Farewell to the Last Music Mogul

Y ou don’t expect a lot of laughs at a funeral, but even before dozens of entertainment’s biggest names — musicians, business titans, executives, media personalities — filed into New York’s Central Synagogue on June 29 to say goodbye to Clive Davis, who died one week earlier at age 94, there were already jokes predicting the gathering’s run time.

“We know he didn’t plan it, because it would have been eight hours — and four would’ve been Clive talking,” Diane Warren recounts with her signature sass. “And I say that with love.” The award-winning songwriter, responsible for eternal hits like Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” and Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time,” was referencing Davis’ annual pre-Grammy gala, a star-studded Saturday-night soiree where music industry heavies, politicians, and other VIPs co-mingled for years as top talent took the stage to deliver unforgettable performances.

Between bows, Davis would shout-out luminaries in the ballroom, listing their accolades like he was reading a résumé aloud. The format was long — some might say tedious — and tightened ever so minimally as Davis aged. On Jan. 31 this year, with Davis seated for his hosting duties, Art Garfunkel took the Grammy party stage around 11 p.m., capping off a night that showcased of-the-moment stars like Olivia Dean and Sombr, regulars Jennifer Hudson and John Legend, hip-hop stars Clipse, and a tribute to Ozzy Osbourne featuring MGK and Jelly Roll.

At 90 minutes, Davis’ funeral stood in contrast to his famed parties, or even the A&R meetings he led, but the seating chart was no less challenging. Behind the immediate family — sons Fred, Doug, and Mitch, and daughter Lauren — were Bruce Springsteen, Barry Manilow, and Usher. Across the aisle sat Dionne Warwick, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, Alicia Keys, Hudson, Mark Ronson, and Stevie Wonder.

Farther down the pews were top brass from WME and CAA, actor Adrien Brody, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Gayle King cut her European vacation short to make it. Sony Music Group chairman Rob Stringer flew in from London. Performing that Monday morning were Kenny G, Hudson, and Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, who delivered a moving “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” (“You have a home at Sony Music Classics,” Stringer cracked.)

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Given that Davis had for five decades served as host and emcee of a party that bore his name, there were certain expectations of this last curtain call — a celebration as much as a send-off, meticulously planned by the man himself, according to attendees.

“He was a household name,” says veteran label exec Barry Weiss, who worked with Davis while running Jive Records during its most profitable period, when Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Backstreet Boys were selling millions of albums. “It’s very rare that somebody goes beyond the scope of just the music industry in terms of recognition, and Clive did that. I look at him as a national treasure and an American hero — the greatest record guy ever put on Earth.”

“He saw what very few people could see; he heard what very few people could hear,” Motown founder Berry Gordy adds of Davis, whom he calls a “treasured friend” and “truly one of a kind.”

DAVIS DREW A-LISTERS to his orbit with little effort. He’d been doing it since the Sixties, when, as a fledgling label executive (outfitted in a tennis sweater and white slacks, with nary a hippie bead to be seen), a trip to the Monterey International Pop Festival led to his signing Janis Joplin to Columbia Records, followed in short order by Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and Santana.

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Davis’ ambitions and golden ear would help soundtrack the next 50 years of pop, R&B, rock, and crossover hits. Among them: chart-toppers by Whitney Houston (“How Will I Know,” “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”), Dionne Warwick (“That’s What Friends Are For”), Santana with Rob Thomas (“Smooth”), and Kelly Clarkson (“My Life Would Suck Without You”), alongside classics by Springsteen, Chicago, and even the Grateful Dead.

“Clive had his hand on so many different things across all different genres of music,” says producer Jimmy Jam, who, along with his partner Terry Lewis, worked on a number of records at labels Davis ran — which would include Arista Records, launched in 1974, and J Records, the instant-major he founded in 2000. “I know the term ‘music’s best friend’ was one that people said about him. And I really feel that because of the lasting reverberations that we still hear today.”

Even Springsteen was once just a guy with a guitar going in to audition for the man himself “with nothing but my whole world to lose,” he said from the pulpit, recalling one fateful morning in 1972. “I sat down, and tentatively strummed my guitar. And when I finished, Clive, smiling, simply said, ‘Welcome to Columbia.’ And in those few words, he changed my life forever.”

