Remembering Clive Davis

USC Thornton School of Music remembers friend and recent guest, Clive Davis. Davis was a prolific A&R and record executive, in addition to record producer and a lawyer, having graduated with a Bachelors from New York University and a J.D. from Harvard. He is most known for championing artists such as Pink Floyd and Whitney Houston into unbelievable success. 

Thornton was honored to have Mr. Davis as a guest at the USC campus earlier this year, in what ended up being his last public speaking event before his passing. Below, we share the wisdom that he offered to our students, in a complete transcript of his conversation with Dean Jason King on Tuesday, March 24th, 2026.

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Jason King:

Clive Davis is with us! Incredible. So welcome to USC, Clive. We’re so happy to have you here. You’ve been hosting the pre-Grammy Gala for 50 years. Can you tell us a little bit about what it takes to build that night from inception, the first planning conversation until the fully realized version that we saw?

Clive Davis:

Well, I really didn’t start working on it until the Grammy nominations were announced, because so often artists are disappointed in their pursuit of a Grammy. If they’re not nominated, they might not come to LA. So, beginning with the Grammy nominations, I really go through all the new artists I keep abreast– I keep current– to pick out those performers, like Alex Warren or Darren Criss, or the ones that you saw in the film that could best represent music of the past year with the criterion, “Will they get a standing ovation?” That to me is the ultimate test. And then filled out the evening as you saw by tributing Roberta Flack, or of course the closing with Artie Garfunkel and “Bridge Over Troubled Water” to make the evening memorable and special.

Jason King:

Tell me, Clive, how do you stay so current? It’s so interesting to see Sombr and then there’s Art Garfunkel – that’s a very interesting range, but how do you stay so current and you’ve stayed current for such a long time. How do you do that?

Clive Davis:

Well, for the fear of going over the hill, I keep current by listening to new music and seeing the emergence of different artists and appraising them ultimately who I would invite to perform at the Pre-Grammy Gala.

Jason King:

Was there a moment in the gala from this year that surprised you or something that was unusual?

Clive Davis:

Well, of course it turned out to be an incredible evening as it is every year. Being introduced by Barack Obama is a lifetime memory milestone that I’ll never forget. And to see the research he did to pick out the important moments that might have influenced music, it really touched me greatly, touched me greatly. So I treasure that and cherish it.

Jason King:

Was that a surprise to you that he was going to do the introduction or is that something you’d worked on?

Clive Davis:

It wasn’t a surprise, but it was a surprise when he said he’d do it. That was very special. I met him and Michelle Obama in a very unique way. Aretha, the great Aretha was being honored by the Kennedy Center and she often asked me to escort her. During that week of the Kennedy Center Honors, you go to the White House with the honorees that have been nominated and she said, “I’m going to arrange to introduce you to Michelle and Barack.” And she did and I did have a private few moments. There’s always that – look, we’re all human, so you don’t know who knows what about you if you’re a public person– but to feel that both Michelle and Barack knew of me, knew of my career, the kind of personal dialogue that we had, I got to tell you – I’ll never forget.

Jason King:

There’s also something really special about being in that room. I don’t know if this was captured in what you saw, but for those of us who are kind of on the outskirts of the industry, everybody you can possibly imagine is in that room and the opportunity to see people that you look up to and have looked up to for such a long time in that room, in that space and the interaction, is really special. Can you talk about the feeling in that room? I think we got it captured, but I’d love for you to talk about it from your perspective.

Clive Davis:

Well, from the moment cocktails begin and each entrance sees who is in that room, you sort of feel a tingle every time. I do those shout-outs – which has become a signature of the evening – so that in that grand ballroom of a thousand people, you know who you’re seeing and sharing the evening with. So you could see that the shout-outs get almost equal applause with the performers. Everybody feels it’s so special to be sitting in the same room with Gladys Knight, with Joni Mitchell, with the artist that I introduced. So that is a signature part of the evening that you never see. I don’t like stage weights and it serves not only the purpose of avoiding any stage weight, but it makes the evening more special.

Jason King:

And great for the younger artists who are being discovered or taking their first kind of steps on stage in that year or in the years before, it’s just a great opportunity for them I think to also be in the room with legends.

Clive Davis:

Yes. Yeah.

