Name: Clive Davis Talks About Lou Reed, Springsteen, Janis Joplin And The Grateful Dead | Letterman
Uploaded: 2024-06-21T23:08:28.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Clive Davis Talks About Lou Reed, Springsteen, Janis Joplin And The Grateful Dead | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-06-21. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Clive Davis Talks About Lou Reed, Springsteen, Janis Joplin And The Grateful Dead | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-06-21. Transcript available.

this is we're very happy about this this is a man uh if you if you know a great
deal about music
you know a great deal about this man if you only know a little bit about music
you still know about
this man he's one of those guys where oh i've heard that name before and in
fact he is a uh
what is he paul he's a pioneer he's an icon he is he changed the music industry
he's still doing it
continues to bring great music in front of the public week after week that's
right and we're
going to visit with him tonight he is a multiple grammy award winner a member
of the rock and roll
hall of fame his remarkable five-decade career has established him as one of
the most powerful forces
in the history of the music business his best-selling memoir entitled the
soundtrack of my life will be
out in paperback next week ladies and gentlemen here's clive davis nice to meet
you thank you very
much for for being here uh i don't want to embarrass you but i think i'm right
about this that while
people may not know exactly what it is you do in music they certainly have
heard the name and associate
you with music and and tell people well it's impossible in a short period of
time tell them what you do
though what i do well i began aristo records after having served as president
of columbia records
for about six or seven years and i sign artists and discover them and sometimes
reestablish major
wonderful orders to show how long a career can last now it's interesting to me
you speak of a long
career and in and in music uh we think in terms of shorter careers but you have
five decades had the
career making artists and hits and so forth and not really from a musical
background yourself
that's true i got into music by luck i studied i lost my parents when i was a
teenager i had four
thousand dollars to my name i studied law i became a lawyer and i through luck
i became lawyer for
columbia records and one day overnight became its president wow uh and then you
went to
they're happy because it's nice to see a lawyer making good that's right
um and then there was uh i don't know if they still have this musical event in
california the monterey
pop festival and you went there and what capacity did you have i was head of
the company but i was
watching observing you know you don't come in and change music overnight or
learn a new profession
i was there and it changed my life who did you see what acts what artists
well the principal one was big brother in the holding company featuring janice
chopper right
and so that day musically culturally socially changed my life forever i saw
this group i saw janice pulsating
vibrating compelling an incredible white soul sister probably the greatest of
all time and i just was
determined to sign her as my first order signing now how old a man are you in
this photograph at that
festival how old a guy were you at the festival uh i was 35 35. so uh not
probably the age of the rest
of the audience but you could observe no i was there in a tennis sweater and khaki
pants and they were
there in flowing robes and beads and i sort of stood out entirely now you uh
you are certainly aware
of the role that the ed sullivan theater has played in in popular music uh both
on the ed sullivan show
and then here now oh without question every great artist in popular uh music
has appeared on this
day you must have been in this building many many times i was indeed i was
indeed tell us about your
relationship with lou reed i have very vivid memories of the great lou reed who
sadly passed away this
past week um he was truly one of the real originals of contemporary music and i
was about i had just
formed darrister records we were about two years old and he and i were becoming
friends and he he wanted
me to get to know him better so he said you got to accompany me on the walk on
the wild side and
and see after midnight what new york is really like and he took me i'll never
forget it you know to the
clubs cutting edge rock music a vanguard social life and yet there's the other
side of lou reed that i
wanted him to know about me and i invited him to my apartment in central park
west over thanksgiving the
macy's day parade i'll never forget watching lou in great punk regalia munching
on a bagel with cream
cheese and lox and there's one short anecdote about lou it was sunday we were
becoming real good friends
i called him up i said it's real sunny today and one of my great a and r men
bob feiden had invited
us to a cabana on atlantic beach i called him and i said lou let's go we'll
spend the day together
we'll listen to music we'll get to really know each other on atlantic beach in
this cabana and
there was a pause and lou said clive if i ever get a tan i've lost my entire
career
now the picture we saw was you lou reed and um andy warhol yes and i mean these
are the people that
you lived and spent your life with really well you're talking about the early
