alicia keys

Walk into the Grammy Museum in downtown L.A., and you’ll see Clive Davis’ legacy everywhere.

The museum’s intimate performance space is named for the late record executive, and his visage greets guests at the front door. (Davis was the first million-dollar donor to the nascent Recording Academy archive and exhibition space.) His sprawling roster of acts — Bruce Springsteen, Miles Davis, Whitney Houston, Alicia Keys, Earth, Wind & Fire — defined an entire art form and business model as preserved in the Grammy Museum. Davis’ pre-Grammy gala was the most coveted invitation in music every awards season.

Davis’ death at 94 is “devastating,” said Michael Sticka, chief executive and president of the Grammy Museum. “Clive was always a north star of music and talent and artistry. We’re all lucky to have his legacy to look up to.”

Davis’ death marks the end of perhaps the most important and enduring career in the record industry. Sticka spoke to The Times about Davis’ remarkable longevity, creative vision and how a career like his will likely never be possible again.

Clive was a giant of the record business. How did his career shape the modern record industry?

His career was iconic. He really had a unique ability to not just bring an artist to their fullest potential artistically, but commercially. From attending Monterey Pop and first seeing Janis Joplin to Whitney Houston and Alicia Keys, I don’t think anybody had that ear in them the way that he did.

With Clive, what you got was not just hearing commercial viability, but an understanding of what was going on in the zeitgeist. That’s what propelled his career and legacy beyond most record executives.

His name’s on the building at Grammy Museum’s theater. What did he mean to the institution — not just for fundraising but as a living connection to music history?

He didn’t just donate to the museum. He donated his time, his historical knowledge of music, his firsthand perspective. He always kept tabs on what was happening in music. I always say the Clive Davis Theater is the toughest ticket in town for its intimacy and the level of programming we do. But he did an annual program at the museum where people could come hear stories directly from him. Once he decided he was in, he was all in.

His gala was the place to be every Grammy season too.

I don’t think anybody could gather a roomful of luminaries like that from entertainment, tech and politics in the way that Clive did. We were lucky to be a part of that. Even with the stature he had, he was still a physical presence there, he was approachable. He was always looked at as this living legend, but his legacy was continuously being built.

That’s true over the arc of his career, which saw him lead Columbia, Arista, J Records and more. He had a lot of resurrections as well as successes.

He had this ability to resurrect. Look at Santana and “Supernatural,” he was a producer on that album that was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame just last year. So many of us would just give up, but he just had this resolve to continue, and thank God he did.

The record industry is so different now than when he began his career. Artists find audiences on social media rather than being discovered by label executives. Is a career like his — a famous executive driven by their own taste and individual savvy — even possible today?

That’s true, artists break on social media before they’re even on record executives’ radars now. I don’t know if we’ll see that kind of career arc again. Clive had a rare combination of gravitas and being recognized so publicly. The man and his legacy are not going to be replicated.

Beyond the name on the theater, how do you hope the Grammy Museum will honor him with its programming in time to come?

I don’t know yet. We weren’t really prepared for this. We’re gonna have to sit down and think how to pay tribute to such a legacy. I think that the impact the Clive Davis Theater has, bringing in 120 artists a year — I couldn’t think of a more apropos name on the door.

“Hell’s Kitchen,” the Alicia Keys musical that has landed at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre in a blaze of rousing sound, deploys the R&B star’s glorious treasure trove of work in the service of a semi-autobiographical version of her coming-of-age story in the Manhattan neighborhood that gives the show its title.

The Hell’s Kitchen of Alicia Keys’ story, set in the 1990s, isn’t the gang-ridden Hell’s Kitchen of West Side Story, set in the 1950s. Keys grew up in Manhattan Plaza, a federally subsidized residential complex that provides affordable housing for artists. But for a teenager in rebellion from her watchful mother, the vibrant, music-filled street life comes with its share of dangers.

Kennedy Caughell as Jersey and Maya Drake as Ali in the North American Tour of Alicia Keys’ “Hell’s Kitchen” at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre.

(Marc J. Franklin)

Ali (Maya Drake, who’s making her professional debut in this North American tour production) is a 17-year-old ready to break out of the cage her mother, Jersey (Kennedy Caughell), has placed her in. Jersey, a single mom, isn’t a tyrant. She just doesn’t want to see her daughter make the same mistakes that she did, namely get pregnant at a young age before she’s had a chance to realize her own dreams.

