Clive Davis

Too bad he missed his crowning achievement. Which is the endless obituaries in today's news media trumpeting him and his efforts. This is what Clive Davis wanted. Acknowledgement and immortality. And to achieve that, he was on an endless quest of personal myth-making. I'm not saying the guy was without talent. He could certainly pick a Top 40 hit. And he did sign all those acts coming out of the Monterey Pop Festival. But if you look closely at his career you'll find an endless slew of evanescent acts singing meaningless songs. They might have had commercial success once upon a time, but they've got no legs. Now let's be clear, Clive Davis was the first well-known executive of the rock and roll era. Before that... It was old men in suits, possibly chomping cigars, but they were ultimately faceless to those outside the business. And then Clive Davis got fired. Now starting a few years before this, the nascent rock press started to mention his name. Fans wanted to know who was responsible for their music, and Columbia Records was the biggest label in the land. With Warner/Reprise coming up close. But Mo Ostin had a different philosophy. Sure, he started off with momentary hits, but soon transitioned to career artists, who he took a hands-off policy towards. Whereas Clive famously meddled. He thought he knew more than the acts. Despite making his bones in the album rock world, he was really a throwback to the pre-Beatle, Tin Pan Alley era. If you're in the know, the two greatest record executives of the modern era are Mo and Ahmet Ertegun. Although I can hear Joe Smith yelling at me from his grave. Joe was pissed that he never received enough recognition, he mentioned this every time we spoke. But Joe seems to have been forgotten to the sands of time, even though he was the one who signed the Grateful Dead and did so much more. Mo? There's a book about him that was released to crickets, but if you weren't alive during that era...you probably never knew who he was, never mind forgotten him. As for Ahmet? He was the true music man of the bunch. He had roots in jazz and R& B. His Atlantic Records famously screwed the original fifties acts that built the label, but he did sign and break them, he pushed the envelope when Mitch Miller was still doing A&R at CBS. Ahmet not only had an ear, he was cultured and dignified, and when Ahmet told you a story... It was frequently out of your league, concerning a legendary club owner in Paris, but he included you, he did not act as if he was above you. Then again, the funny thing about Clive is that despite his image, those pictures you saw everywhere, he was not imposing in real life. He could have airs if you were not introduced, but he could also be intimate and friendly, yet he never stopped promoting himself, it was the opposite of Ahmet, Clive was always trying to convince you how great he was. And the somnambulant press bought it, but if you were in the business... Now not only did Clive get fired from CBS Records, he wrote a book about his career there. 1974's "Clive: Inside the Record Business" was very different from the man's 2013 tome, "The Soundtrack of My Life." The latter was a victory lap, it was unreadable hagiography. "I did this and then I did that and aren't I great!" Well, the true greats don't have to tell us they are. That's one thing that you realize when you reach the top echelon of any business, including the music business. Those at the top have nothing to prove, they do not brag, they're oftentimes more friendly than those who work beneath them. If you can gain access, you'll be wowed. But not Clive. And Clive did not play well with others. The music business is a club, a veritable high school, everybody knows everybody and your reputation is king. There's constant fraternizing, relationships are everything, but Clive was an outsider. His relationships were external, primarily with the press, and he had crack promotion men like Donnie Ienner and Richard Palmese to deal with radio. But really, Clive existed in his own backwater. He'd come up in conversation, but people in the business believed he lived in his own purgatory. Everybody else had drunk the kool-aid, music was the hottest medium, driving the culture... Clive was all about commercialization. It had to sell and it had to sell soon. And if it didn't sell, he would make you change it going forward, or wouldn't let you make any more records at all. Clive was the least artist friendly executive in the business. Once word got out, career artists refused to sign with him. He was known for interfering with the artistic process and killing careers, as he did with Hall & Oates. But before that... Clive got back into the business with Columbia Pictures' Bell Records, transforming it into Arista, and one of his first releases was that of legendary downtown poet, Patti Smith. This was credibility on steroids. This is what we expected after the book. But it didn't stay this way for long. Let's see... Arista's greatest hits... As the seventies wore on, Clive kept a foot in rock, with the Outlaws and the Alan Parsons Project, but filled the company's coffers with the work of Barry Manilow. But the rock focus quickly faded. Rock was a slog. It required FM airplay and the building of a fan base on the road and you never knew if, never mind when, you would reach critical mass. Whereas if you started with the hit... In the seventies all the action was on FM radio, where the career artists lived. But by the turn of the decade, Clive decided to focus on the derided AM dial, where catchy, mindless ditties and drivel dominated. It was easy pickings for Clive. And then he succeeded with Air Supply and Tayor Dayne and he even branched into soft jazz with Kenny G. Let's be clear, there was a ton of money generated by these acts, but they were derided in their day and if they're remembered at all, they're still laughed at. But then something funny happened. The market changed in Clive's favor. MTV came on the scene and suddenly it was Top 40 on steroids. Sure, at first it was about the old rock acts crossing over. But soon it became about ditties that would play around the world. Just what Clive specialized in. This wasn't the slow growth of Warner/Reprise, this was throw it against the wall and make sure it sticks. Massage the music and the image, trumpet it to the press, make a slick video and... The apotheosis was Whitney Houston, who was everything traditional rockers stood against. She didn't write the songs, which sounded unlike the stuff on FM, the only rock and roll thing she ended up doing was marrying Bobby Brown and