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Clive Davis
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Clive Jay Davis (b. April 4, 1932 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American record producer, executive and a leading music industry executive. He has won multiple Grammy awards and is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He has transformed the landscape of the modern music industry with a career spanning over forty years. From 1967-72 he was the President of Columbia Records, was the founder and president of Arista Records in the late 1970s through 2000 until founding J Records.
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Clive Jay Davis (b. April 4, 1932 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American record producer, executive and a leading music industry executive. He has won multiple Grammy awards and is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He has transformed the landscape of the modern music industry with a career spanning over forty years. From 1967-72 he was the President of Columbia Records, was the founder and president of Arista Records in the late 1970s through 2000 until founding J Records. From 2003 until April 2008, Davis was the Chairman and CEO of the RCA Music Group (which includes RCA Records, J Records and Arista Records), Chairman and CEO of J Records, and Chairman and CEO of BMG North America. Currently Davis is the Chief Creative Officer of Sony Music Entertainment Worldwide. Davis is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a non-performer.
Early life and career: The CBS years
Davis said, "When you grew up in Brooklyn and you were good in school and you don't like science, to rise above your family you have to become a lawyer, so everybody said you'll be a lawyer, so I became a lawyer. I didn't know one wealthy person. I was at a law firm working on other people's clients. And then I got a lucky break. A client of a law firm that I was in came to me and then said you could become chief lawyer for Columbia Records if you come right now. I was out of law school for three years and I got that offer, never even thinking music, never even thinking change. I knew if I stayed in law, I would be servicing other people's clients. I didn't travel in those circles. I made the decision I would take that job, go to Columbia Records, and I did within six months, become their chief lawyer, and this odyssey began."
Davis is from a working class Jewish American family and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He was named Clive by his mother, who was a fan of a British actor with that name. Davis graduated Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from New York University College of Arts and Science in 1953, and received a scholarship to Harvard Law School. Davis graduated and practiced law in a small firm which folded, then moved on to the firm of Rosenman, Colin, Kaye, Petschek and Freund, which had CBS Records as a client. Davis was then hired by the legal department of CBS subsidiary Columbia Records.
Davis said, pointing to a picture on his "wall of fame", "This is the night I signed Janis Joplin. She was the first Artist I ever signed."
"When I became head of Columbia Records, I was totally green, so I started listening to music intently, every radio station, every record that came out. You've gotta be the best prepared. You've gotta be the most informed. So, I have a high work ethic. And I used it. I don't mean to imply, when I discuss, that just hard work is enough to succeed in the record business. History has shown that it helps a lot if you have if you call what we in our industry call ears, and ears is that ability to hear special talent or to hear a hit." Davis became a protegé of CBS Records President Goddard Lieberson, and discovered a passion for music which led him up the ranks of Columbia/CBS. In 1967, he became president of Columbia Records and, more or less by accident, he became a convert to the newest generation of folk rock and rock and roll. "Monterrey was almost a religious experience without sounding melodramatic. I was seeing something that was changing the face of music. I had to trust my instincts, and go on the line. I never pictured myself to be an A&R man or talent discoverer that was not within the realm of what I had done before. I found through a combination of luck and the finding of a natural, talent that I never knew I had, a career and tremendous satisfaction. I started trusting my judgment after Big Brother and the Electric Flag and Blood Sweat and Tears and Santana and Chicago, and when they all started all making it I sensed a change was there and a revolution was definitely occurring I was lucky to find myself right in the middle of it." One of his earliest pop signings was the British folk-rock musician Donovan, who enjoyed a string of successful hit singles and albums released in the USA on the Epic label.
In June 1967, at the urging of his friend and business associate Lou Adler, Davis attended the Monterey Pop Festival, a musical event that changed the course of his career, and was inspired by what he saw as the future of music. He immediately signed Janis Joplin with Big Brother & the Holding Company, and Columbia went on to sign Laura Nyro, Jimmie Spheeris, Electric Flag, Santana, The Chambers Brothers, Bruce Springsteen, Andy Pratt, Chicago, Billy Joel, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Pink Floyd. The company, which had previously avoided rock music, doubled its market share in three years. One of the biggest recordings released during Davis' tenure at Columbia was Lynn Anderson's "Rose Garden", in late 1970. It was Clive Davis who insisted "Rose Garden" be the country singer's next single release. The song reached number one in sixteen countries around the world, won a slew of awards and made Lynn Anderson a household name. In 1972, Davis also signed the group Earth, Wind & Fire to Columbia Records. One of Davis' most recognized accomplishments was signing the Boston group Aerosmith to Columbia Records in the early 70s at New York City's Max's Kansas City, which was immortalized in the 1979 Aerosmith classic "No Surprise", where Steven Tyler sings "Old Clive Davis said he's surely gonna make you a star, just the way you are". In 1979, Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead changed the lyrics of the Dead standard Jack Straw in concert from "we used to play for silver, now we play for life", to "we used to play for silver now we play for Clive".
