Legendary record producer Clive Davis on the unique deal he gave Whitney Houston

Making and breaking records

Record exec Clive Davis. Don’t know him, then you’ve been under a fossil 600 years. So I asked him to explain what a record executive does.

Clive: “It begins with signing or appraising the audition of an artist.”

Cindy: Tell us of your early days with Whitney Houston.

“1983. Sweetwater’s Club in New York. Her first song was one I’d commissioned for a Muhammad Ali film but she found meaning that perhaps the composers never knew. I signed her to the key man clause I never gave another artist. That she could leave the company if I left. It proved the intensity of my commitment. Then, for two years, we performed in New York and LA. I was very conscious that I was making a special first album. Took two years to find the material for it.

“I set her on the road for seven consecutive No. 1 records. An all-time record. I treated it especially carefully. She became one of the best-selling albums of all time, selling 23 million worldwide. Never an argument. We were on the same wave from Day One.

Change of tune

“You collaborate. Listen together, narrow choices. Music’s changed today. Different now. A domination of hip-hop. Social media plays a strong part. Without that, you’re not likely to get signed. It’s affecting the extent of hip-hop. Without a few million followers you might not even get signed by a label. It now affects material that artists either write or record today. It’s now reliant on social media. I listen to new music. I keep very current. I observe the important chart records and orders. I choose among them from my pre-Grammy gala. Like I worked with Aretha. With Alicia Keys, it’s more active collaboration because she writes every song she sings.”

If these people were starting today and the quality of music is different today, would they become stars?

“You would never do it differently. And there were no artists like them. I would still look for the best material being written. And collaborate to come up with the best material they could break through. I listen to the best of the new music to keep current. I still go into Sony every week, so I want to be aware. I want to be current.”

Since I hear from you from your building next door, and have seen you at the next table at a restaurant we were both in, and have loved you from the Stone Age, though I’m too dumb to know how you do your job, you are a one-of-a-kind in this world.

Screen-ing calls

This addendum from doctors who read my recent column on the disappearance of the medical profession:

Big cities only will be able to provide some substance, some attention.

The less wealthy will be attended to only online. A doctor will read what hurts but cannot/will not receive or examine them.

You follow the money — but the money is whose? Who’s paying for it?

If you have their phone number, lotsa luck. Call. Try. A visit with a real MD who specializes and is trained to handle your condition is becoming as rare as a polite bicycle delivery guy.

Are the so-called MDs who take phone calls all trained? One MD was writing a prescription with a thermometer. The patient asked how could he be doing that? Said the doc: “Oops. One of my patients must be walking around with my fountain pen stuck in him.”

Only soon in the USA, kids, only soon in the USA.