Jason King:

So let’s talk about that for a second. When we look at the laundry list of artists that you’ve worked with over the decades, and the way that you literally helped shape the sound of popular music of the 20th and 21st century, not everybody who sits in a chair like this can say that but it’s absolutely true that you have been a guiding force in shaping the sound of music. What do people still misunderstand about what it is that you do?

Clive Davis:

Well, I don’t know if they misunderstand, but in many cases it’s not just that I signed the artist, like in the case of Barry Manilow and Whitney Houston. In the case of Barry, who writes and is in the Songwriters Hall of Fame –  after “Mandy” became the huge number one hit that it was, Barry gave me two songs on every album. He obviously wrote the rest, but every song that I gave him – “I Write the Songs,” “Can’t Smile Without You,” “Trying to Get the Feeling Again,” “Weekend in New England,” I Made It Through the Rain,” – became a huge number one big hit record, and me now sitting before you, 55 to 60 years later, to see these songs still resonate night after night at a Barry concert.

I also, along with my A&R staff, was the only one that ever met with Whitney in the choice and the choosing of the material that she would perform. No father, no mother ever, no Bobby Brown, she would never tolerate anyone else being there with the two of us and we would narrow down from the 18 songs. I would come with the 10 or 11 that would make the album. So, it’s not just a list of artists you discover, but it’s how you participate in their career meaningfully, because not everything goes up, up, up. For example, Alicia was on Columbia Records, believe it or not, neither having released a record and they had an A&R change of staff and the new A&R staff didn’t know who she was and started submitting songs to her to perform, but she’s a true writer of music. She was offended by it.

Somehow I auditioned her through Peter Edge and left it to her to get off of Columbia. I couldn’t believe it to this day historically. I thought “Fallin’” was an incredible copyright and that it would be the first single. And what I’m leading up to saying, the record comes out and it stalls. The urban stations think it’s more popular than urban so they were slower to add it. The pop stations wanted more tempo. I got scared. And so I did something I never did before. I wrote a letter to Oprah Winfrey and I said, “What you do for books and new authors, you really have to do for music and new artists.” I mentioned Alicia along with Jill Scott and India.Arie. I said, “There’s neo soul going on. Why not have all three artists – brand new, no records out yet –  on your show?” The very next day she called me: “I have a national big event this weekend with all the advertisers. If you tell me that Alicia is good in person, I’ll have her sing at that dinner.”

“I will be there memorizing all the lyrics and I will put her and Jill Scott and Arie on my show Tuesday.” And that took place, and by the time Alicia sang “Fallin’” on Oprah Winfrey, Oprah learned every lyric, as she said she would, almost dueted with Alicia in the singing of the song; the next week the record exploded and became the big hit that it became. So in summary, I always say I get paid a lot of money to worry, so I believe in worrying. I’m very skeptical of someone who’s supremely confident, aggressively so, that they don’t … I look for the pitfalls that could upend you and impede the progress of having the result tha  you want so badly, really.

Jason King:

I remember watching that episode of Oprah. I didn’t know you then, but I remember watching that episode and being kind of blown away by Alicia’s talent, and Jill and India as well. You are often referred to by others as the man with the golden ears. They talk about your golden ears, which is your ability to spot talent and to recognize hits. So I just want to ask you, what do you listen for when signing an artist? What goes into recognizing a hit and what does that recognition feel like?

Clive Davis:

Well, for example, let’s take Whitney. She was doing backup singing work for her mother and Sissy Houston’s nightclub act. I went to Sweetwaters that night, she’s doing backgrounds, and then in the middle of the show she steps forward and I couldn’t believe the song that she chose to sing; it was “The Greatest Love of All.” That’s a song I had commissioned for the life of Muhammad Ali, the movie The Greatest, eight years earlier, and had George Benson sing it. It was like a number eight R&B record. Whitney didn’t know that. All of a sudden I hear “The Greatest Love of All”, the song I had commissioned with Michael Masser, sung by a 19 year old, finding new meaning in the song that the composers didn’t even know, I’m sure, were there. So I was stunned. I mean this was not just a potentially commercially successful artist, this was a potential all time artist, as it turned out to be.

So you get that shiver up and down your spine, you get that and you look for – in the case of Springsteen, it was his lyric. Everyone else coming up as a folk singer or writer at that time, if there were another Bob Dylan, it was The Kiss of Death.

