This story originally appeared on The Advocate.
Clive Davis, the bisexual music executive whose ear, ego, and instinct helped define the sound of modern American pop, has died. He was 94. Davis died at his Manhattan home on Monday, according to the Associated Press. His family also confirmed his death in a statement.
Over more than six decades, Davis became one of the most powerful and enduring figures in the music industry, a record executive who helped launch, shape, or revive the careers of Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen, Janis Joplin, Alicia Keys, Santana, Barry Manilow, Aretha Franklin, and others. His career spanned Columbia Records, Arista Records, J Records, RCA, and Sony Music, where his reputation as a star-maker became nearly inseparable from the history of postwar popular music.
Related: WATCH: Music Icon Clive Davis Talks for First Time About Being Bisexual
Born in Brooklyn in 1932, Davis graduated from New York University and Harvard Law School before joining Columbia Records as a lawyer. By 1967, he was president of the label. After leaving Columbia in the 1970s, he founded Arista Records, the company through which he would make his deepest mark on pop and R&B.
His defining professional relationship was with Houston, whom he signed as a teenager in 1983. Under Davis’s guidance, Houston became one of the best-selling artists of all time.
Davis was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 as an Ahmet Ertegun Award recipient, an honor for non-performing industry professionals, and won multiple Grammy Awards. His annual pre-Grammy gala became one of the industry’s signature power gatherings.
Related: WATCH: Clive Davis Reacts to Whitney Houston's Lesbian Rumors
In 2013, Davis also became one of the most prominent entertainment executives to come out as bisexual late in life. In his memoir, The Soundtrack of My Life, he wrote about relationships with men after two marriages to women. At a 92NY event that year, Davis said he had opened himself to “the possibility of a relationship based on the person and not on gender.” He also described the skepticism bisexual people face, saying, “You’re either gay or straight, or you’re lying.”
Davis is survived by his four children.
