Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives

The guy is a LEGEND. He IS the music industry. This movie gives you a great overview of his life and YOURS.

This would have been even better if it were longer, like a 6 part series. I feel that way about most documentaries, even 'Country' which WAS 6 parts lol. I have to give it a 10 because you need to watch it so you know who this great man is, an icon in the music industry but not a household name. I've known who Clive was since my younger years, but didn't go down any rabbit holes on the topic of Clive Davis until recently. It's inspiring to know he's still working as I write this in 2020. Go Clive!!!

The story of Clive Davis is interesting & informative however, as much as I like Whitney Houston, had I known she would take up half the documentary, I would've thought twice about watching it. It's such a shame other incredibly talented artists from the 70's & 80's weren't included because as is shown throughout, he helped launch a plethora of big names.

The life of music producer Clive Davis is the history of pop music just before and after Mitch Miller. Working intimately with the biggest names in the business few if any had his expertise or experience and this doc covers most of the creme de la creme of the music scene that Davis either discovered or gravitated toward him. Joplin, Springsteen, Aretha, Dion Warwick, Santana, Whitney, Barry Manilow among many others discovered and promoted by Davis having nothing but kind words for this impresario who had an incredibly keen sense of recognizing talent and selecting songs to promote the artist.

Interesting not so much for Davis's personal life it is the interviews of rock and pop stars over the generations informing us of his incredible acumen while at Columbia and Arista Records that provided us with the "soundtrack of our lives" which gives this doc legs. By the time they get around to the career and tragic life of Whitney Houston Clive's background recedes into it and her dilemma takes center stage, his accomplishment a back seat to her tragedy but not before we get a semi-comprehensive history of pop music over the last 60 years under the stewardship of one of its greatest explorers.

The first artist I think about when I hear Arista records is Patti Smith. We actually get three minutes with Patti and very little time with other legends of rock, such as Janis Joplin and Springsteen, since everything pre-Eighties is sort of skipped over until the day Davis introduced Houston to the world of music. Then the documentary turns into an hagiography of Whitney Houston and afterwards how great Davis was to promote hip hop and such...

It smell so much of political correctness that it made me dislike it. I agree that Houston was an incredibly talented artist and her demise was tragic but it's somehow ironic that this documentary celebrates the exact things that drove her to her untimely death, namely greed and the endless search for the next hit.

Also, I am not a fanny of Manilow and I never heard of Kenny G., therefore there was very little of interest to me and I found the documentary out of focus, overlong and crass in its hypocritical celebration of money grabbing.