Clive Davis, the svengali who plucked Whitney Houston from obscurity and polished her into a rhinestone-encrusted national treasure, has shuffled off this mortal coil at the age of 94. Or as the industry might have it, he’s finally taken a meeting he can’t charm his way out of. The British music industry, that fog-bound island of perpetual mourning for the 1960s, is now left to totter on without his transatlantic shadow.
Davis was the man who convinced us that Whitney’s voice came from heaven, when in reality it came from a rehearsal room in New Jersey and a solid contract with Arista Records. He was the alchemist who turned gospel into pop, soul into shopping-mall soundtrack, and a shy girl from Newark into a global brand. His British legacy? He gave us Whitney on the BBC, Whitney at Wembley, Whitney on the soundtrack to every car commercial of the 1990s. He gave us the illusion that talent alone is enough, when talent alone is merely a raw ingredient for a recipe that requires equal parts orchestration, litigation, and floral arrangement budgets.
The obituaries will tell you he discovered Janis Joplin, which is true in the sense that a prospector ‘discovers’ gold already sitting in a stream. He signed Bruce Springsteen, then promptly dropped him, proving that even the Boss can be a tentative asset. He resurrected Aretha Franklin’s career with a duet of ‘Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves’, a song that felt like a feminist rally and a tax dodge at the same time. But it is Houston for whom he will be remembered, a voice of such staggering purity that it seemed almost criminal to package it for commercial consumption. And package it he did, in layers of digital reverb and gospel swoops that made every song sound like a prayer to the gods of platinum sales.
Davis was a man of undeniable taste, which is industry code for an ability to predict what middle-aged record buyers will tolerate. He had the bravery to let Whitney cover Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’, a track that became the most hummed-to-death funeral dirge of the 20th century. He also had the cunning to ensure that every single she released felt like a single you could not escape, even in the deep woods of a national park.
His passing leaves a void in the music business that will be filled by a thousand younger executives who think data can replace intuition. They are wrong, of course. Data cannot tell you why a sixteen-year-old girl from a Baptist choir should be the voice of a generation. Only the gut of a 94-year-old man who smoked too many cigars and wore too many suits could manage that.
So raise a glass of something expensive and sorrowful. Clive Davis is gone. But somewhere in the British Isles, a radio station is playing ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ for the ten thousandth time, and a nation of karaoke enthusiasts is singing along, utterly unaware that they are following the last notes of a conman’s finest masterpiece. Good night, Clive. You were better than most at making us believe the music was real. But it was never real, was it? It was just a dream expertly costumed as fact.
