YEAR
2000
INDUCTED BY
Patti Smith
CATEGORY
Ahmet Ertegun Award
Every act he touched turned platinum.
Producer and music executive Clive Davis had an uncanny eye for talent; he signed Whitney Houston, Patti Smith, P. Diddy and more.
Clive Davis
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Fred Goodman
“I’m not the oldest of the young guys,” director Francis Ford Coppola once remarked of his place in modern Hollywood. “I’m the youngest of the old guys.”
That surprising -and surprisingly apt-assessment can be applied with even greater illumination to the extraordinarily wide-ranging career and contributions of record executive Clive Davis.
The presence of Bob Dylan and the Byrds on its roster notwithstanding, Columbia Records was hardly a rock powerhouse in 1967 when its new president, Clive Davis, ventured west to the Monterey Pop Festival.
