Clive

Barry Manilow has told the story behind his first big hit so many times that I had no intention of bringing up the half-century-old “Mandy” when I sat down with the singer on a recent afternoon at his home in Palm Springs. Among the questions I did ask was how he ended up recording the song that opens his new album, and the answer — as it’s so often been throughout Manilow’s career, beginning with that 1975 chart-topper — was Clive Davis.

“It was all Clive,” Manilow said of “Once Before I Go,” the Peter Allen/Dean Pitchford number that leads off his just-released “What a Time” LP. Davis, the star-making record executive with the so-called golden ears, had been urging him to record the song for years, Manilow told me, which inevitably brought him back to the well-rehearsed tale of “Mandy” — to Davis’ decision that Manilow’s debut for his Arista label lacked a breakout smash and to his suggestion that the singer cut a version of a modest hit called “Brandy” by Scott English.

“So I went in the studio and did it trying to sound like that guy,” Manilow recalled, stomping his foot to approximate a lumbering rock beat. “Clive came in and said, ‘That’s terrible.’ I said, ‘I know it’s terrible.’ But in order to learn the song, I’d slowed it down and changed the key — I found the love song hiding in ‘Brandy,’” Manilow continued. (He also changed the title to avoid any confusion with Looking Glass’ “Brandy,” which had recently reached No. 1.) Manilow played the tune in his more romantic style for the exec. “I’ll never forget it — Clive said, ‘Just do that.’ And that was the record.” He laughed.

“He’s a kind of a genius.”

Davis, who died Monday at age 94, didn’t sing or play an instrument. “I knew nothing about music,” he once said, looking back at his entry into the record business. Yet his instincts made him one of the surest spotters and nurturers of talent in pop history, with a long — and varied — line of success stories that included Manilow, Janis Joplin, Neil Diamond, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson and Maroon 5, among many others. He even helped the Grateful Dead score a Top 10 single with “Touch of Grey” in 1987.

Davis, who got his start in Columbia Records’ legal department, could identify original voices and seemed to intuit which songs were likely to become hits. Sometimes the hits came from the voices themselves, as in the case of Bruce Springsteen, whom Davis cajoled into writing “Blinded by the Light” for his Columbia debut; sometimes the exec match-made performers and composers, as in the case of “Mandy” or “Freeway of Love,” a zippy Narada Michael Walden jam that launched Franklin’s comeback in the mid-1980s.

A natty dresser with a cosmopolitan air, Davis founded Arista in 1974 after he was fired from Columbia (where he’d ascended to the presidency) amid an embezzlement scandal of which he was later cleared. In 2000, he was ousted from Arista in a corporate shakeup — just months after the label won eight Grammy Awards with Carlos Santana’s 15-times-platinum “Supernatural” LP — then launched a new label, J Records, which scored an immediate blockbuster with Keys’ “Songs in A Minor.”

Clive Davis at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2020.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Wherever he worked, Davis’ goal was shepherding hits that spanned formats and generations; he delighted in projects like “Smooth,” the inescapable Santana single pairing the rock guitarist and Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty, and a series of Great American Songbook albums by the once-scruffy Rod Stewart. He might also have been the music industry’s biggest believer in ballads, at least among suits: Between 1985 and 1992, Houston alone released almost a dozen of music’s all-timers, including “Saving All My Love for You,” “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” and — perhaps the greatest pop ballad ever recorded — her take on Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” (It wasn’t a huge hit, but listen to Houston and Jermaine Jackson’s pedal-steel-drenched “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do,” from Houston’s debut, for an early instance of that crossover ambition.)

One of relatively few nonperformers inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Davis brought his flair for variety to the party he threw at the Beverly Hilton every year on the night before the Grammys — a famously hot ticket that drew A-list celebs from the worlds of music and Hollywood as well as business and politics. You could always count on the exec to have persuaded some number of the year’s splashiest new acts to perform; this year’s bash, in January, had Sombr, Olivia Dean and the women of “KPop Demon Hunters.” But my favorite part of the show was always seeing which veteran Davis had tapped to mix it up with the youngsters — Diamond or Manilow, for instance, or Johnny Mathis, who absolutely killed in 2015.

Davis horrified many in 2012 when he opted to proceed with his party just hours after Houston was found dead in a hotel room at the Beverly Hilton. In the years after the singer’s death, Davis drew criticism for taking too much credit for Houston’s artistic achievements; to some, he became a symbol of the music industry’s efforts to tone down Houston’s Blackness in order to reach white audiences. Five years ago, I asked Warwick, who was Houston’s cousin, whether she’d taken on any kind of consulting role on “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” the 2022 Whitney biopic that Davis produced.

