Clive davis bio biography book review

Clive Davis made headlines when his doorstop of a biography, The Soundtrack of My Life Simon and Schuster , recently filled bookstore shelves.

Customers find the book informative and interesting.

Outing himself, which Davis does in the last eight pages of the page book, is just one of many self-congratulatory revelations. Written with Anthony DeCurtis, longtime contributing editor at Rolling Stone , the book is meant to be the definitive look at the life of Clive Davis in his own words. The man is indeed a pop legend.

Davis made the something artists relevant to a new generation, rescuing them from a life on the oldies circuit. After early test runs with jazz-informed beauties Phyllis Hyman and Angela Bofill, Davis masterminded the career of the first black American sweetheart, who possessed a miracle of a voice and keen, Glamour magazine-ready looks.

Her name was Whitney Houston. Numbingly, laboriously, boringly, Davis details those achievements and others throughout the dense book. Most of his career high points are accompanied by sale figures and a list of awards won. You can just see Davis reclined in a plush leather chair, recounting the achievements, his fingers woven across his chest, a smile stretched across his face.

At dense pages, “The Soundtrack of My Life” is dwarfed by Bill Clinton's herculean “My Life.” But it leaves the shrimpy pages of George.

No one is as proud of Clive Davis as Clive Davis. Davis dismissed it as a failure. The album went platinum and garnered a Top 10 hit. The only time the book registers anything close to emotional resonance is in the early chapters, when Davis speaks of growing up Jewish in Brooklyn during the s. He adored his mother, who loved fashion.

He said he invited her to his house and talked to her directly about her addictions, of which she was in complete denial.