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CLife Davis always said that his life in the music business really kickstarted when he chose to participate in the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival: it was there that he saw Janis Joplin and her group Big Brother and the Holding Company, and immediately bought their contract for $200,000, the first really high-profile signing of his work. But Davis was no match for the high-profile event of the Summer of Love: he was a Harvard-educated lawyer who was “surprised” when a reorganization of Columbia Records saw him promoted from general counsel to president of the company. He was sharp enough to notice the direction in which the wind of pop culture was blowing – “cultural and philosophical change”, he later recalled, “the Haight-Ashbury place, and the peace of love and flowers” – but he was not a hippy idea. Amid a sea of paisley, batik, love beads and bells, Davis attended the festival wearing “khaki pants and a tennis sweater”.
It was a picture he remembered often as a joke – “Me it was a surprise to be surrounded by everyone with flowers in their hair “- but there was something else to say about it too: The skill of Davis as the former so-called man of history lay in his ability to balance the progressive and the traditional. Chambers Brothers. But he did not forget the other side of the company, which did a good job of singing and listening easily and was at home to Barbra Streisand and Tony Bennett: at one time, he found himself trying to repeat the contracts of Bob Dylan. and Andy Williams. When he founded Arista Records in 1974, he did the same: it was the label that gave a home to Patti Smith and Barry Manilow.
That Davis never seemed to favor one genre or genre of music may be due to his background. Before he started working at Columbia, he said that he was not interested in the music industry, and he was not a big fan of music: “I listened casually,” he recalled, “like everyone listens to the radio. You can see how this helped him to move between genres with ease – he was happy to sign Earth Wind and Fire like Aerosmith or Bruce Springsteen – or to take risks where others would have stopped. When Miles Davis complained that his records were not bought in the amount he would have liked, Davis boldly said to leave the jazz arena and playing as support for rock bands, one of the most important factors in the success of Bitches’ Brew in 1969. But the most remarkable thing was his unfailing ear for music, his innate understanding of what would appeal to the masses.
It was Davis who saw the young of 1971 UK captured by Scott English called Brandy and took her to Manilow (also called Mandy, she became the first No 1); Davis who heard something in the work of young songwriters named Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff and signed their famous label, Philadelphia International Records, to share with them; Davis who scored Saving All My Love for You and I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) for the biggest hit of the 80s, Whitney Houston; Davis re-signed Santana in the late 90s with permission to be allowed to choose half of the songs on his next album (Spiritual went on to sell 30m copies); Davis who decided that what the winner of American Idol Kelly Clarkson needed was a song a little stronger and higher than the usual price of the winner of the talent of TV, and he saw in Since U Been Gone, the song of Max Martin / Lukasz Gottwald that had already been rejected by Pink and Hilary Duff. He seemed to know instinctively when to intervene in the work of an artist – he told Springsteen that he had to move around if he did not want to be tied with the “new Dylan” tag that Davis thought was the kiss of death – and to sit down and leave them alone: he was rejected when he tried to sign the Grateful Dead in the early 70’s to represent himself. from all the other music companies, then signed them when the job came to grief, just as Davis had predicted.
Of course they were wrong, among them rejecting Meat Loaf’s 43m-selling Out of Hell because it was “too showy” and its author didn’t look like a star. But his successes have been so great and varied that it seems almost obscene to dwell on his failures. Also, he showed that he had an amazing ability to keep going through what seemed to be work-disrupting accidents. Arista was founded after he was fired by Columbia, who said there were errors that Davis strongly objected to. After being fired by Arista in 2000, he established his own label J Records, which was very popular in the early 00s, the home of Christina Aguilera and Avril Lavigne, Alicia Keys and Kesha, Maroon 5 and Leona Lewis: keeping one eye on the center of the road, J and the reincoring of Rodrigo’s music, J. Many standards of the American Songbook.
It was, in every way, a wonderful work, so different that it was almost impossible to understand. After meeting a man who suggested a connection between Barry Manilow and Iggy Pop or Bruce Springsteen and Whitney Houston, the interviewers were asked, what did the group of artists Davis worked with have in common? Clive Davis had a short answer ready: “They are all”, he likes to say, “headmasters”.
