The music industry has lost its final suit. Clive Davis, the man who turned art into acquisition and guitar feedback into boardroom feedback, has shuffled off this mortal coil at the ripe age of 94. The British music industry, ever the dutiful colonial cousin, has paid tribute, but let us not be fooled by the outpouring of respectful headlines. This is the man who invented the concept of the 'record executive' as a species of vampire that feeds on talent. He discovered Whitney Houston, yes. He also gave us Simon Cowell. That is a debt we are still paying.
Davis was a titan, a colossus, a man whose glasses were thicker than his sincerity. He ran Columbia Records with the cold calculation of a Victorian factory owner, squeezing the last drop of profit from every soulful wail. He signed Janis Joplin then made her record 'Me and Bobby McGee' because he wanted a hit. He got it. She died a month later. Coincidence? The man had a nose for talent and a heart the size of a dried pea.
But let us eulogise him properly. The British music industry, which he treated like a junior partner in a failing marriage, has offered up its usual platitudes. 'A giant of the industry.' 'A visionary.' 'He will be missed.' Missed by whom? The shareholders. The accountants. The people who see music as a spreadsheet. Davis was the man who gave us Milli Vanilli. He gave us the corporate soundtrack to every supermarket in the land. He was the Robert Mugabe of pop: he stayed so long he became a parody of himself.
And yet, and yet. There is a grudging respect. The man had taste. He had the taste of a plutocrat who knows fine wine but drinks it with a Burger King burger. He brought Dylan to Columbia. He championed Springsteen. He saw the beauty in the grit. But he also saw the pound sign. And he was never ashamed of it. That, in the end, is his legacy. The man who proved that art and money can dance a macabre tango, with art always leading until the last bar, when money cuts in and steps on its toes.
So let us raise a glass of the cheapest gin we can find, because that is what he would have wanted. To Clive Davis: the man who made music safe for boardrooms. May his legacy be as long and as hollow as the echo of a golden handshake.
