Clive Davis, one of the most influential figures in the history of the music business, died on Monday at the age of 94, inspiring a wave of tributes from across the entertainment industry.
Among those who called him a friend and mentor was the prolific songwriter Diane Warren, who worked closely with Davis for over 40 years, writing hits for the likes of Toni Braxton, Whitney Houston and Milli Vanilli to name a few. Earlier Monday, she likened Davis’s passing to losing her father. Speaking further with THR, Warren recalled the beginnings of her friendship with Davis, lessons she’d learned and why “there will never be anything like him again.”
Clive was family. Obviously not by blood, but we create our own families. In my heart, he was family. I wrote it in that post, but especially the day after Father’s Day, it felt like losing my dad, losing another father. It hit that hard because it’s not just that we had a lot of hits together and did a lot of work together.
I would not have the career I had now had it not been for Clive Davis, and I’m not the only one. There’s so many of us, so many huge artists, that owe everything to that guy. From the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and so on, that’s 70 years of creating artists. And of so many different genres. Janice Joplin, Carlos Santana, Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston.