The Arista years
After being fired from CBS Records for using company funds to bankroll his son's bar mitzvah , Columbia Pictures hired Davis to be a consultant for the company’s record and music operations. After taking time out to write his memoirs, he was offered the presidency of the division in late 1974. Davis subsequently merged the various labels -- Colpix Records, Colgems Records and Bell Records -- into a new entity named Arista Records, ultimately buying a percentage of the company from Columbia Pictures. The label was named Arista after New York City's secondary school honor society (of which Davis was a member).
This label has one of the most diverse lineups in the record industry. According to the book Planet Rock, by Lonn Friend, he was not a very smart person when it came to recording good rock bands because Artista was mocked for their rock roster. It has been home to Grammy Award winning pop megastar and the best-selling artist on label Whitney Houston, singer-songwriters Barry Manilow and Eric Carmen, Dionne Warwick, Monica, Gary Glitter, Exposé, Angie Aparo, Sarah McLachlan, Annie Lennox, saxophonist Kenny G, rappers The Notorious B.I.G. and Sean "Diddy" Combs, Aretha Franklin, Toni Braxton, Air Supply, Ace of Base, The Alpha Band, The Grateful Dead, The Kinks, TLC, Willie Nile, Bay City Rollers, Nona Hendryx, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Babylon A.D. among others. In the 1970s, Arista also had an extensive jazz line, most notably its Freedom imprint, concentrating on contemporary, sometimes avant-garde, musicians and widely praised reissues from the legendary Savoy label. Davis briefly worked with pop superstar Prince in the late 1990s on his "comeback" album Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic. Due to poor album sales and unhappy promotion of the album, Prince left Arista releasing only one record to date.
Clive Davis was featured in the February 21, 2008 (1046) issue of Rolling Stone. The article titled "The Last Record Man" discusses how Davis has helped guide the careers of hit artists and how even four decades later he still looks for the next hit.
In a reshuffling of the executive ranks at Sony BMG, it was announced on April 18, 2008 that Davis was appointed chief creative officer at Sony BMG. Zomba Music Group head Barry Weiss replaced Davis as chairman and CEO of the BMG label group.
Other achievements
In 2003, Davis donated money to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU) to create the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music. The undergraduate program, the first of its kind in the country, recognizes the creative record producer as an artist in his or her own right and musical recording itself as a creative medium.
He has been at the forefront of American Idol, as it is his company that signs the American Idol winners and runners-up. He has appeared as a guest judge in every season and has chosen songs for the finalists to sing during the last weeks of competition. Davis usually announces the successes of past American Idol contestants on each season finale. Davis was recently featured in the seventh season of American Idol.
In December 2006 it was announced by The X Factor judge Simon Cowell that Davis had agreed to join in on making the latest X Factor winner Leona Lewis a star. In February 2007, Davis signed Lewis up for a $9.7 million five-album record deal. He is executive producer of her debut album, Spirit.
Clive Davis has won three Grammy Awards. At the 42nd Annual Grammy Awards in 2000 he won Best Rock Album and Album of the Year for producing Carlos Santana's Supernatural. In addition that year he received the 2000 Trustees Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement. At the 48th Annual Grammy Awards in 2006 he won Best Pop Vocal Album for producing Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway.
In early 2009, Davis was honored by the controversial political comedian Bill Maher on the Sundance Channel, founded by Robert Redford, on the show called "Iconoclasts." Although he lives "right in the center of Manhattan," for 38 years, Davis has used the Beverly Hills Hotel, Bungalow 8A, as his home away from home, from which he conducts all his business. When asked by Maher if Davis had ever attempted to live out there, Davis replied, "Once, many years ago, but I mean, this IS a second home, so I feel comfortable, I come out a week every four or five weeks." He conducts all his business from there. His mellow dog, Teddy, also was featured on the show "Iconoclasts," who Davis said was once referred to as "Sunshine Superman."
Quoting Davis on the west coast business, "Songwriters, a lot of them live out here, producers live out here,we caught the business was moving to the west coast." Upon ushering Maher into a room he said, "This room, looks out on the pool, and my life really in the record business began to a great extent out here. I would come stay here, and so many of the artists came even from L.A. or from the San Francisco area, so I would take Cabana 2 there, and the German named Ahmet Ertegun, who founded Atlantic Records, and worked with the Rolling Stones and Cream and Clapton, he would be at Cabana 10, and whether it was Boz Skaggs or Loggins and Messina or those artists who lived here, they would come to the Cabana, and especially Sly, he came with all that great flamboyance and costuming, and he would sit, and on the other side you would see, and then I would watch, and then on the other side you would see a Clapton or you would see Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, so then it was like camps, but you were publicly having meetings, pretty much in front, certainly if we were wooing all those people we would not do it cause it was sort of the enemy camp, but this vista brings back very special memories of that era."
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