Clive Davis Steps Down as Head of BMG Music

Famed record industry figure Clive Davis will relinquish his post as CEO of the Sony BMG Music Group. Davis will reportedly take on another creative post at the label. Barry Weiss, chief of the company's Zomba Label Group, will take over Davis' role. Over the course of his fifty-plus-year career, Davis also served as president of Columbia Records, where he signed Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel and many more. Davis also founded Arista Records, which he fronted for twenty-six years, and J Records. He was also inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. If this is Davis' final week on the job, he went out with a bang: One of his most recent signees, Leona Lewis, became the first British solo artist to have the debut album debut on the albums charts at number one. To see an in-depth look into Davis' prestigious career, from his biggest hits to pictures with his most notable artists, check out this photo gallery. Click here to read Rolling Stone's February 2008 profile on Clive Davis, "The Last Record Man."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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