive him, along with a daughter, Lauren Davis; eight grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and his partner, Greg Schriefer. Davis’ marriages to Helen Cohen and Janet Adelberg ended in divorce. NYTIMES