Clive Davis Reveals Secrets About Legendary Artists and His Own Sexuality

Feb 19, 2013 12:01am

Clive Davis is a force of nature.

His musical enthusiasms are legendary — as is his break-neck schedule — and those so-called “golden ears.”

Not only did he discover talent as wide-ranging as Janis Joplin, Santana, Whitney Houston and Alicia Keys, he has recorded everyone from Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen to Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin. There were the Grateful Dead and Aerosmith. Did I mention, Barry Manilow, Jennifer Hudson and Kelly Clarkson? He formed a company with L.A. Reid and Babyface, which became home base for Usher and Pink. With Sean “Puffy” Combs he founded Bad Boy Records and recorded Notorious B.I.G. The list does go on and on.

abc clive davis cynthia mcfadden lpl 130212 wblog Clive Davis Reveals Secrets About Legendary Artists and His Own Sexuality

(Image Credit: Jake Whitman/ABC News)

Tune into “Nightline” TONIGHT at 12:35 a.m. to watch “Nightline” anchor Cynthia McFadden’s full interview with Clive Davis

Nearly 50 years after the one-time lawyer became the president of CBS Records, he remains a vital force in the music industry. Davis, now 80, reigns as  the chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment and just last week he appeared on the cover of Billboard Magazine’s power issue.

PHOTOS: Clive Davis Shares Personal Celeb Photos

Now comes his autobiography, “The Sound Track of My Life,” in which he chronicles a childhood in Brooklyn, the loss of his parents when he was still a teen and his triumphant, scholarship-supported march through New York University and then Harvard Law School.

The over 500-page book is filled with the often juicy behind-the-scenes stories of some of the best known artists of our time: How Janice Joplin suggested she perform a sexual act with him to seal their deal, how John Lennon offered him insight to the creative process, the false accusations of embezzlement that ended his career at CBS.

And there are deeply personal revelations: The end of his two marriages, and in the final chapter, Davis discusses his sexuality. He is bisexual, he told me. Since the end of his second marriage in 1985, he has been sexually involved with men. At first with both men and women, Davis said, but for the past 20 years with two male partners: A doctor for 13 years and for the past seven, with another man he does not name.

He tells me bisexuality is “maligned and misunderstood” but that it is his truth and he decided it was time for him to say so publicly.  I asked Davis about the old adage that people are “either gay, straight or lying.”

“I’m not lying,” Davis said. ”[Bisexuality] does exist. For over 50 years I never had sex with a male. It wasn’t repressed.  I had very good sexual relationships with women.”

RELATED: Clive Davis On the Current State of Music

When pressed about why he doesn’t name the men he has had relationships with, he said it is their privacy he is protecting, not his own.

We have followed Davis around for much of the past month — trying to keep up. From his extraordinary office at the top of New York’s Sony Building, to his stunning, art-filled New York duplex and finally to his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Davis is fun to be around. Something is always happening. New young composers want to meet with him, senior citizen superstars need his ear. He is always unruffled. Has time for everyone. The necktie and handkerchief always match.

And music, there is always more music.

Clive Davis Confirms: Michael Jackson Plotted to End Brother Jermaine’s Career

michael_and_jermaine (2)

In his wonderfully juicy new book, “Soundtrack of My Life,” Clive Davis — “the Man with the 45 RPM Ears” –confirms what has always been out there: Michael Jackson purposely tried to kill off brother Jermaine’s career. In the mid 80s, Davis signed Jermaine Jackson and had a couple of hits that  still stand up: “Do What You Do” and “Tell Me I’m Not Dreaming.” Michael didn’t like this.

When Clive hired Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds and LA Reid in the late 1980s to produce Jermaine’s fourth album at Arista Records, Michael had enough, Davis says. The King of Pop tied up Babyface for his own projects, ripping him away from Jermaine. Clive writes: “Jermaine couldn’t believe that Michael, his close brother, would hijack his producers’ material this way.”At a dinner in Paris, Clive recalls, Jermaine was “crying, indeed sobbing at times, so deeply hurt that his brother would do this to him.”

The older brother was so angry that he wrote his infamous song, “Word to the Badd,” which denounced Michael as shallow and selfish. Michael responded by calling Davis and demanding he take the song off of Jermaine’s new album.

Davis was between a rock and a hard place, as they say. Jermaine leaked the track so the world could hear his bitterness. Clive “I felt it would be wrong for me to tell an artist to take a song off an album. This was a family and personal matter that they would need to resolve themselves.” Eventually a watered down version of the song was officially released. Davis’s story lines up with the one told by Michael’s longtime pr man, the late Bob Jones, in his book with Stacy Brown.

I’m sorry: this is the petty side of Michael Jackson that his fans don’t like to hear about. But now we have the same story from two people who never knew each other–Bob Jones, and Clive Davis. Bob Jones wrote that Michael systematically destroyed the careers of Rebbe and Jermaine, and even LaToya, but wasn’t fast enough to stop Janet.

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