Clive Davis Enters Film Without the Rock & Roll Routine

In mid-1980, Arista Records president Clive Davis made a move that looked, at first, like a familiar industry crossover. He signed a three-picture development and production deal with 20th Century Fox, backed by Arista and its co-owner Ariola-Eurodisc. But the agreement wasn’t what the trades had imagined. Davis wasn’t planning to turn Barry Manilow, Patti Smith, or the Grateful Dead into movie stars.

“I’ve not gotten into film as an extension of the recording careers of Arista artists,” Davis said at the time. “Nor will I make rock & roll films. I’m a great believer in the script having to hold up and be meaningful.” The partnership, welcomed by Fox president Sherry Lansing, was built on finding fresh ways to integrate contemporary music and cinema — a notion that gained traction after Robert Stigwood’s success with Saturday Night Fever.

Davis could afford the side step. Five years after founding Arista, the label was performing well above its weight. Record World’s 1979 album charts placed Arista fourth, virtually tied with A&M and trailing only Warner Bros. and Columbia, the company Davis once ran. The roster was deliberately compact: about 60 acts, roughly 20 percent the size of its larger competitors. It included the Kinks, Graham Parker, Dionne Warwick, and Aretha Franklin, who had just left Atlantic after more than a decade in search of a closer creative relationship.

That closeness defined Davis’s working method. He was more executive producer than distant suit, matching Warwick with Manilow as producer and hand-picking “I’ll Never Love This Way Again” for her return to the charts. With Franklin, he anticipated the same kind of involvement — a hands-on attention to singles and artistic direction that had already reshaped Melissa Manchester’s image and kept Arista’s select group selling at a rate that rivaled the biggest labels.