In the latter half of his career, Davis got into the reinvention business — with Rod Stewart among the beneficiaries, thanks to a hit album of American standards. “Nobody in the industry would touch the Great American Songbook. Not a soul,” Stewart says of the 2002 collection. “They said a rock singer had no business singing the standards, and if I did, nobody would buy the bloody thing. Clive Davis was the only one who saw it differently. He was in the studio till three, four in the morning, going over the tracks with the band. And I kid you not, the man could hear a missed note from a mile off. It was a mad thought even having an executive in the room like that — but Clive was different.”

Much has been said and written about Davis’ ear — an exceptional track record for spotting and crafting hit songs. Was it a natural-­born talent? A gut feeling? A skill honed after years of studying the charts, radio plays, sales data, and now streaming numbers? To hear his closest associates tell it, the magic was in the match — pairing the talent with the tune. And the list was long and impressive: Barry Manilow’s “I Write the Songs,” Melissa Manchester’s “Don’t Cry Out Loud,” and Whitney Houston’s smash remake of “I Will Always Love You,” to name a few. “He had a very mysterious way of choosing the right person for the right song,” Warwick tells Rolling Stone. “‘Heartbreaker’ was one I did not want to record.… And he called me and said, ‘Dionne, you have to record this song. I can guarantee you it will be one of your biggest hits internationally.’ … Well, guess what? He was right.”

That experience was shared by Kenny Loggins, whom Davis paired with Jim Messina for a string of hits in the Seventies. “Clive said, ‘I want a six-year commitment, because I don’t want to release the album of a band that’s going to break up,’” Loggins recalls. “And so, at his insistence, we stuck together, and that was the foundation of my solo career.”

“He could hear a hit, and he could hear a song that missed, as well,” says songwriter Carole Bayer Sager, whose credits include Warwick’s “That’s What Friends Are For.” “I remember Burt [Bacharach] and I sent him a song once, and he wrote back a note saying, ‘We all know you’re incapable of not writing a good song, but I’m looking for an incredible song, and this one is not the one.’ It was such a nice way of rejecting me.”

How did a songwriter know when Davis connected with a song? “You saw it on his face,” says Warren, who shared successes with Davis like Celine Dion’s “Because You Loved Me” and Toni Braxton’s “Un-Break My Heart.” “I saw tears in his eyes sometimes. This is someone that really felt it.”

“He was a great A&R man,” says Bayer Sager. “And of course, nobody demonstrates that more than his relationship with Whitney, who was one of the greatest singers of all time, but also did follow along with what Clive wanted her to do. And what a career that was, and what a pairing. He found her and he molded her, and she allowed him to have that position in her life for a very long time. It was an amazing pairing of A&R and artist greatness on both sides.”

“It was partially his kindness, because he was a real gentleman,” adds Weiss. “And it was also from a business point of view, because he always believed you never know where your next hit is coming from. The writer who hasn’t had a hit in eight years might come up with ‘I Will Always Love You’ next week. So you stay engaged with everybody. That was Clive.”

Indeed, some of Davis’ biggest successes were the executives and creatives he mentored and championed, like Larry Jackson, who founded Gamma (home to Kanye West and Usher) after a decade at Apple. The two would meet regularly at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Davis’ West Coast outpost, as Jackson sharpened his A&R skills, and long after. “He always had an insatiable quest to have his taste and his understanding of the marketplace stay current,” says Jackson. “He wanted to know the producers I was into; [which] songwriters I thought were the best. He would listen to all the newest releases. He had a voracious appetite to not fall off. He never wanted to have a dated point of view.”

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Jackson had a prime seat at Davis’ A&R meetings, which were notoriously chilly, loud, and, yes, long. “We would be making creative decisions from noon until 5 or 6 p.m. And then my workday started. That was my experience working with him. It was around the clock.”

By most accounts, Davis was still incredibly active in his final months. In April, he attended Springsteen’s Land of Hope and Dreams Tour at Newark, New Jersey’s Prudential Center. (“He’s 94 years old; he’s standing up for a three-hour show,” Springsteen marveled at the funeral.) Over Memorial Day weekend, Davis hosted family and friends at his Pound Ridge, New York, estate. He had plans to see Paul Simon perform at New York’s Forest Hills Stadium, and was looking ahead to a July Fourth bash. Says Jackson: “He had such a lust for life and just a vigorous stamina that I honestly thought he was going to outlive us all.”