Remembering Clive Davis, who elevated hitmaking to an art form

Barry Manilow has told the communicative down his archetypal large deed truthful galore times that I had nary volition of bringing up the half-century-old “Mandy” erstwhile I sat down with the vocalist connected a caller day astatine his location successful Palm Springs. Among the questions I did inquire was however helium ended up signaling the opus that opens his caller album, and the reply — arsenic it’s truthful often been passim Manilow’s career, opening with that 1975 chart-topper — was Clive Davis.

“It was each Clive,” Manilow said of “Once Before I Go,” the Peter Allen/Dean Pitchford fig that leads disconnected his just-released “What a Time” LP. Davis, the star-making grounds enforcement with the alleged aureate ears, had been urging him to grounds the opus for years, Manilow told me, which inevitably brought him backmost to the well-rehearsed communicative of “Mandy” — to Davis’ determination that Manilow’s debut for his Arista statement lacked a breakout smash and to his proposition that the vocalist chopped a mentation of a humble deed called “Brandy” by Scott English.

“So I went successful the workplace and did it trying to dependable similar that guy,” Manilow recalled, stomping his ft to approximate a lumbering stone beat. “Clive came successful and said, ‘That’s terrible.’ I said, ‘I cognize it’s terrible.’ But successful bid to larn the song, I’d slowed it down and changed the cardinal — I recovered the emotion opus hiding successful ‘Brandy,’” Manilow continued. (He besides changed the rubric to debar immoderate disorder with Looking Glass’ “Brandy,” which had precocious reached No. 1.) Manilow played the tune successful his much romanticist benignant for the exec. “I’ll ne'er hide it — Clive said, ‘Just bash that.’ And that was the record.” He laughed.

“He’s a benignant of a genius.”

Davis, who died Monday astatine property 94, didn’t sing oregon play an instrument. “I knew thing astir music,” helium erstwhile said, looking backmost astatine his introduction into the grounds business. Yet his instincts made him 1 of the surest spotters and nurturers of endowment successful popular history, with a agelong — and varied — enactment of occurrence stories that included Manilow, Janis Joplin, Neil Diamond, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson and Maroon 5, among galore others. He adjacent helped the Grateful Dead people a Top 10 azygous with “Touch of Grey” successful 1987.

Davis, who got his commencement successful Columbia Records’ ineligible department, could place archetypal voices and seemed to intuit which songs were apt to go hits. Sometimes the hits came from the voices themselves, arsenic successful the lawsuit of Bruce Springsteen, whom Davis cajoled into penning “Blinded by the Light” for his Columbia debut; sometimes the exec match-made performers and composers, arsenic successful the lawsuit of “Mandy” oregon “Freeway of Love,” a zippy Narada Michael Walden jam that launched Franklin’s comeback successful the mid-1980s.

A natty dresser with a cosmopolitan air, Davis founded Arista successful 1974 aft helium was fired from Columbia (where he’d ascended to the presidency) amid an embezzlement ungraded of which helium was aboriginal cleared. In 2000, helium was ousted from Arista successful a firm shakeup — conscionable months aft the statement won 8 Grammy Awards with Carlos Santana’s 15-times-platinum “Supernatural” LP — past launched a caller label, J Records, which scored an contiguous blockbuster with Keys’ “Songs successful A Minor.”

Clive Davis astatine the Beverly Hills Hotel successful 2020.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Wherever helium worked, Davis’ extremity was shepherding hits that spanned formats and generations; helium delighted successful projects similar “Smooth,” the inescapable Santana azygous pairing the stone guitarist and Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty, and a bid of Great American Songbook albums by the once-scruffy Rod Stewart. He mightiness besides person been the euphony industry’s biggest believer successful ballads, astatine slightest among suits: Between 1985 and 1992, Houston unsocial released astir a twelve of music’s all-timers, including “Saving All My Love for You,” “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” and — possibly the top popular ballad ever recorded — her instrumentality connected Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” (It wasn’t a immense hit, but perceive to Houston and Jermaine Jackson’s pedal-steel-drenched “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do,” from Houston’s debut, for an aboriginal lawsuit of that crossover ambition.)

One of comparatively fewer nonperformers inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Davis brought his flair for assortment to the enactment helium threw astatine the Beverly Hilton each twelvemonth connected the nighttime earlier the Grammys — a famously blistery summons that drew A-list celebs from the worlds of euphony and Hollywood arsenic good arsenic concern and politics. You could ever number connected the exec to person persuaded immoderate fig of the year’s splashiest caller acts to perform; this year’s bash, successful January, had Sombr, Olivia Dean and the women of “KPop Demon Hunters.” But my favourite portion of the amusement was ever seeing which seasoned Davis had tapped to premix it up with the youngsters — Diamond oregon Manilow, for instance, oregon Johnny Mathis, who perfectly killed successful 2015.

Davis horrified galore successful 2012 erstwhile helium opted to proceed with his enactment conscionable hours aft Houston was recovered dormant successful a edifice country astatine the Beverly Hilton. In the years aft the singer’s death, Davis drew disapproval for taking excessively overmuch recognition for Houston’s creator achievements; to some, helium became a awesome of the euphony industry’s efforts to code down Houston’s Blackness successful bid to scope achromatic audiences. Five years ago, I asked Warwick, who was Houston’s cousin, whether she’d taken connected immoderate benignant of consulting relation connected “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” the 2022 Whitney biopic that Davis produced.

Bobby Brown, from left, Whitney Houston and Clive Davis successful New York successful 1998.

(Stuart Ramson / AP)

“Not 1 thing,” she told me. “I privation them to fto Whitney remainder successful peace. Leave her alone. Ten years [since she died] — it’s clip to fto her sleep.” (In a connection Monday, Warwick called Davis her “dear friend” and said she “can deliberation of nary different grounds antheral that seemed to person that magical quality to cognize a deed erstwhile helium heard a song.”)

I spoke with Davis galore times implicit the years and was ever struck by his enthusiasm astir euphony and astir his callback of events from decades ago. In 2017, I interviewed the exec alongside Mathis and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds astir a grounds the 3 made unneurotic that had Mathis singing newish popular songs similar Adele’s “Hello” and Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” — a conception Manilow told maine successful March helium and Davis had been talking astir replicating. After my communicative ran, Davis emailed maine and said he’d enjoyed the piece, which had a mates of lines astir Davis’ inclination to spell overboard hyping his projects.

“Yes, a fewer of your bites required a idiosyncratic Band-Aid,” helium wrote, “but I did admit your position of the Mathis album’s quality.”

He knew the euphony was good; Clive Davis ever knew erstwhile the euphony was good.