News

There is exactly one person on earth who could be serenaded on his 90th birthday by (in order) Barry Manilow, Patti Smith, Dionne Warwick, Kenny G, Art Garfunkel, Earth Wind & Fire, Bruce Springsteen and Alicia Keys — and have the whole evening capped off by a brilliant Mark Ronson-helmed “megamix” of great songs from across that birthday boy’s 60-plus-year career. The answer is so obvious we’re not even going to bother.

Yes, Clive Davis’ 90th birthday party, held Wednesday night at the memorably named Cipriani South Street at Casa Cipriani in Lower Manhattan, was truly one for the ages. With around 600 guests and low-key performances, it was more intimate and not as large and elaborate as his pre-Grammy galas — well, relatively speaking, anyway. It was still the kind of event where you’re getting slightly annoyed at the person blocking the doorway until you realize it’s Martha Stewart; or you see a group of people coming up the stairs that includes Bernadette Peters, Tony Danza, Fran Drescher and Suzanne Somers; or you realize the two people in front of you who are about to effusively greet and embrace each other are Barry Manilow and Kenny G.

To read the rest, visit the Variety article here.

Clive Davis doesn’t do anything by half, and his 90th birthday is no exception. Not only will there be a star-studded party tonight at Cipriani in Lower Manhattan, there’s a four-part music-and-interview series on Paramount Plus culled from last year’s virtual pre-Grammy galas; a Clive Davis Gallery with personal items from across his career at New York University’s Brooklyn location; an interview on the “Rock & Roll High School With Pete Ganbarg” podcast airing April 14; a talk at the 92 St. Y on April 21; and two comprehensive, detailed articles here at Variety.

With two autobiographies, a documentary film and literally thousands of interviews over the course of his 60-plus year career, Davis’ history — from his childhood in Brooklyn to his early years at Columbia Records, to founding Arista and J Records and his current role as chief creative artist at Sony Music — has been well-documented, as has the crucial role he played in the careers of artists ranging from Simon & Garfunkel to Santana, Whitney Houston to Puff Daddy, Aretha Franklin to Alicia Keys and so many more. So for the main “Clive at 90” article, we spoke with many of the people who worked for him over the years, creating a rich alternate history of that career, which illuminates what a great executive, boss and mentor he is. You can read that article here. But we were offered an interview with the man himself as well.

To read the rest, visit the Variety article here.

Clive Davis’ name is a synonym for the ultimate record man.

In terms of success, influence, longevity, and the artists and executives he has mentored, he has no peer and probably never will. To give just one example, in 1972 he told a young Bruce Springsteen that the debut album he’d just submitted didn’t have any songs that would get played on the radio. Dejected but determined, that night Springsteen wrote “Spirit in the Night” and “Blinded by the Light” — and thanks Davis to this day for the tough love that spawned those two now-classics.

But that story and many others have been told countless times over the course of Davis’ 60-plus-year career, in two autobiographies, a documentary film and thousands of interviews. So for his 90th birthday, we took a different approach and spoke with 25 or so executives who were employed by Davis over the years — ranging from Ron Alexenburg, who worked with him in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, to Sarah Weinstein Dennison, who joined his team in 2004 and is on the clock for his superstar-studded 90th birthday celebration tonight in New York City. (Apologies and no offense intended to those we didn’t speak with: We could have done an equally comprehensive article with at least five different sets of alums.)

To read the rest, visit the Variety article here.

As one of the most respected names in music history, Clive Davis has not only seen it all, but discovered and fostered some of the most iconic names in entertainment, from Janis Joplin to Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen to Alicia Keys. Now, on the cusp of turning 90 years old on Apr. 4, Davis finds himself on the cutting edge once again, as the host of the new Paramount+ series Clive Davis: Most Iconic Performances, a miniseries culled from both archive performances and original interviews.

To read the rest, visit the Billboard article here.