So the great Clive Davis has shuffled off this mortal coil, leaving behind a legacy of such monumental, glittering fluff that future historians will likely date the collapse of Western civilisation to his first hit. The man who gave us Whitney Houston, Patti Smith, and Barry Manilow — a holy trinity of overproduced, perfectly structured pop — has finally met the one note he couldn't auto-tune. He was 94, which means he got to spend roughly four decades on an irony-free cloud of his own making, smiling down on the pop landscape he bulldozed into shape.
Naturally, the British music industry has doffed its trilby, muttered something about 'a giant of the industry' and returned to arguing about licensing fees for Arctic Monkeys reissues. Sir Paul McCartney, who once recorded a song so saccharine it could only have been produced by Davis, called him 'a visionary' in a statement so bland it could be printed on a digestive biscuit. We expect more of the same from Elton John, who now has to think of something nice to say about the man who made him wear those ridiculous glasses in the 80s.
The headlines are writing themselves: 'Davis was the man who discovered a generation of superstars.' Yes, as if they were truffles buried under a cash-stuffed sofa. He didn't discover people; he commodified them. He saw the hamster-wheel of chart success and greased it with the tears of session musicians. His genre was 'appeal to everyone,' which is to say, sophisticated nothingness. He turned music into wallpaper, and we all danced to it.
But let's raise a glass of lukewarm, aeroplane-bottle gin to the man. He never pretended to be art. He was the honest crook of pop, a Mephistopheles in a sharp suit who traded fame for your soul and threw in a bridge for the radio edit. His life's work was a magnificent, preposterous joke, and he died laughing on his yacht, probably soundtracked by a chorus of overdubbed angels. Now the British press will mourn him with the same enthusiasm they once reserved for Princess Diana, but with less weeping and more passive-aggressive obituaries from people who definitely thought they could have done it better.
The Independent's front page will no doubt read 'Clive Davis: The Man Who Sold the World a Soundtrack.' But the real story is that he sold it a fantasy, a world where every problem could be solved by a key change and a power ballad. Now that he's gone, we might have to face reality. Or we could just put on a Whitney record and pretend he's still here, polishing his Grammy collection. Either way, the gin is running low.