taking drugs. But it was the eighties. Sunny and hedonistic, image became more important than soul, and Clive's acts were perfect for the era. Ultimately we got Milli Vanilli, who weren't even an act to begin with. Talk about a lack of credibility... And Ace of Base wasn't much better. Yes, Clive did bring Santana back with duets... But "Supernatural" goes mostly unplayed these days, whereas the initial Santana work on Columbia is legendary, a north star in its fusion of rock and Latin rhythms. Clive could make you commercial, make you some money, but in most cases he was unable to build your career, never mind embellish it. Yes, he had a disposable hit with the Dead's "Touch of Grey," but people forget that the Grateful Dead signed with Arista back in the mid-seventies, just after the label was formed, after their disastrous experience with their own record company. Would the Dead have signed with Arista in the eighties? I wouldn't think so. But Clive did deliver a hit, with a video to boot, but did it make new hard core Dead fans? I doubt it. Got to give Clive credit for going into business with Puffy's Bad Boy Records... Then again, even at that early date Puffy had a checkered legal past. And then there was the pushing aside of Clive at Arista for L.A. Reid and the establishment of J and then the reunification of the two labels, but the dirty little secret was... Clive was a bad businessman. As in when it came to the bottom line... A lot was spent and not a lot was left. Now eventually Clive aged and ran out of gas and focused upon his Grammy party. He was really into it, laboring over the seating chart, and if you were up close and personal, on the inside, it was almost sad. Clive was hanging on by a thread, he needed this party to show that he still mattered. So why am I bothering to piss on Clive Davis, especially upon his death? BECAUSE HE WAS THE ANTITHESIS OF EVERYTHING I LOVE ABOUT THE MUSIC AND THIS BUSINESS! The Beatles broke and then it was about albums, statements, our acts were gurus who we followed more than politicians, movie stars, ANYBODY! And then Clive is purveying this meaningless commercial crap, contributing to the downfall of the edifice that threw off so much money that Warner/Reprise paid for the Warner cable system. More money was made from records than movies. Which is why conglomerates picked up all these companies. And let's be clear, the executives were well paid. But other than Clive, no one mistook themselves for the artist. It was clear who created the music, who was in control, but not with Clive, he thought he was the act, that he knew better! And now we have songs written by committee fronted by airheads with no backbone who will do anything to make a dollar, who are categorically unable to say no. But are any of Clive's acts playing the Sphere? Well, Dead & Company if you want to stretch it, but my point is do Arista acts have such rabid fan bases that they can sell out arenas at multi-hundred dollar ticket prices? NO! There's really no there there. When back in the so-called day, EVERYTHING WAS THERE! These acts were our lifeblood. They made so much money that they could blow it destroying hotel rooms and carry on, knowing there was much more where that came from. They lived outside the system, they commented on the system, they were beacons imploring their audiences to think, to question authority. Clive's acts? They were like the Scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz." Clive is not much different from Sumner Redstone, who convinced himself he would not die. But he did. And then Viacom went into the toilet and his name has been scrubbed from the public consciousness, if not history. As for Clive... It's double zeros. Not only will he not be remembered by future generations, the acts he signed and promoted won't be either. There's no legacy! But this guy snookered the press into believing his hype. The best artists let their music speak for themselves. And the best executives let their artists speak for them. But Clive Davis was all about speaking endlessly for himself, tooting his own horn. You won't read the above in the hosannas in the obituaries, but those on the inside know. And those on the outside too, because the acts Clive promoted were ultimately hollow. The exec should sign and promote, they should not meddle in the music itself. And other than Jimmy Iovine, nobody has self-promoted like Clive since. Doug Morris got a lot of publicity, became too big for his britches, was fired by Bob Morgado and became press shy thereafter, while building the world's biggest recorded music company, Universal Music. And Lucian Grainge has only grown the company, engineering the Capitol merger, and as a result of his perch and his power he's in the news, but we don't see endless puff pieces, Lucian is not on an endless press tour promoting himself. This business is not what it was. There have been a lot of changes, first FM radio, then MTV and the CD and then the internet. It's so far from the garden it's disillusioning. And the first thing wannabes want to talk about is money. And everybody's bitching they're not more successful. What they want is Clive Davis to put them up front and center, to promote them to the world. But are they worth it? In most cases not. Never mind that today labels seem unable to break an act. The story of today is the Balkanization of music, and live... You don't see Michael Rapino touting himself, and he's even more powerful than Lucian, he's promoting multiple genres, he's the one who is paying the acts. There was not enough love in the world for Clive Davis. The boy from Brooklyn was always trying to convince us he was worthy. Only someone extremely insecure would need to promote himself to this degree. Clive signed some good acts, especially in his CBS days. He knew what was a hit, and he could promote a worthy record to success. But he was not the only one who could do this. And when it comes to lasting records, others did it so much better. In the long run, Clive Davis does not matter. But a bunch of the acts still do. And almost all of them were not on Arista. -- Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ -- Listen to the podcast: -iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj -Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp -- http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz -- If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter, http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1 If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25 To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25