Clive Davis, one of the most influential figures in the history of the music business, died on Monday at the age of 94, inspiring a wave of tributes from across the entertainment industry.
Among those who called him a friend and mentor was the prolific songwriter Diane Warren, who worked closely with Davis for over 40 years, writing hits for the likes of Toni Braxton, Whitney Houston and Milli Vanilli to name a few. Earlier Monday, she likened Davis’s passing to losing her father. Speaking further with THR, Warren recalled the beginnings of her friendship with Davis, lessons she’d learned and why “there will never be anything like him again.”
Clive was family. Obviously not by blood, but we create our own families. In my heart, he was family. I wrote it in that post, but especially the day after Father’s Day, it felt like losing my dad, losing another father. It hit that hard because it’s not just that we had a lot of hits together and did a lot of work together.
I would not have the career I had now had it not been for Clive Davis, and I’m not the only one. There’s so many of us, so many huge artists, that owe everything to that guy. From the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and so on, that’s 70 years of creating artists. And of so many different genres. Janice Joplin, Carlos Santana, Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston.
The crazy thing is he started as a lawyer. He wasn’t a trained music guy, and yet he possessed an ear — an innate talent — no one will ever have what he had. I got to witness it myself. I go play him a song, and just seeing him be so moved by hearing a song and having tears in his eyes, there’s nobody like that anymore.
A lot of today’s executives, they don’t listen, they look. They look at numbers. They look at Spotify streams, TikTok numbers, they look at all the shit that really doesn’t matter. All that matters is what makes you feel, what hits you in the heart.
I was talking to someone yesterday who’s really high up at a big music company who told me: “we had this company retreat and in three days, we listened to one song.” I’m like, “oh my god, is that what it is?” It’s sad. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Clive, he just got it. It wasn’t one kind of artist or one kind of song. If it moved him he knew it’d move other people, and most of the time he was pretty right.
I trusted his opinion when he loved the song. I didn’t trust it when he didn’t. (laughs). No, I trusted him. Sometimes I’d play something that I wasn’t sure if he’d like it and he’d love it. Sometimes I’d play something I thought he’d love and he didn’t. But he was always honest. if he said someone was doing a song and it was coming out as a single, it was going to happen. it wasn’t like they had to test it, do all that other shit. I love the fact that he trusted his instincts, and they were so on spot on. You couldn’t argue with success, and the guy was successful from day one.
I think I met him right before “Rhythm of the Night,” and I played him a bunch of songs. He didn’t like any of them, and I was really bummed because I grew up reading his first book, Inside the Record Business. I studied everything. I was going to be a songwriter, and Clive Davis was on Mount Rushmore when I was a kid. I knew I had to meet Clive Davis. I finally I met Clive and he didn’t like the music. But then I came back, because I always come back. He loved some of those other songs.
We became really good friends too. Two of those 17 Oscar losses, Clive was my date. I took him when I was nominated for “Because You Loved Me” from Up Close and Personal, that was a song that I basically wrote to thank my dad for believing in me. I remember telling Clive, “I really want you to go because you’re like my dad.”
I thought I was gonna win that year. I went with Clive and he was trying to cheer me up, and he goes, “Let’s go to Jerry’s Deli.” We went there, and I ate like three servings of French fries to drown my pain. There were so many great times I have with Clive. One time I had a meeting with him and I said I can’t get there till ten-to-5 because I had a therapy appointment. He started cracking up because he thought I said I have therapy from 10 a.m. to 5 o’clock. He goes, “I know you’re crazy, Di, but you need that much therapy a day?
[My first song he took] was probably something from Air Supply. There was a lot after that. I’d come and bring him songs for Whitney, she was their biggest artist. I always wanted to be on her records, and he’d go, “No, it’s not for Whitney, but it’s for this other artist Taylor Dayne.” I’d say “I don’t want Taylor Dayne, I want Whitney.” But then Taylor did “Love Will Lead You Back” and it was a Number One Record. Or there was “I’ll Be Your Shelter.”
I’d play him something else I thought was Whitney and he goes, “no, I have this group Exposé,” and that was “I’ll Never Get Over You Getting Over Me.” I think I probably played on “Un-Break My Heart” for Whitney too. “No I have an artist named Toni Braxton I want that song for.”
I was holding a song for this group called The Jets. I held it for a year, they tell me they’re not going to do it. I decided I was going to see Clive in New York because I knew it was a hit record. He played me Milli Vanilli. He played “Girl You Know It’s True,” and I thought it sounded like my song “Blame It on the Rain.” It became one of my biggest hits ever. I would get some Whitney songs too.
He taught me that it’s all about the song, it starts with a song. I knew that already, but the fact that someone who ran a record company knew that, respected that and respected songs and songwriters, that was big.
Genius, passionate, brilliant, kind. He was a good man. He was a family man. He loved his family, he took care of people. We lost the greatest music man of all time today. No one will ever, ever, ever, ever come close to a tenth of what he did.
