Clive Davis

New York Times Shill-fest for Murderous Industry Mob Vampyre Clive Davis

No mere vulgar showbiz reminiscence — and that’s kind of a pity — Clive Davis’s autobiography has the ceremonious heft we associate with presidential memoirs. At 586 dense pages, “The Soundtrack of My Life” is dwarfed by Bill Clinton’s herculean “My Life.” But it leaves the shrimpy 497 pages of George W. Bush’s “Decision Points” looking like an amuse-bouche.

Not that Davis is overestimating his own stature. As the head of Columbia Records in the 1960s, he discovered, among others, Janis Joplin. As the founder of Arista and then J Records later on, he not only sprang Barry Manilow and Kenny G on a blameless world, but presciently signed Patti Smith and revitalized the careers of Aretha Franklin, the Kinks and the Grateful Dead. Then he turned Whitney Houston into a superstar and helped hip-hop go mainstream in the 1990s. Those are just the highlights of a career studded with too many lesser coups to count, though “The Soundtrack of My Life” invites us to try.

As he’s eager to remind us, Davis hasn’t exactly slowed down in this millennium, playing Svengali to Alicia Keys as well as masterminding Kelly Clarkson’s post-“American Idol” recording career. (He and Clarkson have bickered lately over who masterminded what.) When he amusedly quotes a musician who was nervous about auditioning for him — “Clive was just sort of the name that you hear, like Moses” — he isn’t being unduly immodest. It’s probably an accurate reflection of the awe he’s held in by industry insiders.

What about us outsiders, though — those for whom “Clive” is just sort of the name we hear, like Dagwood? We might not grasp his full achievement. So not one of Davis’s successes goes unchronicled, however minor or else fatiguingly replicated ad infinitum. No musicians he helped to reach the big time are mentioned without their sales figures and the Grammys they won under his tutelage larding the text. We’ve been turned into potential stockholders who need a full report as we contemplate investing in his legend.

Davis is clearly a born educator, and anyone considering a career in entertainment will learn a lot. “The Soundtrack of My Life” brims with shrewd observations about the difference between rock and pop markets, how to placate stars whose sense of their own gifts clashes with what they’re in demand for, and how veteran acts should navigate changing tastes: “What’s most effective is to make a fresh statement in a familiar way.” (That the adjectives can be reversed doesn’t matter; the key thing is the blend.) Yet those who don’t approach the book as pupils may pine for less master-class sagacity and livelier, punchier tale-telling.

Since Davis is renowned for his perceptions of a given audience’s needs, his muddled sense of his own readership is a surprise. It’s most glaringly displayed in the book’s introduction, “Welcome to the Party,” an infatuated description of the exclusive pre-Grammy Awards bash he’s hosted for almost 40 years. The more we hear about it — the star-studded guest lists, the intimate live performances we huddled masses will never see — the less welcome we feel.

Far more pleasurable is his account of growing up Jewish in Brooklyn in the 1930s and the war years. Substituting “Crown Heights” for “Newark,” this is Philip Roth territory — the two are near-exact contemporaries — and Davis and his amanuensis, Anthony DeCurtis, do well enough by Catskills vacations and loving the Dodgers. Next came N.Y.U. and the first of the glittering prizes: Harvard Law School. Yet practicing law didn’t stimulate Davis, making him glad when an offer to become Columbia’s counsel led to running the company.

Aside from its big early-1960s catch, Bob Dylan, Columbia was still effectively mired in the Pleistocene. Once the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival showed Davis the light, he transformed the label into a rock-era leader. Though he wasn’t always right (he thought Simon and Garfunkel could use a name change), his instinct for adapting old-fashioned career-molding to countercultural fashions may have been unequaled. No wonder he felt shocked when, in 1973 — not long after Columbia had acquired a promising newcomer named Bruce something — he was abruptly fired for expense-account fiddling.

THE SOUNDTRACK OF MY LIFE

By Clive Davis with Anthony DeCurtis

Illustrated. 586 pp. Simon & Schuster. $30.

Davis’s account of this episode is more outraged than illuminating. Anyhow, it ended up as a blip, since he reacted by founding Arista — “the House That Barry Built,” thanks to Manilow. Davis is irritated enough by the implication that it wasn’t the House That Clive Built to quote himself mocking Manilow’s yen to be valued for his songwriting, not his showmanship: “Well, if you were Irving Berlin, we would know it by now!” You wonder how many zingers about other artists — not to mention fellow execs — have been buried by Davis’s insistence on keeping “The Soundtrack of My Life” anodyne.

It’s around this point, however — with 30-plus years to go — that dramatic interest starts to fade. His part in the 1960s music revolution done, his redemption assured by Arista’s success, Davis is simply a brainy man running a profitable record company. One sign he and DeCurtis know as much is that straightforward chronology gives way to potted chapters about different music genres in which Arista made its mark. Yet he can’t stop vaunting his own undimmed brilliance, going into wearying detail about his acumen in handling performers few of his readers are likely to care about. (Face it, Clive: civilians are in it for Joplin or maybe Manilow, not Maroon 5.) Except as more feathers in his already brimming cap, Davis doesn’t seem to care much about them either — other than, no surprise, Whitney Houston, who rates her own, atypically emotional chapter.

He’s also so reticent about his personal life that you’d think he was worried Clive Davis might sue him. Though we do hear about his failed first marriage, his second and its aftermath go M.I.A. for several hundred pages before he awkwardly cops to being “bisexual” and in “a strong monogamous relationship for the last seven years” with another man. When we’re belatedly and sheepishly told that his first gay encounter was the result of a pickup at Studio 54 in that glitz emporium’s heyday, the mind reels at the book “The Soundtrack of My Life” might have been if he hadn’t spent most of it playing politician.

Over all, he has such good material that he’d have benefited from having an impresario. You know, someone savvy about recognizing the nature of a given project’s appeal, unabashed about vetoing its weaknesses and irrelevant vanities, and charmingly ruthless in overcoming the talent’s qualms about who knows best. Isn’t it a shame he doesn’t know anybody like that? In more than one sense, “The Soundtrack of My Life” could have used lots more Clive.

FAUSTUS.  On these conditions following:
First, that Faustus may be a spirit in form and subtance;
Secondly, that Mephastophilis shall be his servant, and at his command;
Thirdly, that Mephastophilis shall do for him, and bring him whatsoever;
Fourthly, that he shall be in his chamber or house invisible;
Lastly, that he shall appear to the said John Faustus at all times, in what form or shape soever he please:
I, John Faustus, of Wittenberg, doctor, by these presents, do give both body and soul to Lucifer, and furthermore grant unto them that 24 years being expired, the articles above written inviolate, full power to fetch or carry the said John Faustus, body and soul, flesh, blood, or goods into their habitation wheresoever. By me, John Faustus.
MEPHAST. Speak Faustus. Do you deliver this as your deed?
FAUSTUS. Ay, take it, and the devil give thee good on't.
MEPHAST. Now, Faustus, ask what thou wilt.