Clive Davis: The Last Record Man

There's something I want you to hear," says Clive, handing a CD to the man DJ'ing the meeting late last summer. "It's from a record we're doing with Aretha — duets."

Clive is at the head of a table, paterfamilias presiding over the brood. He's not handsome, not not. He's better looking now than he was in the 1970s, when his head was framed by a fringe of curly hair. He's one of those men who get better with age, whose features have come to seem dignified.

"We're getting Christina to do a song with Aretha," he says of Christina Aguilera, the pairing of a young hitmaker with a musical deity being a Davis specialty. (See Santana with Rob Thomas on "Smooth," from the album Supernatural that sold 15 million copies.) "We want to get the record into Starbucks for Christmas." He's wearing a black suit with a black shirt and a black-and-yellow tie. He's wearing tinted aviator glasses, and you can see his eyes, darting this way and that.

The music comes on: Aretha, then cool, bouncy Frank Sinatra, dead all these years but still singing, answering each phrase, hitting the consonants, letting the vowels run on. Clive grins, his head swinging like a metronome. The music is cranked.

He plays two more cuts — Aretha and Luther Vandross on a song called "Doctor's Orders," in which Vandross sings of getting a prescription filled at a "love pharmacy." (Clive listens with head cocked, then says, "The mix is off. We're losing licks at the end.") Then Aretha and John Legend on a tune meant to go Top Forty. When the song is over, a young man says, "That is bumping!"

A discussion follows: Can the record cross over? If so, how can this be made to happen? This illustrates one of Clive's unambiguously great qualities: his dedication to the artists of the past, who have seemingly had their run and moved on to the senior circuit. Time and again, Davis has been able to blow on the embers, to spark a dying fire back to flame. He did it with Santana. He did it with Barry Manilow, who in 2006 had a comeback album with The Greatest Songs of the Fifties (Clive's idea). He did it with Rod Stewart, who in 2002 had a huge hit with It Had to Be You . . . The Great American Songbook, a collection of standards (Rod's idea). Stewart came to Clive when this project was shot down by his regular producers. "We saw it as a small thing," Stewart says. "But Clive jumped on it. He said, 'Get rid of the drum, get rid of the guitar and make it about voice.' "

"When Rod brought it to me, I thought it was a tragically bad idea," says Arnold Stiefel, who has managed Stewart for over twenty years. "I said, 'That's a good way to wind up as a lounge singer in Las Vegas.' Later, after it had been turned down by Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker [the former Warner Bros. patriarchs who then ran DreamWorks Records], I brought it to Clive. He said, 'I love this concept. I don't like the way it's structured.' When it was finished, you might think, 'Great, it's this nice little niche thing, it will sell 150,000 albums.' Not Clive. He treated it like it was a new Beatles record. It sold 5 million."

Stiefel then explains Clive's plan for Stewart's follow-up. "So, after the record hit, I go to Clive and say, 'What do we do next?' And he gives me this look. 'When Volume One sells 5 million copies,' he says, 'your next record is called Volume Two.' "

And here was Clive, doing it again, or trying to, for Aretha, who has not been a Top Forty staple in ages. The people around the table believe her best shot is a duet with Aguilera, which has not yet been cut. Grab onto Aguilera, and ride her to heaven.

"We wait for Christina," says Clive, "we miss Christmas.

"We lose Starbucks."

The people at the table, including Charles Goldstuck, the company's chief operating officer, tell Clive that, in this case, Christina Aguilera is more important than Christmas, which annoys Clive. He raises a hand — everyone gets quiet. He has a story, which he tells in a whisper, causing everyone to lean in. Back in the 1980s, Davis paid Andy Warhol to paint a cover for an Aretha Franklin album. He then decided to buy the original. He called Warhol and asked for a price. Warhol said, "Good question, I will get back to you." Warhol came back with a price. Something like $100,000. Davis asked if the money he had already paid Warhol for the cover could be subtracted from this price. Warhol said, "Good question, I will get back to you."

Clive pauses, looks around, then says, "Then Andy Warhol died."

The room is quiet; everyone laughs.

"Can you imagine what that painting is worth now?" someone says.

Of course, there is a lesson: Don't be greedy. You have Aretha and John Legend; you have Aretha and Sinatra.

What are you waiting for?

Who knows what might happen while you're waiting?

When the people at the table see that Clive has made up his mind, they not only stop talking but say he is correct.

A microphone is passed around, each marketer reading numbers, breakdowns, trends. It sounds like air-traffic control: We've got a six with a bullet, 790 number six five. Six, five, two, fifteen, twenty-six. The mike makes its way to the A&R man who's working with Hurricane Chris, a rapper whose song "A Bay Bay" is a summer hit. But its success is not straightforward, and, in this, it's indicative of a moment of turmoil in the industry, where ever more music is produced and consumed but ever less is paid for.