Clive Davis Discusses His Bisexual Life in A New Book (Also Kelly Clarkson!)

By On 02/19/2013 · 63 Comments · In American Idol, Kelly Clarkson

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That famed record executive, Clive Davis. has been romantically involved with men is no big secret–or a big deal for that matter. But, for the first time, David openly discusses his sexuality in his new memoir, The Soundtrack of My Life. From Rolling Stone Magazine:

Davis, who has been married and divorced twice, has never before publically addressed his sexuality. In a candid five-page section toward the end of the book, due in stores today, he writes that he first had a sexual encounter with a man during “the era of Studio 54.” “On this night, after imbibing enough alcohol, I was open to responding to his sexual overtures,” writes Davis, who says he had only been with women before. Being with a man, he writes, provided “welcome relief.”

After a period of “soul searching and self-analysis,” Davis separated from his second wife in 1985, and says that he went on to have simultaneous relationships with two women and a man. In 1990, he entered into a “monogamous relationship” with a male doctor, who is not named in the book. Although that relationship ended in 2004, Davis says he has been in a subsequent relationship with another man ever since. Davis writes that his coming out deeply affected his ties with one of his sons, Mitchell: After what Davis calls “one very trying year,” father and son worked out their differences, Davis says.

The book covers Davis’ post 1975 career, as founder of Arista and J Records “in great detail” and includes an in-depth discussion of his clash with Kelly Clarkson and her management over the release of 2007′s My December. Davis “recruited focus groups to offer opinions on a batch of the album’s songs, with very negative results.” Well. Reading this book = getting pissed off all over again. Hooray.

Davis will sit down with Katie Couric tomorrow on her afternoon talk show where I expect most of the conversation will be about his sexuality and relationship with Whitney Houston. We’ll probably have to buy the book to get the Kelly Clarkson scoop.

More on Kelly via EW:

American Idol season 1 winner Kelly Clarkson also enjoyed massive Davis-masterminded early success, particularly with her second album, 2004?s Breakaway. That collection included the megahit “Since U Been Gone,” a track, Davis recalls, which Clarkson adamantly did not want featured on the CD. (Davis writes that when he insisted “Since U Been Gone” be included, Clarkson burst into “hysterical sobbing.”)

Worse was to come. The artist and the executive fell out badly over Clarkson’s desire to write more songs on her next collection, My December. In Soundtrack, Davis recalls that he didn’t believe the Clarkson-copenned material contained a No. 1 hit and told the singer’s manager that he was “out of his mind” to believe otherwise. He also writes about a meeting with Clarkson in which he told her that My December was “a pop album that still needs pop hits.” While Clarkson prevailed in her creative vision, Davis was proven right in his commercial assessment of the material when My December failed to repeat the success of Breakaway.

 

 
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  • waitingforthe1

    All you people talking about “Because of You” have no idea what you are talking about. Ben Moody even said the original version was HORRIBLE! IF you think the 16 year-old version is the masterpiece that ended up on the album you are wrong. The stunning version on “Because of You” is the result of Ben Moody and other producers cleaning it up.

    Where did Ben ever say that BOY was Horrible?  Below is an article about the song when it was chosen as a single:

    http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1506898/kelly-clarkson-chooses-next-single.jhtml

    and a quote from Ben:

    They were just unbelievable, how structured [the songs] were and her understanding of music, which is not something you would expect from a pop artist,” said former Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody, who co-wrote and produced the songs after Clarkson sent him the tape. “She had these ideas already in place for songs; all I really had to do was build music around them and develop them. It was quite easy.“

  • standtotheright

    The music business is always a battle between art and industry, and an artist who “needs to make an album for him/herself for many reasons” should do it on his/her own dime.

    Unfortunately label contracts don’t work that way.  Maybe some very savvy artists have arranged it so that they can “step out” of a contract and self-finance a release, but most can’t. They present material to the label that is commercially viable and the label goes from there. There is a wide range of material between “Breakaway Part 2″ and “not commercially viable” and MD obviously did well enough to merit a release. Davis didn’t “win the battle for industry” by pulling support for the project; he lost the war. And I suspect that had something to do with his, er, “lateral move” at Sony.

  • Incipit

     …but you can’t always expect to win.. 

    I can’t find the part where she “always expected to win”, dabney c . And there is plenty of commercial and artistic success, even for My December. I can tell Clive didn’t expect that – IDK about Kelly, but there is sweet vindication. so that’s cool.

    I don’t think she expected to be bullied, patronized, insulted, slandered, or sabotaged either, a decade ago…but that happened. I remember. And Friedman was Clive’s TMZ style hatchet man. But Kelly’s still standing. 

