Clive Davis was not the first powerful man in the music business. There were, however, few who were known as he was for his instincts for talent. Yes, he launched Janis Joplin, Carlos Santana, Bruce Springsteen, but also, the template he built across three separate reinventions — Columbia in the late 1960s, Arista through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and J Records from the age of 68 — is the template every major label executive since has operated from, whether they know it or not.
As news spreads of his passing this week at the age of 94, this is a look at how Clive Davis became the mould.
Act One: How Clive Davis Transformed Columbia Records
Davis came to music sideways. He trained as a lawyer at Harvard Law School, joined the Columbia Records parent company as assistant counsel in 1960, and was named president of the now iconic label in 1967 at 35, a position he accepted, he says, largely because of a twist of fate that had almost sent him to run Columbia’s musical instruments division instead, per Rolling Stone. He knew almost nothing about rock music when he took the job. CBS Records had previously focused on artists like Tony Bennett and Jerry Vale.
What changed everything was a single weekend. In June 1967, Davis attended the Monterey Pop Festival at the invitation of Lou Adler, who managed the Mamas and the Papas. “I knew I was in the midst of something unique and profoundly deep,” Davis later wrote. He signed Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company before the weekend was over. “Joplin was mesmerizing, like a white tornado,” Davis said. Within months, he had also signed or developed Santana, Blood Sweat & Tears, Chicago, Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Pink Floyd, Neil Diamond, Earth Wind & Fire, and Bruce Springsteen.
Introduced by legendary A&R man John Hammond, Springsteen was still raw and commercially uncertain at the time. Davis’s involvement in shaping Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. included encouraging Springsteen to write more radio-friendly material like “Blinded by the Light.” Although Springsteen’s early sales were modest, Davis’s belief in his potential never wavered.
The firing in 1973 was humiliating and public. Following a federal investigation and an internal CBS probe, Davis was dismissed for misappropriating $94,000 from the label — money used in part to pay for his son’s bar mitzvah and family vacations. He was subsequently indicted on six counts of federal income tax evasion, pleaded guilty to one count, and was fined $10,000. In any conventional career, this was the ending.
Act Two: How Clive Davis Built Arista Records From Nothing
In 1974, Columbia Pictures offered Davis the chance to consolidate three failing imprints — Bell Records, Colpix, and Colgems — into a new entity. He called it Arista, after the New York school system’s honours society. The label made its first commercial score immediately; Davis insisted that Barry Manilow, one of Bell’s remaining artists, release “Mandy” as his next single. It went to number one. This was the Davis method in miniature — an executive willing to override conventional industry wisdom about what an artist should release, proved right by the market.
Arista became home to Aretha Franklin, the Grateful Dead, Dionne Warwick, Hall and Oates, Kenny G, Sarah McLachlan, Annie Lennox, TLC (via LaFace Records), Toni Braxton and most consequentially, Whitney Houston. Davis signed Houston at 19 in 1983 and spent the next decade developing her. Houston released seven multi-platinum albums under his stewardship, including the 1992 The Bodyguard soundtrack, which became one of the best-selling albums in history. Franklin, who spent multiple decades working with Davis after signing to Arista in 1980, called him “the greatest record man of all time”.
The label also survived the Milli Vanilli scandal of 1990, and in 1999 produced one of the decade’s most remarkable commercial coups; Davis conceived the idea of pairing Carlos Santana, whose commercial relevance had faded significantly since his 1970s peak, with contemporary hitmakers on an album called Supernatural, which went on to win nine Grammy Awards and sell more than 20 million copies worldwide.
In 2000, Davis was removed as head of Arista and replaced by L.A. Reid following the merger of parent companies Sony and Bertelsmann. He was 68. The industry widely expected retirement.
Act Three: How Clive Davis Founded J Records At 68
Instead, BMG gave Davis $150 million in seed money to start a new imprint. He called it J Records. His first significant signing was a 20-year-old singer-songwriter named Alicia Keys, whose debut album Songs in A Minor was released in 2001 and sold 12 million copies worldwide and won five Grammy Awards at the 44th ceremony in 2002. Davis had done it a third time; walked into a new institutional context, found a generational talent nobody else had prioritised, and built a commercial and critical record around her that defined a decade of popular music.
What Clive Davis’s Career Actually Changed
Before Davis, the dominant model at major labels was institutional; executives managed rosters, made deals, applied formulas. Davis’s innovation was to make the executive’s personal taste the label’s competitive advantage.
Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 as the only non-performer to receive that honour at the time. He won five Grammy Awards. He founded the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2003 with a $5 million donation. He died, per his family’s statement, peacefully at home, surrounded by family.
