Clive Davis, a record executive who helped to launch the careers of many stars over a career that lasted decades, has died. His death was confirmed in a statement by his family posted to his official social media accounts. He was 94 years old.
"To the world, our father was the iconic music legend whose vision, instincts, and relentless pursuit of excellence shaped the soundtrack of countless lives," the statement reads. "He discovered, mentored, and championed the greatest artists in modern music history, leaving an indelible mark on culture that will endure for generations." It did not specify the cause of death.
Davis began his career as a lawyer before pivoting into the major-label record business. While leading record companies like Columbia Records and Arista, Davis was instrumental in shepherding the successful careers of a number of monumental music stars, including Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Janis Joplin, Billy Joel and Whitney Houston. Through Arista's part ownership of labels like LaFace and Bad Boy Records, Davis also played a role in the growth of hip-hop and R&B through the '90s and 2000s, when artists like Usher, Outkast, Toni Braxton, the Notorious B.I.G. and Sean Combs became stars. Most recently, he was the chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment.
"I trusted this instinct, this natural flow of energy that I felt when I was in the presence of someone extremely talented," Davis told World Cafe in 2013, in reference to trusting his gut in signing new artists. "And, you know, I began to build a track record."
Davis was a native of the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, born in that city on April 4, 1932 to Herman, an electrician and salesman, and Florence Davis. While Clive was still a freshman at New York University, which he attended on a scholarship and would later graduate from magna cum laude, he lost both parents to what he later described as complications resulting from high blood pressure. Davis, a destitute undergrad at the time, was forced to move in with his sister while finishing his degree.
After graduating from Harvard Law with honors in 1956, Davis went to work as a Midtown Manhattan lawyer, drafting and reviewing contracts and assisting with tax and estate planning. But at 28 years old Davis moved over to Columbia Records, a client of the firm he had been working for, after a former colleague convinced him his experience with contract law could be useful there. Davis proved his value quickly, helping Columbia and its parent company, CBS, fend off a complaint brought against them by the Federal Trade Commission over alleged misdealings related to a subscription record club it had been operating. That experience gave Davis detailed knowledge of the byzantine economic structures underlying the music business, and where those money flows drew their momentum. It was good timing — the record business' fortunes would exponentially balloon over the coming decades.
By 1966, Davis had been named as president of Columbia Records — where he would add "possessor of golden ears" to his resume, after recognizing the commercial promise of rock-and-roll (and rock-adjacent) talent like Santana, Chicago and Laura Nyro, among others. But just under seven years into his presidency at Columbia Davis was fired from that position, over allegations that he'd misused around $100,000 of CBS' money through falsified invoices.
Not long after, however, in 1974, Davis was again leading his own label, Arista, which he'd started at the behest of Columbia Pictures (that company had no relationship at the time to CBS or Columbia Records). After helping Barry Manilow rejigger the tune "Brandy" into the No. 1 hit "Mandy," Davis' belief in his own taste was emboldened — and more so with every new hit, of which there would be many. Over the coming years, Davis would help guide the work and careers of a long list of pop stars, including Lou Reed, The Kinks and the Grateful Dead. His mentorship of Houston, who he signed at age 19, would lead her to record seven consecutive number one hits, and earn global record sales in the tens of millions. In the 2000s, while leading J Records and later RCA records, he found success in signing artists like Alicia Keys and helping turn American Idol stars like Kelly Clarkson into household names.
Davis was once called "the greatest record man of all time" by Franklin. He had a reputation for being polite but firm when it came to debating which artists he wanted to sign. "Clive listened critically," Anthony DeCurtis, music critic and co-writer of Davis' 2013 autobiography, The Soundtrack of My Life, told NPR. "He had a very clear sense of what he thought would work and what he didn't think would work."
Until his death, Davis was an active member of the music industry, regularly hosting an annual, star-studded pre-Grammys party featuring original performances. In 2003, Davis built on his reputation for fostering rising talent by founding New York University's Clive Davis Institute of Record Music in 2003, which offers programming for future music industry professionals. Across his career he earned five Grammys, and in 2000, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a non-performer. "Talk about music being a spirit, he is the epitome of that," Nwaka Onwusa, the former vice president and chief curator at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, told NPR.
"To me, there is no greater thrill than when you discover a terrific song," Davis told the Los Angeles Times in 1996. "It's not just something you can hear. You can feel it down into your spine."
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