Clive Davis, music industry starmaker, has died at 94
Clive Davis, a music industry mogul who launched or resurrected the careers of Janis Joplin, Whitney Houston, Carlos Santana and Alicia Keys, has died. He was 94.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
Davis died in his Manhattan apartment, weeks after being hospitalised for an upper respiratory issue, his publicist Aliza Rabinoff said.
Davis' family said he "shaped the soundtrack of countless lives. He discovered, mentored, and championed the greatest artists in modern music history".
"We celebrate not only a towering figure whose influence changed music forever, but the man who led our family with grace, generosity, and kindness," they said on Instagram.
Carlos Santana called him "a visionary," while Patti Smith thanked him for a half century of "love and support".
Davis' influence grew since the 1960s to span genres and labels as he directed the careers of everyone from Barry Manilow, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart, Aerosmith, Earth, Wind and Fire, Neil Diamond, Pink Floyd, Whitney Houston to American Idol winners Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson.
He worked with a number of veteran artists and groups including Aretha Franklin, The Kinks and Eurythmics and in 2000 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
His groundbreaking support for black artists earned him the NAACP's Vanguard Award. His exclusive pre-Grammys gala has been an institution since he first threw the party in 1976.
"Clive's talent has always been seeing and hearing what other people don't," former US president Barack Obama said in a video message played at this year's gala.
Davis was born on April 4, 1932 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of a travelling salesman, and attended Harvard Law School.
He became an in-house lawyer at a time when Columbia Records was resisting rock 'n' roll.
Seven years later, he was company president and seeking to capitalise on the counterculture spirit he witnessed at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival.
His success stories were a staggering who's who of America's most iconic and enduring musical acts - with Houston both a crowning achievement and a devastating tragedy.
Davis signed her to his Arista record label when she was just a teen and turned her into America's reigning pop princess.
Houston racked up multiple No. 1 hits before drug abuse hobbled her career.
She died in a Beverly Hills hotel room in 2012, hours before Davis' annual gala downstairs. He had been convinced she was turning her life around.
"Maybe I should have been more sceptical," Davis wrote in his 2013 memoir, The Soundtrack of My Life, "but I've always been optimistic, and I felt hopeful. It felt like old times".
Davis proudly noted the other talents he signed, including Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Diamond, Billy Joel, Blood Sweat & Tears and other "all-timers", as he so often put it.
"I signed Patti Smith, the great Renaissance woman ... I signed Lou Reed ... I signed the Grateful Dead," he proudly touted in an interview with The Associated Press in 1999.
He also signed the up-and-coming producer Sean "Diddy" Combs, whose Bad Boy Records under Davis scored huge hits, most notably with Notorious B.I.G., long before Diddy landed in prison.
Davis also kept veterans relevant. Aretha Franklin flourished in her later years at Arista as did Luther Vandross at another Davis label, J Records.
It was Davis who conceived of the 1999 album Supernatural, pairing guitar god Santana with some of the day's hottest talents to win eight Grammys.
And he persuaded middle-aged rocker Rod Stewart to try standards from The Great American Songbook. That album, released in 2003, selling close to 40 million copies.
Stewart described Davis as "a giant of a man in the music business".
"He was the only one who believed a rock singer could sing the standards with conviction - other labels rejected the idea.", he wrote.
His collaborators didn't always agree - Davis won a bitter fight with producer David Foster over Houston's all-time hit, a cover of Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You - and the song was published with its iconic a cappella intro.
And Manilow strongly objected to recording I Write the Songs - a song he didn't write - but it too became a signature hit.
"He's just brilliant at picking ideas he thinks the public will connect," raved Manilow.
Bruce Springsteen said "he changed my life when he signed me to Columbia Records".
"He treated me with the same respect and kindness as a 22-year-old nobody as he did after all my success," he said.
Columbia fired Davis in 1973, accusing him of mismanaging funds. Davis pleaded guilty to tax evasion and had to pay a $US10,000 ($A14,284) fine, but said Columbia funded Arista to resolve the dispute.
That label became another huge success, with country superstars Brooks & Dunn, sassy R&B group TLC, Babyface, Houston, Franklin and others.
Arista also signed Milli Vanilli, the male pop duo that was stripped of its best new artist Grammy after revealing they were lip-syncing their songs.
In 1999, Arista's parent company BMG Entertainment, a division of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, wanted him to retire.
He was ousted despite support from his superstar roster. But BMG then helped Davis launch J Records, where he found his next star in Keys, a piano-playing singer-songwriter whose powerful pipes and dramatic R&B songs would sell millions of Grammy-winning albums.
Davis later ran BMG's U. division, guiding American Idol winners to platinum albums.
Some disagreed with his directions - Clarkson went her own way with My December - but she apologised after the album flopped. Davis was serving as worldwide chief creative officer at Sony Music Entertainment at his death.
He was married twice, and in his memoir, confirmed he was bisexual and living with a man.
His family - including four children - shared a loving statement, saying they "celebrate not only a towering figure whose influence changed music forever, but the man who led our family with grace, generosity, and kindness".