Clive Davis

“I’m not the oldest of the young guys,” director Francis Ford Coppola once remarked of his place in modern  Hollywood. “I’m the youngest of the old guys.” 

That surprising -and surprisingly apt-assessment can be applied with even greater illumination to the extraordinarily wide-ranging career and contributions of record executive Clive Davis.

The presence of Bob Dylan and the Byrds on its roster notwithstanding, Columbia Records was hardly a rock  powerhouse in 1967 when its new president, Clive Davis, ventured west to the Monterey Pop Festival.