There’s a reason that New York University is a perennial honoree on Billboard’s Top Music Business Schools list each year: There aren’t too many universities where students can sit down for an exclusive Q&A with industry behemoth Clive Davis and 21st century hitmaker Mark Ronson on a casual Tuesday night to hear insightful, revealing stories about everyone from Aretha Franklin to Adele.
On Tuesday (Nov. 18) night in Manhattan, a couple hundred industry power players, artists, educators and students at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts/Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music sat down to watch an unreleased film (a visual mixtape, really) spanning Davis’ legendary career, a run that saw him boost everyone from Billy Joel to Aerosmith to Patti Smith to Whitney Houston to TLC to Brooks & Dunn to the top. Do You Remember? — first screened at Davis’ 90th birthday and produced by Ronson, Erich Bergen and DJ Earworm — was followed by a Q&A between Davis and Ronson moderated by Anthony DeCurtis.
Both Davis and Ronson have written acclaimed memoirs about their very different careers (Ronson’s book, Night People: How to Be a DJ in ’90s New York City, came out just this year), but much of the discussion covered territory that was brand new or vaguely familiar to the student body in the audience. “Just hit after hit after hit!” exclaimed one astonished student after the screening. “So many different eras.”
What’s fascinating about Davis isn’t just that he was “The Man With the Golden Ear,” but the fact that he refused to do one genre at a time, working with Barry Manilow while also helping Earth, Wind & Fire, or giving the Grateful Dead a late-career win around the same time he was working with golden-age rap group Whodini and sax juggernaut Kenny G.
Guided by DeCurtis (who assisted Davis’ memoir, The Soundtrack of My Life), Davis regaled the crowd with stories about Aretha Franklin’s four bodyguards eating their way up to a massive bill at three-Michelin star Manhattan restaurant Le Bernardin and John Lennon explaining why he didn’t need to listen to the radio to make music: “Do you think Picasso goes to the galleries to see what’s being painted?“ (Lennon, incidentally, had this to say when Davis introduced himself in a diner: “I read Billboard. I know who you are.”)
Ronson also shared some wisdom with the crowd of aspirants, telling students that he only broke through (with Amy Winehouse, incidentally) when he stopped chasing trends and focused on making music he loved — and that sometimes you have to eat crow at a songwriting session and admit that someone else’s idea is better.
Whitney Houston, who was discovered and signed by Davis and remained a lifelong friend until her passing in 2012, was naturally touched upon, though Davis refused to answer the loaded question “Aretha or Whitney” when it reared its head. He did, however, share that at one point, Houston wondered if she should start cowriting her own material, given that Madonna and Janet Jackson did so. His response? If you’re going to do it, the standard to reach is “The Greatest Love of All” (a three-week No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1986). Davis said that after that exchange, she never brought up the idea again.
Though both men have enjoyed very different careers, that story tips to a through line in the Q&A — whether you’re a singer, a songwriter or an executive, you need to know when it’s time to put your foot down and when it’s time to take the L. Because as both Davis and Ronson have demonstrated over the course of their lengthy careers, you can suffer defeat and still emerge victorious when the dust has settled.