So I did a video and recited the lyrics to all of Bruce’s material showing that this is not another Bob Dylan. This is a unique artist. And I got a big thrill a few years ago, two, three, four years ago at a dinner in my honor – Bruce remembered submitting the first album, his first album, reading from Mesmery Park to me and I listened to it. It’s always very sensitive if you’re asking or saying, “There’s not a hit.” And I said to him, “I love your music, but I don’t hear a radio hit here. I don’t hear a radio song here. Would you consider writing two more songs for the album..” bearing in mind that to sell it we’re going to have to go to radio at that time, no streaming.” He said, “I like radio. I want to have a hit. I will write it. ” And he said, “So I was not defensive about it. I went to the beach, to the park over the next week to 10 days and I wrote “Spirit in the Night” and..”  what was the other beat?

Jason King:

Blinded by…

Clive Davis:

“Blinded by the Light”, of course. And he looks in the camera and he said, “I never would have written those two songs if you had not said what you did when you heard my album.” So it’s what you do in each career. Aretha was the Queen of Soul before I met her. She saw what I had done with Dionne Warwick and “I’ll Never Love This Way Again.” She cooked dinner for me at her home. “I’m approaching 40,” she said. “Do you think I could have a hit again?” I said, “It would be the biggest challenge of my life..” meaning that her fame and her talent were legendary. She was walking history and to perpetuate that talent for the next 20 years, that’s a challenge. She was so grateful we had “I knew you were…” the title of it. I knew..

Jason King:

You were waiting.

Clive Davis:

For me. “I Knew You Were Waiting For Me” and “Freeway of Love” and “Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves” … I mean, we had hit after hit and a beautiful friendship.

Jason King:

Absolutely. Can you remember a time when you went against everybody else, what everybody else was saying about something and decided to go your own way, but you were right?

Clive Davis:

I think of two instances, one of which is in the film as I was watching tonight. Simon and Garfunkel had just finished their album, and they asked me to listen with them and Roy Halley to pick the first single. I was head of Columbia and I knew after listening to the material that they were totally expecting me to choose “Cecilia (You’re Breaking My Heart)” Immediate, good tempo, melodic…but I heard “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, and there were times in life where you can’t just give a formulaic response. And I said, “Yes, it’s five minutes. Yes, it’s a ballad, but it is so great that I’m willing to make it the first single and title the album with it.” And that’s why Artie was saying what he said. They didn’t expect it at all. We did it, we brought it home and that’s an example, I think.

Jason King:

You said you had two. Do you have one more?

Clive Davis:

Okay. I didn’t love the idea of Whitney doing a movie. She was selling 23 million, 24 million albums. I had no idea she could act well, certainly commensurate with being a superstar musical artist. So I questioned her. She said, “I really want to make movies. And Kevin Costner has agreed to cast me in this movie, The Bodyguard.” So I said, “Okay.” I mean, obviously I didn’t have approval, but I went along with it. I was going away with my family for Christmas and they sent me six months later the first cut of the film.

It was bad. It was a thriller with no music. You didn’t know why she needed a bodyguard. She didn’t portray that. So I wrote a long letter to Mick Jackson and Kevin saying, “You sure you expect me as the head of a record company to complain that there’s no music?” And I went through the reasons where there had to be and Mick Jackson wanted to go with the movie he said I thought it would be a failure and Kevin Costner moved in as director and then we came up with, I came up with “Run To You,” David Foster wrote with Linda Thompson’s wife, “I Have Nothing.” We put in “I’m Every Woman.” [The] Bodyguard became one of the best grossing films ever, standing just shy of 500 million and the soundtrack is the best selling soundtrack of all time.

Jason King:

That’s a good example. But also the decision for the acapella, right? The beginning of “I Will Always Love You.” That’s a very radical choice for a hit single to start with 45, 50 seconds of acapella singing.

Clive Davis:

When Whitney cut “I Will Always Love You,” When he [David] sent me with great enthusiasm, the record, I loved it. I got shivers up and down my spine. He said, “Well, don’t get Demo-itis. I have to put strings. I’ve got to put in horns. I’ve got to sweeten the record.” I said, “Okay.” And he sent me the next version a week later and I found it slick. I said, “David, I’m not demoitis, but it doesn’t work.” He says, “Give me another shot. I’m going to do another.” And we did that twice more when the head of Warner Brothers, Bob Daley called me, he said, “We need a single out there. The movie is opening. I mean, we need a single out there.” And so he gave me until Friday where I had to release a single and David still had not delivered to me a version to compare with that first cut.

