Clive Davis: The “how to” of Music Business
by Sheldon Rocha Leal
When I first endeavored to pursue a career in the music business, I as most people entering this business, wanted to be the next big superstar. The myth and the reality are completely different and I soon realized that I didn’t really want to be the next Michael Jackson, but rather more like the people who created Michael Jackson.
Throughout my youth not only had I been a big follower of the big artists in the music business, like Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince, I had also always been interested in the people that stage managed these careers, like Tommy Mottola, Berry Gordy, Clive Calder and Freddy DeMann.
I learnt these names because they were the names behind my favorite stars: Michael Jackson and Madonna were managed by Freddy DeMann, Mariah Carey was managed by Tommy Mottola (and even married him), Stevie Wonder and all my favorite Motown stars were managed by Berry Gordy and Clive Calder managed the teen music revolution of the late 1990s (Backstreet Boys, *NSync, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake). But one of the careers in which I was most interested was that of Clive Davis, the man who discovered and stage managed the career of one of my favorite artists, Whitney Houston. I observed his career over the years and came to discover that his talent and understanding of music contributed to making him one of the most iconic music executives/A&R specialists of all time.
Presently Clive Davis, at the age of 85, serves at the Chief Creative Officer of Sony Music Entertainment international. But he is one of those people that started his career at the bottom and worked his way up. Since 1956, he has had one of the most illustrious careers in the music business, a career of over 60 years that outshines many of the stars he created.
Early Days
Clive was born in Brooklyn in 1932, to a middle class Jewish family. His dad was an electrician and salesman and his mom was a stay at home wife. In his teenage years he lost his parents in quick succession and was left with no money. As a result he moved in with his sister in Queens, New York. After finishing school he received a scholarship to study at NYU (New York University) at the College of Arts and Sciences, from which he graduated with a degree in Political Science (magna cum laude) at the age of 21. He then received a scholarship to study Law at Harvard, from which he graduated in 1956, at the age of 24.
His first job out of university was in a small law firm called Rosenman, Colin, Kaye, Petschek, and Freund. One of the company’s clients was CBS records. Clive became closely associated with the client. When one of the partners left the company, he hired Clive to handle one of CBS Records’ subsidiary labels, Columbia Records. He was originally hired as assistant counsel, but within a year was made general counsel for the label. He was only 28 years old at the time.
CBS/Columbia
In 1965 the company was restructured and Clive was made administrative vice-president and general manager of Columbia. A year later CBS restructured all their recorded music units into a one group called Columbia-CBS. Clive was then made the president of recording for CBS and this new unit, which became known simply as Columbia.
As president of the label he became very interested in the trending genres in the music business: Rock ‘n Roll and Folk music. At the company he signed some of the most significant talent of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the first people he signed was the Folk legend Donovan. After being urged by a friend to attend the Monterey Pop Festival he discovered and signed Janis Joplin and her band, The Big Brother Holding Company. He went on to sign Bruce Springsteen, Santana, Chicago, Billy Joel, Blood Sweat and Tears, The Grateful Dead, Earth Wind and Fire and Aerosmith (to name but a few). With these signings Columbia doubled their income.
He was eventually fired from Columbia in 1973 (13 years after he had initially been employed at the company) for misappropriating company funds to pay for his son’s Bar Mitzvah. Charges for which little evidence was found and many say he was dismissed for political reasons, linking CBS to the New York Mafia. This did not, however, prevent Columbia Pictures (a company not linked to Columbia Records) from affording him the opportunity to head up their music division. Motion picture companies usually consist of music divisions which assist in facilitating the use of music in the content they create.
Arista
After writing his biography, he used money given to him by Columbia Pictures to restructure one of the companies’ record labels (Bell Records) and start his own recording label, Arista Records in 1974. He got the name for the company from the honour society which he was a part of at NYU. He later went on to found a music division at NYU called the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music (2003).
Besides for being a master of identifying and breaking in new talent, Clive is also very good at analyzing the career of already established artists and determining ways in which to reinvigorate these careers. At Arista he reinvigorated Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick and Santana’s careers, bringing their music to whole new generations of music listeners. One of Arista Record’s first major stars was Barry Manilow, who had a No1 hit single, soon after the launch of the company with Mandy. Some of the other early signings included Carly Simon and Eric Carmen, along with The Grateful Dead, Patti Smith and Air Supply.
Whilst the earlier part of his career was dominated by Pop, Rock and Folk signings, the 1980s and 1990s was dominated by R&B and Hip-Hop signings. Arista became the go-to label for R&B music at this time. After signing a mega deal with prolific R&B producers LA Reid and Babyface, in which they started their own subsidiary of Arista, LAFace Records, many of the top R&B talent resided on the Arista roster: Toni Braxton, Usher, OutKast, P!nk and TLC. The company’s dominance of the urban music market was further cemented when Clive signed a deal with Sean Combs (P Diddy) whereby he started his own subsidiary of Arista, Bad Boy Records. P Diddy brought Notorious BIG, Faith Evans, Ma$e and 112 on board the Arista freight train.
