This week, the storied record label executive Clive Davis published his autobiography, The Soundtrack of My Life – an account of five decades in the music business and his central role in the careers of Whitney Houston, Alicia Keys, Barry Manilow and more. Attention, however, has focused less on the music and more on Davis's bisexuality, a revelation that the 80-year-old made calmly.
"There will come a time," he writes, "when very few will care about other people's sexual preference – or preferences." There are, indeed, far more interesting things in the book than this and the "she-said he-said" Kelly Clarkson imbroglio. ("She cried", he said; "He was a bully", she said – and so on). Here's what we learned:
Janis Joplin wanted to "ball him" (and he turned her down)
When an endearingly square Davis first sees Janis Joplin perform, it's at the flower-strewn, marijuana-soaked Monterey Pop Festival and he's wearing "a V neck tennis sweater in the traditional white, maroon and black, over white pants." He's blown away by the "not conventionally beautiful" Janis and signs her as soon as he can. But she also seems to terrify him. Herewith, the most cringingly indelible line of the book: "In the afternoon sun, she radiated a desperate sexual heat." So "desperate" that after signing her and the band, their manager tells him: "She thinks it only fitting and proper that she ball you to cement the deal." Davis declined the offer "as politely as I could."
He assented to be dressed by Miles Davis
If a legendary jazz trumpeter wants to style his record label boss, who is Davis to say no? Miles sends him "a pair of black-and-gray flared trousers, a black-and-gray striped vest, and a long sleeved black shirt", accompanied by a note asking him to wear this outfit to the opening night of his shows with the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore West because, as he puts it, "I want you to look special." And he certainly did.
He missed out on owning a Warhol and he hasn't got over it
When Andy Warhol made an album-cover portrait of Aretha Franklin, Davis was tempted to buy it but thought the asking price, $25,000, a little steep. "I was recently in a first-class restaurant at Park Avenue and Fifty-third Street called Casa Lever," he writes. "On the wall was the Warhol portrait of Aretha." On learning from the manager that it's worth $3.7m, he writes, "I lost my appetite and, good and hospitable as the restaurant is, I have difficulty going back there."
He has watched Austin Powers and would like you to know that he has a sense of humour
In his chapter on the Milli Vanilli scandal, Davis claims he had no idea that the duo did not, in fact, sing on their own recordings. "Over the years I've tried to comprehend how that might have played out, how the discussions with the producer might have gone: 'Look, we all know these aren't the singers on the tracks but let's pretend we don't know, and pull of this musical fraud' – at which point I might have stroked a cat in my lap like Dr Evil."
He told what Whitney what to do
Davis begins this section of the book by saying that it is "without question" the most difficult chapter for him to write and his grief following the singer's death last February is palpable. It is extraordinary, though, to read of just how peremptory he was in the early stages of her stardom. Davis reproduces a lengthy, paternalistic letter to a young Whitney in which he enumerates several "constructive suggestions". "It's certainly OK to improvise at the end of the song and to extend it and give it a soulful feeling but it can't go on and on just aimlessly," he chides. "[...] it looks like you don't know how to end the song."
He and Michael Jackson used to sing to each other down the phone
Would that we had tapes of this! Davis reveals that during a conversation with MJ about his annual pre-Grammys party, "We would take turns singing songs together on the phone as we talked about the various artists who would be performing and his favourite hits of theirs."
Clive and rappers have a lot in common (he believes)
Nowhere does this self-described good, Jewish, Brooklyn boy seem more clueless than in his chapters on Bad Boy, the imprint of Arista Records run by Sean Combs – or Puffy, as Davis still calls him. When Davis is called on to speak about Combs to "a large hall filled with all the power players, both artists and executives, in the hip-hop community" he is "concerned that I might not fit in or that I would be perceived as not fitting in". But don't worry y'all, he's got this. This, the middle-aged white record executive proudly recalls, was his opening sally: "Let me just get one issue out of the way right here and now: Tonight you motherfuckers are gonna get the real Clive Davis!" But here's Clive keeping it real, with his explanation of what he and the world of hip-hop have in common: "I am passionate about music and my work to the bottom of my very soul, but I also very much enjoy good clothes and some of the finer things in life. Rappers do too, and perhaps it's one of the reasons I've been welcomed so warmly into their world."
The Davis clan play their own version of American Idol
Towards the end of the book you can practically feel Davis leaning back in his armchair, soaked in paterfamilias satisfaction. "So it's been a wonderfully full life," he writes. But, he writes, if his account of the record business "leaves you, the reader, with the impression that I had little or no life outside of work, let me correct that notion right now." There follows a bewildering insight into Davis family life when he reveals that they play a version of American Idol, the megalithic TV show on which he was a guest judge. "The competition is really serious in the warmest of atmospheres", and it takes place in his home's "wonderful theater which comfortably seats about forty people". In case you were wondering.
He is very, very proud of his parties
Oh did he mention his pre-Grammys party? Yes. Yes, I think he did. The book begins and ends and is regularly punctuated with much chest-puffed musing on this annual event, "a music business institution to which invitations are highly coveted". The hardest part, he brags, "is saying no, even to people I socialize with regularly." Never mind Whitney's seven consecutive No1s, forget being inducted into the Hall of Fame or his five Grammy Awards – the real reason he's going to die happy is this: "It is one of my proudest achievements that it continues to this day... the party is still going strong – more exclusive, more unique, and more festive than ever."
