Clive Davis couldn’t bring 2,000 stars and execs and celebrities to the Beverly Hilton tonight, so he put them on a Zoom call. All of them! Insane! It may have been the biggest Zoom call of all time!
Saturday night’s “call”/party, whatever– all the proceeds go to MusiCares and the Recording Academy. So Clive pulled out all the stops. His guests– I mean the people he interviewed through the five hour call included Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, Alicia Keys, Carole King, Barry Gibb, Rod Stewart, who was hilarious, and the legend Gladys Knight. John Legend and Jennifer Hudson each sang live and wowed the crowd. Jamie Foxx was sensational.
And the crowd– yes, of the 2,000 people who watched the show, about 250 were in a “VIP” room and I was a fly on the wall. This group included LEGENDS, the heavy hitters of the music biz including all the label execs, plus — and this just in no order—Joni Mitchell, Dionne Warwick, Quincy Jones, Berry Gordy, Roberta Flack, Herbie Hancock. Verdine White of Earth Wind and Fire, Carole Bayer Sager, Diane Warren, Jimmy Jam Harris. Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, Nile Rodgers, Lou Adler, TONY ORLANDO, kids, David Foster and Katherine McPhee, Sam Moore and his wife Joyce Moore, Lisa Loeb, Cynthia Erivo, Rob Thomas, Rickey Minor– who gave a great interview about Whitney Houston, Peter Asher, Melissa Manchester, Alan Parsons, Clarence Avant, LORNA LUFT — hello!, the great Michele Lee, Charlie Puth, Ray Parker Jr, and I’m pretty sure Lindsey Buckingham was in there.
Who else? Lorraine Bracco, Katie Couric, Sherry Lansing, Richard Weitz and his daughter Demi, 90 year old Laugh In impresario George Schlatter, Broadway’s Andy Karl and wife Orfeh, Cameron Crowe, Ari Melber, Shep Gordon, Bryant Gumbel, Tyra Banks, Martha Stewart, agent of all time Arnold Stiefel, Robert Weir of the Grateful Dead, the great songwriter Lamont Dozier, and Atlantic Records’ Pete Ganbarg, Craig Kallman, and Julie Greenwald, and BYRON ALLEN.
I’ve missed some– and this thing is still going on at 11:26pm with Sean Combs giving an interview about he signed Bad Boy Records to Clive at BMG and launched a million hits.
Again, this was to benefit MusiCares, which needs funds to keep helping musicians through the pandemic. If you listen to music, you must send them money. Harvey Mason Jr. of the Academy explained how they created a COVID fund with Steve Boom of Amazon Music.
Bruce Springsteen told Clive tonight, “Fifty years ago you changed my life.” He wasn’t kidding. Alicia Keys and Carole King were charming. Rod Stewart was hilarious.
I think Clive might be turning 88 this spring. If you saw him interviewing stars for four and a half hours tonight, you’d give him a talk show. He literally surveyed the whole of pop, rock, and R&B tonight with the biggest acts. He’s going to do another one of these on March 13th, the actual night before the Grammys, and then he can turn the whole thing into documentary to benefit MusiCares.
What a night! And it was just Part one!