This R&B revolution commenced with the signing of Whitney Houston in 1983. After being persuaded to go watch the young singer/model perform at a New York night club, Clive was sold. He took it upon himself to mentor the young girl and stage manage her career, knowing that he could make her an international superstar. The amazing thing was that Clive sold R&B music, which is a very niche product, to a predominantly white audience in the USA and eventually made the world fall in love with the genre. As with Berry Gordy before him, he was highly criticized by R&B purists for white washing the sound of R&B. Whitney became the crown jewel in the Clive Davis multi verse. She would go on to become one of the biggest selling female artists of all time, selling over 200million records in her career.
Together the two of them broke various records: the biggest selling soundtrack of all time (The Bodyguard), the longest running No1 in US history (I Will Always Love You), the first person in US history to debut at No1 on the album charts (Whitney, 1987), the only artist in history to have 7 consecutive No1 on the US singles’ charts…
In the 1990s Clive signed one of the most successful Swedish acts since ABBA: Ace Of Base. The band dominated the charts in the mid-1990s, with songs such as The Sign, All That She Wants, Wheel Of Fortune, Lucky Love and Happy Nation. The band went on to sell over 50million records internationally.
At the same time Clive decided to explore Country music and opened a Nashville division of Arista in order to use the same magic he had used on R&B talent to promote and push Country talent. He signed Brooks & Dunn, Alan Jackson, Brad Paisley and Pam Tillis.
One of my favorite Clive Davis success stories is that of Santana. Clive had originally signed the band to a recording contract at Columbia in the 1960s. Santana found a receptive audience in the 1960s and attained a lot of success. By the 1980s a lot of that success had dried up and in the 1990s the band decided to rather focus on touring and no longer recording as it was not an economically viable exercise for them. They therefore only released 2 albums in the 1990s. Clive, however, still saw potential in the band and approached Carlos Santana with an idea for an album and signed the band to a recording deal with Arista. The concept of the album was to record various songs with some of the music Business’ biggest talent at the time. The resultant album was entitled “Supernatural” and was released in 1999. It featured songs with Dave Matthews, Rob Thomas, Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill, Cee-Lo Green and Eric Clapton (to mention but a few of the many talented luminaries included on this album). The album peaked at No1 in the USA, UK and 10 other countries, shipped over 30million units around the world and won 8 Grammy Awards in 2000, tying the record for most Grammy’s won in one night by an act. The success was unprecedented and relaunched the band’s career, resulting in 6 further album releases and an additional 5million sales. Not bad for a band that was down and out and focusing on the nostalgia touring circuit.
J Records
But by the end of the 1990s BMG was starting to feel that Clive was a little out of touch and they decided to squeeze him out of his position as the head of Arista and replace him with one of his protégés, LA Reid. This was strange considering that at the time he was dismissed Arista experiencing major financial gains, especially at the victories attained by the Santana album. Many say that BMG did not like the fact that he was generating so much money from the acts that he was mentoring. There was a massive outcry and rallying support from the music industry. The dismissal did not stop him, and in 2000, he used money given to him by BMG ($150million) to start a new recording company: J Records.
Many Arista Records artists followed him to his new label along with the majority of executives from the company. There was even talk that Whitney might defect, at which point LA Reid offered the ailing diva a record breaking $100million contract to remain at the company. A move many industry insiders didn’t quite understand considering that Whitney had only released 3 albums in the preceding decade of which only 1 was a studio album and the remaining two were soundtrack albums.
One of Clive’s first major signings, at J Records, was Alicia Keys, whose debut album, Songs in A Minor, shipped over 12million units internationally. Other major discoveries at the label included Maroon 5, Gavin DeGraw, O-Town, Jamie Foxx, Jazmine Sullivan and Pitbull. He also helped to revive the careers of artists like Rod Stewart (with his American Songbook Recordings), Luther Vandross and Busta Rhymes, who saw increased album sales under the guidance of the master record executive.
Sony International
Under LA Reid’s leadership Arista saw a major downturn and he was eventually relieved of his duties. LA Reid soon discovered that he had been handed a bit of a poisoned chalice. After the immense success attained by J Records, BMG, now owned by Sony, bought a majority stake in J Records in 2002 and made Clive Davis CEO of the RCA Group which owned Arista, RCA and J Records. He was essentially made boss of the company from which he had been fired. In 2004 Sony merged with BMG and formed a new company known as Sony/BMG. Sony owned Columbia and CBS, companies from which Clive had been dismissed in 1973. At Sony/BMG he was made Chief Creative Officer for Sony/BMG International, a role he holds to this day. In 2008, at the age of 76, BMG sold their shares to Sony and Clive continued in his role as CCO of Sony International.
Conclusion
Clive Davis really has the music business Midas touch, whether it’s mentoring a new talent to greatness (like Whitney Houston or Alicia Keys) or putting the shine back onto the career of a legendary artist (like Luther Vandross or Santana). The man has had an amazing career that has spanned over 60 years, being responsible for over 1billion albums worth of sales. He was around at the dawn of the Rock revolution and he is still relevant to this day. When he first started out in the music business people consumed music via vinyl, today people are streaming. There have been many changes in the music business but his legend lives on. He has conducted a career with precision, integrity and ethics and is the personification of the old adage that the cream always rises to the top. Clive proves that if you are truly passionate about what you do and if you invest in your craft, that you can have longevity doing whatever it is you want to do and make money doing it.
