“I will not start from scratch. I want…”
Clive Davis discusses his requirements when joining a new label.
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So here we are in Hawaii. Charles Goldstock flies out, my president of Arista. I entrusted him to come. I want to be an instant major.
I will not start from scratch. I want five platinum honors other than Whitney, Kenny G, Barry Manilow, and Carlos Santana. I want five artists that have no album or recording out that I’ve signed that are in the studio with their first music. I knew that Alicia Keys was one of those artists in the studio.
You can’t trade it like baseball tickets, but the artist had to agree. And they could tear up the contract and offer her anything they wanted to. I wanted the right to hire anybody at Arista who would come work for me at Jay without offering them a penny more than what they were earning currently at their position with no limit of number. I wanted to be an instant major and there were 18 artists and executives all with families. That I wanted to approach the president, the executive vice presidents, the entire A& R staff, the major radio promotion staff, product management, publicity, all the top executives of Arista without offering them a penny more.
I presented these terms and more importantly, not more importantly, but, and I wanted $150 million to pay for this, where the biggest new label ever formed was 32 million for Interscope.
I got all those terms and all 18 executives came to work for Jay Records. Unheard of.
I had Aristair immediately thereafter with L. A. Read at the helm. They did one album with Whitney. It bombed.
I came out with a Lucy Keys, got her on the Oprah Winfrey show, led the charge, marketing, put her on my Grammy party. She exploded. Maybe 15 million album sales. I signed Luther Vandross and bringing him back to prominence, back to prominence. The same with Busta Rhymes. Everything we touched exploded. No more than two to two and a half years later, the new head of Bertelsmann Music came to see me. He said, I just fired Michael Dorniman. I just fired Strauss Zellnick. I’m giving you back Arista. Forget the fact that you’re now 70. I’m giving you RCA music, I’m giving you Jive music, you are the head of all of Birdman music. Very gratifying.