Clive Davis Quotes
100 Clive Davis Quotes
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My years at Arista were incredibly gratifying. I will always root for Arista and wish L.A. Reid the best. I very much want the company to succeed and grow. You don’t participate in the foundation and naming of a company and not want it to succeed.
Clive Davis
My 50% equity in J Records makes the future a win/win situation for everybody. We have incredible momentum from the start…
Clive Davis
[On how Clive Davis defined Alvin Tellers job] Just learn.
Clive Davis
[On Goddard Lieberson liking to pit people against one another] So that he could lie back and take a rest while his underlings struggled for position and power.
Clive Davis
[On getting his dream job to be administrative vice-president at Columbia at age 33] I was stunned, I suddenly had the job everyone coveted.
Clive Davis
[On knowing that CBS Records sales would coast for a year but after that sales would slip unless he did something dramatic] I became very intense [and] embarked on the heaviest talent-raiding campaign ever conducted in the history of the music business.
Clive Davis
[At a singles meeting] Who here thinks he can pick a single? See that’s the problem, I have to do everything myself.
Clive Davis
[On believing his was underpaid in 1970 when he made $100,000 a year in salary with an additional bonus of $40,000 more] Clearly, I wasn’t starving. Yet it seemed ridiculous to be making Columbia tens of millions of new profits and getting much less compensation than the president of Capitol Records – which was losing money.
Clive Davis
That’s a dangerous assumption.
Clive Davis
[On working eighteen hour days at CBS to bring in new talent] No one at the corporate CBS level seemed to have the foggiest notion that this might be a difficult, possibly even superhuman task.
Clive Davis
[On Dave Wynshaw] It had never occurred to me that Wynshaw was anything but a selfless person totally dedicated to making my life free to handle the business of the company… I was shocked by the thought that he might have been secretly duping me for years.
Clive Davis
I play no instruments.
Clive Davis
I did not develop my ear, I discovered I had an ear and it was an accident. I was a lawyer, three years out of law school I was made chief counsel for Columbia Records and five years later I was made president. And I looked and watched for a while for maybe a year…
Clive Davis
Music is changing, a revolution is in the air.
Clive Davis
I started trusting my instincts… I kept trusting my instincts, it was working and it went on from there.
Clive Davis
I don’t read music so therefore it’s a matter of initially I was dealing with self-contained artists. I was dealing with rock artists who wrote the raw material and who were as you say self-contained. Later when I founded Arista Records and I looked at the words ‘A&R’ –Artists and Repertoire, I realised there were great artists who like a… Aretha Franklin who had a golden voice but who did not write. Then I started to develop song sense. And the construction of songs and what for the combination of melody and lyric that could be hit songs for artists that did not write. So one is common sense, also an immersion in music that became my passion.
The discovery of artists when you know someone not only has a good voice, but a great voice like a Whitney Houston. Or a combination of a great voice and also an incredible ability to write like… Alicia Keys.
Clive Davis
[The definition of what makes a good song] I don’t listen to a song, many people do. I don’t listen to a song without also studying the lyrics. To me the lyrics of most songs, and I’m not talking of dance songs which is becoming more and more popular today, but I’m saying to know when you’re really seeing and feeling a copy write it’s the melody, it’s the hook as we say of the song. Does the melody stay with you, can you hum it back after you hear it? Is it memorable? And then the lyrics certainly if it is a ballad… you’re looking for the impact it has on you.
Clive Davis
When you’re appraising the copy write you’re appraising the lyric and you’re appraising the hook. How does it stay with you?
Clive Davis
[The consistency or common thread on hit artists] The consistency for me is can this artist become a headliner? I’m not into one hit wonders. I’m as much into the discovery of the new artist you mentioned or the extending of the career of a great artist of an Aretha [Franklin] of a Dion… What we’re been doing with Rod Stewart over the last eight or nine years…
Clive Davis
You have to understand the criteria that can lift an audience out of their seats…
Clive Davis
I had one occasion when I was not employed…
Clive Davis
[On music] I always knew it would be part of my lifetime work.
Clive Davis
To me it’s been one success after another… You do have to pinch yourself…
Clive Davis
[In 2011 at the age of 78] I’m not bragging, I just telling you in my head we’ve never had a dry period.
Clive Davis
[On being born in Brooklyn] I’m permanently indebted to Brooklyn. It was a melting pot for me meeting all races, and ethnic backgrounds so I’m really strongly indebted to the New York school system and
Clive Davis
[On his beginnings in Brooklyn] I really feel today in music and dealing with people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds that it was a terrific underpinning for me.
Clive Davis
[Received a scholarship to study at NYU] I went to [Harvard] law school from NYU…
Clive Davis
I had been president of the student council…
Clive Davis
[On going from Brooklyn to Harvard law school] It was quite intimidating, because there you were going up a social ladder that I had never had experience with from people from all over the country.
Clive Davis
[On his first year at Harvard] When my parents passed away, I had a total of $4,000.00 to my name. And so that if I didn’t keep the scholarship… The old adage that one out of the three of you might not be there… I had to keep a B average to maintain the scholarship… So the idea that you didn’t get a task for the entire year and you had the uncertainty, the anxiety, it was probably the toughest, rigorist year I’d ever spent.
Clive Davis
It’s the work ethic that I talk about to the people who work with me. The idea that if you have 12-16 hour days that it does not tire you, that it does not intimidate you, that whatever has to be done, to get the job done is what you’ve got to do.
Clive Davis
[On believing that education can help instil a healthy work ethic] Education I’m indebted to.
Clive Davis
I did well in school, the competitive edge of the New York system, the work ethic got me to a great law firm.
Clive Davis
Luck plays a part of everybody’s life.
Clive Davis
[On initially working for the law firm] For me it was luck that I was at the firm, which really represented CBS that Columbia Records was a part of.
Clive Davis
[On his beginnings in the music industry] I didn’t have anybody within the framework of friendship or family that had any money. It was survival.
Clive Davis
The opportunity came up to be not just the attorney, it was the opportunity to be head attorney
Clive Davis
[On becoming the head attorney at Columbia Records] I didn’t have any clients, they didn’t want me to have any clients. They could afford me to work there and deal with the smaller nature of enterprising young people.
Clive Davis
[In the beginning] I had no aspirations for a musical career…. I really listened to the music of the day…
Clive Davis
[On his children] They’ve all become lawyers. I have four children… I have four grandchildren my eldest each have two. They’ve all become involved in music – on their own… We have dinner together every Sunday night.
Clive Davis
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