Bobby Brown, from left, Whitney Houston and Clive Davis in New York in 1998.

(Stuart Ramson / AP)

“Not one thing,” she told me. “I want them to let Whitney rest in peace. Leave her alone. Ten years [since she died] — it’s time to let her sleep.” (In a statement Monday, Warwick called Davis her “dear friend” and said she “can think of no other record man that seemed to have that magical ability to know a hit when he heard a song.”)

I spoke with Davis many times over the years and was always struck by his enthusiasm about music and about his recall of events from decades ago. In 2017, I interviewed the exec alongside Mathis and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds about a record the three made together that had Mathis singing newish pop songs like Adele’s “Hello” and Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” — a concept Manilow told me in March he and Davis had been talking about replicating. After my story ran, Davis emailed me and said he’d enjoyed the piece, which had a couple of lines about Davis’ tendency to go overboard hyping his projects.

“Yes, a few of your bites required a personal Band-Aid,” he wrote, “but I did appreciate your perspective of the Mathis album’s quality.”

He knew the music was good; Clive Davis always knew when the music was good.

Our Yorkshire Farm star Clive Owen opens up about a travel mishap during his Ireland trip with sons Miles and Sid in Channel 5 series Reuben Owen: Life in the Dales

Clive Owen found himself having to explain a “little incident” that happened away from the cameras, after his sons raised concerns.

The farmer, who has nine children with Amanda Owen, has been appearing in his eldest son Reuben’s Channel 5 programme, Life in the Dales.

The show follows the family, who rose to prominence on Our Yorkshire Farm, as they continue to document the ups and downs of their farming life.

A recent instalment saw Clive venture beyond the Dales on a road trip to Ireland with his sons Miles and Sid, as they took part in the All Nations Shearing Champions.

However, the journey proved far from plain sailing for Clive, as he revealed he had suffered an “incident” along the way, reports the Express.

Upon arriving at the competition in Donegal, ahead of the two-day event, Clive declared: “Well boys we’re here. The sheep pens are empty but they’ll be coming we hope.”

The narrator then observed: “With the chill of yesterday’s storm still in the air, there’s a memory the boys haven’t quite shaken.”

Sid enquired: “Are you feeling better after yesterday?”

The farmer brushed it aside, responding: “You don’t let me forget yesterday, you guys. My little incident on the ship…”

Miles chipped in: “That sea air was getting to you.”

Clive then put his sons’ minds at rest: “No I’m fine, so forget all about it.”

The narrator continued: “Unlikely, but with prize sheep, sizzling stalls of Irish grub and more vintage tractors than you can shake a spanner at, Clive’s little incident might slip off the radar.”

Miles then jokingly questioned whether his dad was “up to” judging, as he commented: “You look the part but whether you’re up to it…”

“Just remember, the judge is always right,” Clive hit back.

Ahead of heading off on their lengthy journey, marking Sid and Miles’ first time outside the country, Clive shared his concerns about leaving the farm.

He told Reuben: “I’m going to take Miles and Sid because they’ve never been on a ship and they’ve never been overseas.”

He went on to the camera: “I used to skive off school and go and watch these famous sales and watch these great men sell these wonderful sheep and dream that maybe one day it might be me.

“For me, to eventually breed a Champion myself, that’s pretty amazing, actually. We called him Glory and sold him for £28,000 which was amazing.

“Fellas that go and judge like myself, know how hard it is to breed these things. So I see it as a great responsibility and a great honour to judge.

“It’s a tough thing to do because you don’t make everybody happy when you judge sheep.”

Before setting off, Miles and Sid shared their excitement for the ferry, with the former saying: “Yeah, they reckon it will be a bit stormy.”

“Hope you don’t get sea sick,” Reuben warned, while his girlfriend reassured: “You’ll be fine!”

After asking if Sid has ever been abroad before, he replied: “No I haven’t, this will be the first time.”

Clive added, “It’s quite a journey,” before sharing his concerns for travelling through the Irish sea before hitting the sheep competition.

“Tomorrow, there’s a big storm passing through so I’m quite worried about the crossing, how rough it will be.

“Whether we’re ill or anything, I would not like that to happen but we shall see.”

Reuben replied: “Well have a good time you three,” as they set off, with Clive saying, “Have a good time you three.”

“Miss you already,” Reuben called after them.

Reuben Owen: Life in the Dales is available to watch on Channel 5.