The book by playwright Kristoffer Diaz (“The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity”) is structured around a loving but combustible mother-daughter relationship amid the creative ferment of New York. This artistic neverland is crystallized in the apartment building that has music pouring out of every floor when Ali rides the elevator.

Maya Drake as Ali and the company of the North American Tour of Alicia Keys’ “Hell’s Kitchen” at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre.

(Marc J. Franklin)

The story isn’t the strong suit of “Hell’s Kitchen,” which is powered by Alicia Keys’ versatile catalog, which has been supplemented with original material. The hits — “You Don’t Know My Name,” “Girl on Fire,” “Fallin’,” “If I Ain’t Got You,” “Like You’ll Never See Me Again,” “No One” and “Empire State of Mind,” among them — reverberate inside the Pantages with a thrilling exuberance.

What’s most impressive, however, is the way these tracks have been arranged both musically and dramatically. Jukebox musicals are notorious for shoe-horning in beloved songs without regard for storytelling integrity. “Mamma Mia!,” which crammed in as many ABBA hits as possible, hardly even bothered to find pretext for their inclusion. The lucrative example paved the way for more than two decades of musical theater shamelessness.

The company of the North American Tour of Alicia Keys’ “Hell’s Kitchen” at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre.

(Marc J. Franklin)

“Hell’s Kitchen,” directed by Michael Greif, takes a more dignified approach, raiding Keys’ greatest hits in a way that doesn’t cause dramatic offense and better yet, adds a layer of surprise to music that is so well known.

The songs are allocated in unexpected ways. Numbers that you might think belong to Ali are divided among the company. Jersey is first in line, and Caughell makes the most of her opportunities. But sharing in the bounty are Davis (Desmond Sean Ellington), Ali’s mostly absent and chronically unreliable father; Knuck (Jonavery Worrell), Ali’s forbidden love interest; or Miss Liza Jane (Roz White), a pianist who lives in the building and becomes Ali’s formidable mentor.

There are other characters who offer luminous assistance, but these are the principals in a musical tale built around Ali’s central relationships. Keys’ origin story is more dynamic on an atmospheric than dramatic level. A mother having difficulty with her boy-crazy teenage daughter isn’t exactly breaking any ground, and Diaz avoids venturing into more turbulent territory. Ali’s divided identity, stemming in part from an all-too-present white mother and all-too-missing Black father, sets up issues that are touched on but never deeply engaged.

Desmond Sean Ellington as Davis and Kennedy Caughell as Jersey and the company of the North American Tour of Alicia Keys’ “Hell’s Kitchen” at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre.

(Marc J. Franklin)

Miss Liza Jane spots Ali’s musical gift right away and fills her with a sense of pride and responsibility in her Black heritage. But her character’s role is somewhat earnestly compartmentalized. Knuck recognizes that Ali’s fascination with him stems in part from the way she sees him, much as her mother does, as a “thug.” But their tentative affair is secondary to the complex bond between Ali and Jersey, whose troubled connection with Davis helps Ali understand why her mother is so paranoid about her romantic choices.

But these concerns fall away when the performers start singing. Drake has a beautiful voice, but her Ali is slighter than that of Maleah Joi Moon, who won a Tony for her Broadway debut performance. I didn’t mind that Davis sings “Fallin’,” as Ellington has a voice of luscious thunder. Worrell’s Knuck more than holds his own with his duets with Ali. (In fact, I was more taken by his velvety interpretation of “Like You’ll Never See Me Again” than Ali’s more straightforwardly pretty version.) White’s Miss Liza Jane takes the Pantages audience to church in her numbers. And when Caughell magnificently directs “No One” to Ali, I can’t imagine there’s a dry eye in the house.

Desmond Sean Ellington as Davis and Maya Drake as Ali in the North American Tour of Alicia Keys’ “Hell’s Kitchen” at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre.

(Marc J. Franklin)

This tour production isn’t crisp in all areas. The dancing isn’t always smooth, the costumes struck me as a road show idea of New York cool, and the acting didn’t do much to compensate for some of the book’s less subtle moments.

But the energy of the production is infectious. “Hell’s Kitchen,” a New York story of a wunderkind discovering her gift, helped me get over my allergy to the jukebox genre. The soaring quality of the orchestra and the delectable company of voices pay exhilarating homage to a singular artist, who seems right at home at the Pantages.