News24 | ‘The greatest record man of all time’: Remembering the life and legacy of Clive Davis

Clive Davis, the music mastermind who championed some of the globe’s biggest names, including Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen and Santana, died Monday aged 94.

An empathetic executive whose expertise transcended genres, he displayed an uncanny ability to spin talent into gold. Aretha Franklin once called him “the greatest record man of all time.”

“Clive has the mind of a bank executive and the ears of a teenager,” said Davis protege Barry Manilow, the singer-songwriter known for Copacabana and other easy listening hits.

A lawyer by education, Davis entered the music world as counsel at Columbia Records before shifting into management and, in 1966, becoming president of the reorganised CBS Records.

It marked the start of a career that would come to define the modern music industry.

From Janis Joplin to Earth, Wind & Fire, Aerosmith to Billy Joel, Patti Smith to Alicia Keys, Davis discovered, mentored, and catapulted an empire of artists to household-name status, reigning for decades in a business where longevity is rare.

Grateful Dead singer Bob Weir even sometimes changed a lyric when performing the band’s standard “Jack Straw” to honour Davis.

“We used to play for acid,” he’d sing. “Now we play for Clive.”

Born 4 April 1932 in Brooklyn, Davis enjoyed music but did not see it as his professional future.

“The emphasis in Jewish families that did not have any money was that you’ve got to be a lawyer, or you’ve got to be a doctor,” Davis said in the documentary Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives.

“I was going to be a lawyer, with no clue what being a lawyer meant.”

He was a New York University student when personal tragedy struck: Davis’ mother died suddenly, and then his father died within the following year.

He graduated from Harvard Law School and began working at a New York law firm. His move to CBS subsidiary Columbia Records as legal counsel proved pivotal.

“I knew nothing about music. I knew nothing about what awaited me,” said Davis. “But I did seize that opportunity.”

CBS executives ultimately convinced him to change from law to management, and Davis took an interest in the burgeoning world of folk and rock.

He attended the storied Monterey Pop Festival, an experience he later described as life-changing.

Awestruck by Joplin and the social and musical revolution she embodied, Davis signed her that night.

He worked with Bob Dylan as well as Simon & Garfunkel, convincing the duo that the soft, melodic Bridge Over Troubled Water could be a radio hit, though it was far from the sounds on the airwaves at the time.

And Davis ret