In Clive Davis’ handsomely appointed penthouse apartment on Park Avenue, there’s a long windowsill adorned with photos of the music mogul’s family and friends, among the latter such familiar faces as Rod Stewart, Barry Manilow, Dionne Warwick and the late Whitney Houston.
Davis, who will turn 81 in April, has “a lot more” pictures at his weekend home in suburban Pound Ridge, he says, and it’s surely not an empty boast. In his more than five decades in the business — first as a lawyer at Columbia Records, then as chief of that fabled company and founder of his own two labels, Arista and J — Davis has helped discover, nurture and revitalize the careers of some of the biggest names in rock, pop, R&B and jazz.
In his new memoir, The Soundtrack of My Life (Simon & Schuster), co-written with Rolling Stone contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis, Davis takes readers from his Brooklyn, N.Y., boyhood through his ascent to one of the most high-profile and creatively engaged executives in his field — and also includes, in the final chapter, a highly personal revelation. Setbacks are addressed in detail, from his 1973 firing at Columbia in the midst of a legal scandal to his removal from Arista’s top position in 1999. (He’s now chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment.)
But as Soundtrack makes clear, such reversals did not impede Davis’ ability to play key roles in the progress of icons ranging from Janis Joplin to Miles Davis, Billy Joel to Annie Lennox, Patti Smith to Alicia Keys. Not too shabby for a guy who, as he admits early in the book, wasn’t actually a fan of rock ‘n’ roll. “It just wasn’t for me, any more than Hula Hoops or coonskin Davy Crockett hats were,” he writes.
Then Davis attended the Monterey Pop Festival of 1967 and had what he describes in conversation as “an epiphany. Watching artists like Joplin perform, I felt that tingle down my spine; I experienced the wonders of a cultural and musical revolution.” He grew committed to Joplin and then-fledgling bands such as Santana, Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears — “artists I thought were groundbreaking and cutting-edge. And I found that I had a natural gift” for spotting talent “that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.”
In later decades, of course, Davis would gain even greater renown for his work with pop and R&B divas, none more so than Houston. There’s a chapter dedicated to the superstar (who died last year, on the day of Davis’ pre-Grammy awards gala) that begins, “Without question, this is the most difficult chapter for me to write.”
Read more: USAToday