    I can easily find the part where the Dark Lord is lying his ass off…and now, I can find Kelly’s rebuttal of those lies. He probably expected that when he started ‘misremembering’ because that’s who Kelly is, ‘straight, no chaser’. Great buzz for selling his memoirs (Not to me) – because really, does anyone care about his sex life? and whatever he says about Michael Jackson can’t be refuted by the source. 

    Since he skipped over John Cougar Mellencamp, that’s maybe an interesting story too. Heh.

    But if you consider that a “Boo Hoo” post when someone says, “I refuse to be bullied” – Then I am in Strother Martin territory, with a “failure to communicate”…are you sure you read the “No Mas Pantalones” Post mj put up? It has it’s own thread now.

  • fuzzywuzzy

    Thing is though is that “My December” was a commercial and artistic success, it just didn’t sell 6 million like “Breakaway” did. Now, over 10 years into her career (extraordinarily long for a pop artist), Kelly has another platinum album, her biggest commercially successful single and made Grammy history by winning the second time for Best Vocal Pop Album, all without any input from Clive. I think that Kelly knows about artistic differences and accepts that they are part of the business, but to have Clive openly sabotage her album in public and now, lie about her and her music is unacceptable, despite any artistic differences they may have had. And if Clive had any decency at all, he would have included the story about BOY, and admitted that he was wrong about that song and Kelly’s composing abilities, but that’s too much to expect from a lying asshole like him.

  • dabney c

    Even so, there’s just this entitlement thing that I see more and more in relative newcomers (and surprisingly, in reality show winners/finalists) which seriously turns me off. My December was – what – her 3rd album after being in the business for all of 3 or 4 years? It’s a bit galling. Again, I know my opinion is not popular, but this is my gut reaction. It drives me crazy when I hear Idols dissing industry giants before they’ve earned the right to do so. I dunno, maybe I’m wrong, but it’s what I feel. :-/ 

  • fuzzywuzzy

    “Then I am in Strother Martin territory, with a “failure to communicate”"

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2f-MZ2HRHQ

    ;)

  • standtotheright

    It drives me crazy when I hear Idols dissing industry giants before they’ve earned the right to do so. I dunno, maybe I’m wrong, but it’s what I feel. :-/

    She didn’t “diss” him at all until he came out at a meeting saying what a huge disappointment the album was. If they argued behind the scenes, she didn’t have to “earn” the right to do that nor was it being disrespectful to advocate for herself. She had instincts which she had deployed to help make Breakaway and its singles the successes that they were; it’s not entitlement, in my view, to say that she merited a little consideration and flexibility. And even if she hadn’t, she was the one who had to go out and sell the material so it was incumbent on all parties to find material that she believed in. It could have involved working with the core of the album that she had.

    Instead, Davis threw a public temper tantrum that helped damage his reputation as well as hers. And, I suspect, more.

  • julesb2183

    Clive was right – My December really has no hits on it and was a bad CD. Coming from the massive success of Breakaway, it must have had the label concerned, to put it mildly. I don’t think he “sabatoged” it. MD sold far to much for it to have been. No marketing money to back it because they didn’t believe it would sell and they wanted to cut their losses? Probably. Kelly could have compromised and replaced one or two of the horrid songs with hits. You can’t tell me “Yeah” was irreplaceable. 

  • escape

    How things can change in a flash.  Kelly Clarkson went from the high of winning a Grammy then her speech about not knowing who the hell Miguel was, now to this.  This is not kind of attention she needs. It also didn’t look as winning the Grammy help with her CD sales of Stronger.

  • standtotheright

    It also didn’t look as winning the Grammy gave Stronger a bump with CD sales.

    Her GH CD sales went up by 50 percent. Since she didn’t actually perform any of the material from either CD, it suggests simply being on stage was effective in making people remember that they love the pairing of her voice with a lot of different songs, including, in this particular case, Never Again. Oh, I do love a bit of irony.

  • LongKissGoodnight

    Let’s keep it real, that 50% increase means Kelly’s GH had sold 5K more then a week before.
    It’s the king of bump that sounds far more impressive in percentages then in actual numbers.

  • LongKissGoodnight

    Let’s keep it real, that 50% increase means Kelly’s GH had sold 5K more then a week before.
    It’s the king of bump that sounds far more impressive in percentages then in actual numbers.

  • standtotheright

    That doesn’t change the point that she had a bump despite not singing any material from her own album. That’s the real-keeping. The bands with “big” increases had their own material performed on stage.

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