Clive Davis Remembered by A&R Pete Ganbarg: He ‘Had This Crazy Ability to Predict the Future’
Categoria: Musica
Ganbarg, who worked with Davis at Arista Records and later J/RCA, offers a window into Davis' legendary A&R meetings.
Por Billboard | 17/07/2026
Pete Ganbarg, a two-time Grammy Award winner, worked with Clive Davis from 1997 to 2001 as senior director of A&R at Arista Records, where he A&R’d Santana’s Supernatural album, which sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and won nine Grammys in 2000. He then reunited with Davis, who died June 22, from 2004 to 2008 as an A&R consultant at J/RCA Records. Here, Ganbarg takes readers inside Davis’ legendary A&R meetings. Clive treated A&R people almost like protected species. They were the most important people inside of his company because he realized that as an A&R if you can’t do your job right and give the company the tools to work with, then the company can’t do its job. Related Clive Davis, Legendary Music Executive, Dies at 94 DJ Quik Says His Son 'Made a Mistake' Following Murder Conviction, Pleads With Fans to Stop Asking About It Naoshi Fujikura of Universal Music Japan on Japan's Unique Superfan Culture & Global Ambitions: Billboard Global Power Players Interview A&R meetings with Clive were never scheduled. You’d get a call at 9:30 in the morning: “A&R meeting at 10” or “A&R meeting right now.” An A&R meeting was basically a day in the life of Clive Davis because you were spending so much time listening to music. It could be the artist is calling in and so he’s talking to the artist about the music, while we are there helping, passing notes and things like that. It’s really a lost art. You don’t see that anymore. You could be sitting there, literally, from 10 a.m. to midnight. If you had another meeting, tough, cancel it. Clive worked with a lot of artists who did not write their own songs, so you would have publishers and songwriters sending in songs to be considered for Whitney [Houston], for Aretha [Franklin], for, the [American] Idols, whoever was in cycle looking for material. This was back in the pre-MP3 days. The [music] would literally — first on cassette and then on CD — be put in a folder called “the song folder.” There was a Whitney folder, an Aretha folder, an Idols folder. Every CD was wrapped in a lyric sheet and went in the folder. There was never an agenda, but it was like, “OK, today’s the day that we’re going to talk about Whitney. Who’s got the latest Whitney song file?” It would come in with seven or eight CDs. It would never pile up more than that because we would do this once a week, sometimes more than once a week. Everybody would have a lyric sheet and everybody would be listening. Now it’s about algorithms, TikTok, virality and influence. That had nothing to do with anything with Clive. It was always about the music. Related 21 Music Legends Developed, Signed or Boosted by Clive Davis’ Golden Touch I realized over time that he was not asking our opinion to influence his opinion; he already had his opinion. He was asking our opinion because we were stand-ins for the audience. He didn’t want you to answer with words, he want