Clive Davis

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Clive Davis. Music industry icon, record company head, legendary producer, prototypical A&R guy, Grammy Award winner, member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame…and the man who had his hands on the careers of Janis Joplin, TLC, Rod Stewart, Alicia Keys, Barry Manilow, Christina Aguilera, Carlos Santana, Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Hudson, Laura Nyro, Santana, Earth, Wind & Fire, Bruce Springsteen, Chicago, Billy Joel, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Loggins & Messina, Usher, Outkast, P!nk, the Notorious B.I.G., Sean Combs, Toni Braxton, Aerosmith, Pink Floyd and Whitney Houston…should I stop with the list now?!!

Adrian DeLucca sent me down to Sony Music Entertainment…where even at 85 he is still the Chief Creative Officer…so I could get a few portraits for PENTA. Here’s what we came home with…

Knowing that we were probably gonna have no more than 5 minutes with Clive, Robert and I set up a couple of identical sets with different backdrops…

The 5 minutes was about right, but we got what we came for…

…and Adrian liked my pulled-back set portrait so much, they used it for the opener…

Thanks, Clive…

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November 15, 1984: Before Whitney Was Famous…

Back in the day, one of the guys I assisted quite a bit was Tony Costa, an L.A.-based celebrity photographer who was always coming to New York to shoot for People Magazine. He called me up and said we were gonna be shooting Cissy Houston’s daughter who was getting a lot of notices because she had been recording with Jermaine Jackson. It wasn’t a big deal shoot…just a quick couple of rolls of B&W on seamless in a cheapie midtown rental studio for a one-paragraph mention in the magazine…and then Whitney showed up with a couple of dresses she borrowed for the shoot. No entourage, not even a hair and makeup artist…just a shy 21 year-old girl who was terrified cuz she was gonna be in People magazine. Tony and I were floored! Then she tells us she’s got an album coming out soon and she was signed by Wilhelmina to model and suddenly our quickie shoot had me running out to buy more film cuz we ran out after ten minutes!

And today it’s all so damned sad.