years there's no
question i mean i've gone on with arista to discover whitney houston and to uh
work with aretha franklin
and dion walwick and the grateful dead what about the for example bruce springsteen
what was your role
in his career early stories give us an early story of you and bruce okay um
well bruce was brought to
me by john hammond a great a and r man and he played his music for me and i saw
him as a real original i mean
someone who was not just the new bob dylan or another bob dylan that was the
kiss of death in those days
and so i was excited i signed him and i get the album and i just saw a video
that bruce did in my
honor which touched me because he said you know clive heard my album and he
called me up and he said you
know there's no radio hits on this album could you try to take a shot and maybe
one or two more cuts
and bruce said you know i didn't retreat into the normal artist ego i said you
know maybe he has a
point and he said he went on to write blinded by the light and spirit in the
night so he called that a
real good call and and um you know bruce when i first signed him he stood very
stationary you know
it was not that he he has since become the greatest to me live performer in
rock music and i was trying
to show that music is not that every few years you get the media saying music
is dying and so i took over a
theater in la for seven nights i put all different artists together miles davis
with bruce springsteen
with johnny mathis and classical music anyway bruce comes on this stage it's an
enormous stage
and he was just standing there so in rehearsal i went up and i walked him from
one side of the
stage to the other i said you know when you play a place like this you got to
take advantage of it fast
forward two years later i founded arister we were not connected he was still on
columbia of course
and he played the bottom line and he invited me down you got to see what i'm
doing now and i went down
there and there was the great bruce springsteen emerging jumping on tables you
know so live so energetic
so compelling i i was amazed and i the show was over i walked back to his
dressing room and he looked at
me he said so clive did i move around enough for you tonight it's hard to
believe when you look at
this picture of you and bruce springsteen
in that picture who knows more about moving to music the guy on the left or the
guy on the right
uh let's do one more let's see here uh well what about the grateful dead well i
mean my gosh the the
range it just everybody is on this list the grateful dead tell us something
about that organization okay
when i was head of columbia i met with them in a long table conference room in
san francisco because
they were unhappy with their record label and they felt my god you put tickets
for the grateful dead
concerts on sale and you could sell out madison square garden seven nights in a
row and their album
would come out and they would get a fraction of those sales so they had decided
that they would with
their next release go independent and sell their album on good humor ice cream
trucks all over america
and that there's no question their audience will be found so they asked me and
two or three other
heads of companies what our opinion was and i told them they're going to have a
nightmare that they're
going to have a big credit and collection problem they're going to have a radio
promotion problem
that eventually came to pass and i was very touched because here i had formed
arister about two or three
years previous and i get a call that everything i told them would happen did
happen and they want to
be on this relatively brand new company arister records so it's a very touching
memory that i have
of the grateful dead when you start a company you could sign an artist like the
grateful dead in
your second and third year you're really doing something you know it reminded
me when you mentioned
you had a a meeting with the group tell there was another story a meeting with
i think it was
with janis joplin and and her band uh and there was a surprise to the end of
the meeting as they
got up to leave does this ring a bell with yes it rings a yes tell them the
story yeah well i she had
been in my office and i was trying to say look the cbs building is a beautiful
great classic this is here
in new york city this is right here in new york city and i said you know don't
think of us as
establishment she said i said because i really want to give sign to my label to
columbia records rather
you know the real cutting edge orders at that time when it came to things when
it came to signing the
contract she said this is too formal this is too establishment and she made a
direct overture to go
to bed with me she said that would be meaningful that would be personal it
would so i was flattered
i declined we go down a few flights to um a conference room where the rest of
big brother in the holding
company was and you know we had an exchange i said you know how comfortable i
want creative artists to be
here and then as we ended the meeting you know one of the guys stood up and he
was standing there
naked and so she cackled as only janice can she says you see how formal we are
and that's the only kind
of meetings i attend by the way the great clive davis ladies and gentlemen the
soundtrack of my life
out on paperback next week great to have you here thank you very much thank you
so much