Clive Jay Davis was an American record producer, music industry executive, and lawyer who played a key role in the success of many musical legends.
Born in Brooklyn in 1932 and raised in the Crown Heights neighborhood, Davis lost both of his parents at a relatively young age. His mother died at the age of forty-seven, and his father, an electrician and salesman, died the following year, causing Davis to move in with his adult sister’s family in Queens. Young Clive set his sights on education, attending New York University and graduating magna cum laude in 1953 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He also received a full scholarship to Harvard Law School and earned his law degree in 1956.
After several years practicing in a small law firm in New York, Davis made some connections in the entertainment industry and was hired by Columbia Records at the age of twenty-eight, becoming their general counsel the following year. By 1967, he’d climbed the ranks to become company president and took an interest in the up-and-coming rock and roll scene.
Davis became known for his “golden ear” — his remarkable ability to identify talent and untapped musical potential. He was instrumental in giving numerous superstars their big breaks, including including Pink Floyd; Sly and the Family Stone; Janis Joplin; Laura Nyro; Santana; Bruce Springsteen; Chicago; Earth, Wind & Fire; Aerosmith; Billy Joel; Donovan; the Bay City Rollers; Blood, Sweat & Tears; Luther Vandross; Loggins and Messina; Ace of Base; Olivia Longott; Westlife; and Gavin DeGraw. He is also credited with having helped launch the careers of Whitney Houston and Barry Manilow. The impact he has had on music is difficult to overstate.
In 1974, he founded Arista Records and continued to sign musicians, including Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Patti Smith, Air Supply, Ray Parker, Jr., and Alicia Keys. He co-founded LaFace Records with L.A. Reid and Babyface. That label became the home of TLC, Usher, Outkast, Pink, and Toni Braxton. He also founded Bad Boy Records with Sean “Puffy” Combs, which became home to the Notorious B.I.G. and Faith Evans. In 2000, he left Arista Records and served as the Chief Creative Officer for Sony Music Entertainment for the remainder of his life.
Clive Davis died in June 2026 at the age of ninety-four. He left behind a legacy that’s hard to top. He won four Grammy Awards out of five nominations, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a non-performer, and inspired the 2017 documentary Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives. Without Clive Davis, the music industry would be unrecognizable. He has worked with artists across genres for decades, and his golden ear still shapes what we listen to today.
Davis was also bisexual — a subject he became very outspoken about during the last decade and a half of his life.
In his 2013 autobiography, The Soundtrack of My Life, Davis came out as bisexual. Then eighty years old, Davis said in an interview with Katie Couric that he began exploring his sexuality in the 1980s after the failure of his second marriage, and that he didn’t want his same-sex attraction to impact his marriages. As he said, once he was single,
I opened myself up to the possibility that I could have a relationship with a man as well as the two that I had with a woman.
He revealed his bisexuality to the people closest to him, but regarded it as a private matter. He also spoke about the misconceptions around bisexuality that made coming out more fraught:
There was an attitude toward bisexuality — pervasive — that you were either gay, you were straight, or you were lying. It’s not true. So I knew that when I decided to write my autobiography, this was something that I was certainly going to be forthcoming about.
Davis went on to say that he hoped his coming out would help to foster better understanding about bisexuality, and was clear that if the relationship he was then in with a man were to end,
I’m still attracted to women […] you don’t have to be only one thing or another.