Clive Davis: Powerful hit-making titan of the music industry dies at 94

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 Monday at his home in New York City’s Manhattan borough.

He was 94.

His family confirmed the 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 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 Davis started in the Columbia legal department in 1960, at age 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.”

Davis 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 “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 around the world, according to Sony.

In his 2013 book, Davis described a growing tension during the 1970s with Manilow, who saw himself primarily as a songwriter but whose biggest numbers — even “I Write the Songs,” a No. 1 hit in 1976 — were mostly written by other people.

Davis said he told Manilow, “If you were Irving Berlin, we would know it by now!”

After Houston’s death, Davis came under criticism when Arista insiders said that the label, under Davis’ direction, had pushed her to adopt an image that would appeal to white audiences. In recording her albums, “anything that was too Black-sounding was sent back to the studio,” one former executive said in a 2017 documentary, “Whitney: Can I Be Me.”

Davis’ longevity in the music world made him an institution in the business. Well past the point when most of his contemporaries had retired, Davis continued to hunt for talent. He could also draw headlines, as when he revealed, at age 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 neighborhood.

Davis’ epiphany in both music and business came at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967, where the lineup 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. Artists 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. Artists 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 $150 million. Davis would own 50 per cent.

J got its name from Davis’ middle initial, which he shares 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.