So with great apprehension, I green lit that first record that David sent me with the acapella opening with the record as we hear it. David calls me that day when he knew that it was out. There wasn’t one obscenity I’d ever heard in my life that he omitted. And by the end of the day, he called me back to say, “I have never in my life gotten the kind of calls I’m getting from this record, so thank you. ” That’s a fond memory.

Jason King:

I think that’s one of the things, if I can say people misunderstand or maybe don’t know enough about with you is that you are so creatively involved in the record making process and with artists and that for anybody who’s worked with you will know you are very, very detail focused to the point that it’s really incredible actually. I think the results that you get, which are the result of that kind of detail. Would you agree with that in terms of my perspective around the idea of detail?

Clive Davis:

I know. I’m happy for the compliment, so of course I agree with that.

Jason King:

And let me put it this way, standards, because I don’t know, I mean, especially since we have students here, the importance of high standards and being exacting and being specific I think is something, I don’t want to say it’s being lost, but it’s certainly not as in focus as it once was. And I think that’s one of your core skills.

Clive Davis:

Listen, attention to detail is so very important. You’ve got to. I’ll give an example. The artist working with Aretha, the producers working with her knew that Aretha was so well rehearsed when she came to the recording studio that she would never do ever more than three takes of a song. Now you know there are artists that spend months on a song until they get it right. She would give them three takes and they were all, I’m talking Jermaine Dupree, I’m talking Babyface, Luther. They were shocked that I was able after she had recorded the material to get her to go back in the studio to do a final take. And so they recently at a dinner came to me and said, “How in the world did you get Aretha to go back in the studio with us?” I said, “If I felt a record was a candidate for a single, which she knew is you don’t sell without hit singles.” And I said, “You’re ad-libbing too much in the final choruses and you don’t do that with the hit record.

It might be brilliant live singing, but for a record you want that chorus to be pounded on melody.” So I said, “You’re not pounding the chorus enough on melody.” She would get that. She’d go right in the studio and record again in order to get that hit.

Jason King:

Which also means she trusted you.

Clive Davis:

Oh yes.

Jason King:

Yeah. Which is earned. Trust is earned. You’ve worked across every era of the business from vinyl and cassettes and A tracks and CDs and streaming and now we have AI. What has not changed about identifying great songs despite all the technological changes?

Clive Davis:

Listen, I had nothing in my background. Let me tell all of you here, students, young age. I had nothing in my background to prepare me. I was going to be a lawyer. I lost my parents when I was a teenager, had no money. When I was growing up, you either were a doctor or a lawyer to rise above the station of my father who was an electrician and nothing prepared me that, for the natural gift, of finding unique artists or hit songs. So you’ve got to really hone in. You got to give it all your attention. You’ve got to see how special someone is talented, but are they uniquely talented? Are they original? Are they special? Are their hit songs, their lyrics really affecting you meaningfully? Is it touching your heart? So all that combination of attention to detail, looking for the unique, it’s necessary.

If you love music and that’s why you’re here today and you want music to be your profession, go with it. It looked a few years ago with Napster that music would not be a good career. It’s a wonderful career and my life was full with gratitude that music became my passion.

Jason King:

Great. Since you’re talking about it, you’ve really invested deeply in music education by way of the Clive Davis Institute at New York University. We actually, two of the singers from HUNTR/X, EJ and Audrey Nuna went to the Clive Davis Institute. EJ just won the Oscar for Best Song for “Golden” from K-Pop Demon Hunters. So when you think about that impactful work, what feels most important to you about shaping the next generation? Why is education so important?

Clive Davis:

I believe that if you’re going to be an artist, you should understand the business and the career that you’re moving into, that you should not just be a loner concentrating on your voice. When I was growing up, the only way you could study music would be if it were classical or jazz at Berkeley, two or three schools. I could give back since I got through schools on scholarship. I endowed NYU with a degree-awarding school where the executives, future executives, future artists, future producers can really study music and understand it in each genre. And that’s why I endowed NYU with the school that exists and is flourishing. I mean, it’s full as the music school here and that’s why I’m really here today. I love the fact that there’s a music school at USC that the students are studying the underlying business, the history, understanding how Miles Davis became Miles Davis or the various examples I’ve written about or spoken about here today.

So I encourage that and I applaud each of you that is studying music.

Jason King:

So as we wrap up, last couple of questions. I want to ask you about adversity because lots of people obviously face adversity. Everybody’s going to encounter in their careers. Can you give one or two examples of where you encountered adversity and you

Clive Davis:

Found out- I encountered adversity several times. No one’s life goes up, up, up. And the most vivid example was after I had signed Joplin, Chicago, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Santana, Earth, Wind & Fire, Aerosmith, all the artists I signed, Columbia went from number three to number one. It was fabulous. And then I found that someone working for me, whom I inherited, I never knew him before I got to work there. He’s head of artist relations and he was a crook and he compiled invoices to get a piece of it for hundreds of times. We fired him. I fired him. So disappointing.

He went to a lawyer who said, “I’ll get you a lesser jail term. If you cooperate with the US attorney in Newark, New Jersey.” And he claimed there was payola in the record business at major companies including Columbia. The long-term president of CBS, the owner of Columbia Records, the owner of the network CBS, was no longer there. A new young man was there, 37 years old for six months. The law firm said, “You’ve got to sever CBS from the record division.” And they recommended and he did fire me. I was beyond shocked. I had to wait a year and a half for the vindication where there was no payola, none at Columbia Records, none at the other major companies.

And so I’m very proud in my documentary that you might see in either on Netflix or Amazon now, you see a check as I formed Arista from CBS to me in a million dollars for the future. I had not signed an artist Arista for future mail order record club rights that was them paying me. I’m truly gratifying. It doesn’t make up for the hurt. It doesn’t make up for the wound, but that’s one example. There were several if you read my book where you really have to summon all the energy you can to fight back if you’re edged out of Arista. I was being edged out of Arista the very year I’m inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the very year that I was getting a lifetime achievement award from the Grammys.

I had just done Supernatural, one of my biggest career successes with a 55-year-old man who doesn’t sing and yet the album is such a huge all-time album. And I get a call from the two heads of Bertelsmann in America to have dinner. I thought it was going to celebrate all these things that we picked the great Lutes restaurant, we go there and they tell me that the mandatory retirement age of Bertelsman was 60. I was 68. They had waved it. Obviously we were on fire, but I was making a lot of money and that was not the happiest result there. And so they said, “We have to ask you because the current head of Bertisman is turning 60. He has to either retire or become a consultant so we’ll create a position of you as head of worldwide A&R and take you out of Arista.” What? I mean, I couldn’t hear something so stunning, so unexpected.

And I walked out of that dinner. I said, “I can’t make cocktail talk after hearing that, because there’s no way I’m leaving Arista like that. I’m taking that position.” Fortunately, the guy succeeding the current head of Bertelsmann, Van, no one knows this, called me from Germany and said, “I’m coming in tomorrow. Can I meet with you at your apartment?” I did and he said, “Look, I can’t fight this publicly because I’m becoming head of Bertelsman because Mark is turning 60, but I can’t let you leave Arista. So tell me what terms would you insist on to stay and do a joint venture, new company with Arista?” So I did that with my family and the previous newest label ever formed had been Interscope for 32 million.

We came up with the demands, not settling back. I was not going to start overnight by myself with this limited knowledge on their part at the height of my career, start a brand new label. I have to have the right to take any executive, never offering them a penny more in a risky new joint venture. I had to be staffed as a major label, full A&R staff, marketing product development. So I went after 18 executives, the president, the two executive vice presidents, the entire A&R staff, product management, all 18 came with me to J Records, all 18, my biggest career achievement. They all had families. They knew the risk of a new label.

So Arista became J really and all of a sudden what was Arista for two and a half years did not break an artist and the one album would need it without me did not make it. So they were losing money big time after the successes I have, I had and I also had the right to take a new artist that had never released an album. That’s how Alicia was just completing her first album. So that’s why she and I are so loyal to each other because she came with me to J Records and I signed Luther Vandross and signed Busta Rhymes. We had hit after hit after hit so that the joint venture became more valuable to me than what I was even earning before. So they came to me two and a half years later. They fired everybody at Arista. Those two guys were fired and two years older I became head of the worldwide music operation including RCA/Arista/Jive Records.

So the message and all that is not to brag to you, but it’s not to be passive. When adversity hits as it does, even in the midst of success, you’ve got to reach down deep and fight back and do what you’re doing. So that’s the message in that story.