Daily Digest: Clive Davis, Mindy McCready, Patrick Carney, Led Zeppelin
Today’s new bits: Clive Davis opens up in new memoir; Mindy McCready dies from apparent suicide; Patrick Carney and Justin Bieber continues their Tweet beef war; Robert Plant gives hints of a possible Zeppelin reunion
Confessions of a Music Mogul
Clive Davis’s 2013 book, Soundtrack of My Life, hits stores this week.
Clive Davis, 80, is dropping his new book, The Soundtrack of My Life – The Man with the 45 RPM Ears. It’s his first autobiography since releasing 1975’s Clive: Inside the Record Business.
Inside the music mogul’s new memoir, he talks about his work relationships with Bruce Springsteen, Kelly Clarkson and the late Whitney Houston – even Milli Vanilli. And yeah, there’s a juicy story inside the book about Michael Jackson deliberately trying to sabotage Jermaine Jackson’s solo career. When Babyface was supposed to produce music for Jermaine, Michael tied up the producer for his own projects. “Jermaine couldn’t believe that Michael, his close brother, would hijack his producers’ material this way,” Davis writes.
Although the book overlooks his career at CBS and focuses intently on his work at Arista, the record label he started back in 1975, along with J Records, he does spend a little time talking about his five-decade long relationship with Springsteen and Bob Dylan.
The book also opens up about his personal life, particularly his need to finally come out of the closet as a gay man. Davis, who has been married twice and divorced twice, has never before addressed his sexuality publicly. Towards the back of the book, he writes that his first sexual encounter with a man was during “the era of Studio 54.” “On this night, after imbibing enough alcohol, I was open to responding to his sexual overtures,” Davis writes, who says he had only been with women before. He added that being with a man provided him “welcome relief.”
He also admits that he has been in a monogamous relationship with a male since 2004, although he has decided to keep the identity of his partner private. He also talks about other relationships, some women and some men. And he does all of that in five candid pages, according to Rolling Stone writer David Browne.
Mindy McCready Commits Suicide
At the age of 37, country star Mindy McCready took her own life on Sunday, February 17 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She was found dead on the front porch of her house in Heber Springs, Ark., according to police documents.
Major news is now swarming around the death of her boyfriend, David Wilson, who was found dead at their home from a gunshot wound last month. The case of Wilson’s death is still under investigation by the Cleburne County Sheriff’s Office. McCready, at the time of his death, denied having any involvement in it.
Immediately before her passing, her two young sons were removed from her custody.
Her life had been ravaged with depression, even by her own admission. She described her life as “a giant whirlwind of chaos all the time.” Three years ago, she later told the Associated Press that throughout her life, “things have been attracted to me and vice versa that turn into chaotic nightmares or I create the chaos myself.”
McCready broke unto the country charts back in the ’90’s with “Guys Do It All the Time,” which skyrocketed to No. 1. Her debut album, Ten Thousand Angels, went on to sell well over two million copies. Her career nosedived, leaving her with bouts of depression, jail time and drugs. In 2009, she appeared on Dr. Drew’s Celebrity Rehab. Ironically, four cast members of the show have also died.
Carney v. Bieber: Round 2
Devout fans of Justin Bieber are passionately defending their teenage idol against Black Key drummer Patrick Carney, after a series of joke-styled tweets landed on both of their accounts after the 55th annual Grammy Awards.
Things all started when TMZ reporters asked Carney, a big winner at this year’s Grammys, about Bieber’s snub. His reply? “I dunno, he’s rich, right? Grammys are for, like, music, not for money. . . . He’s making a lot of money. He should be happy.”
Apparently Carney’s reply sent off a hale storm of Twit-spits from Justin’s Beliebers; many of them down right belligerent and dangerously fueled with rage. With his dry humor in tow, Carney decided to retweet just a handful of the more absurd threats.
Yeah, those look like death threats.
But watch the Black Key whip up a name change on his Twitter account, crowning himself a honorary Belieber:
Celebration Day: The Sequel?
Band members of Led Zeppelin performing at London’s 02 for Celebration Day concert in 2007.
Okay, another Led Zeppelin reunion, like the one at the 02, might as well take place on a stairway to heaven, because we have been entertaining the idea for quite some time.
But the infatuation of yet another reunion propped by Ledheads and rock critics has pushed the legendary rock band’s frontman Robert Plant to give off a hint at some kind of possibility.
While speaking to the Australian version of 60 Minutes, Plant has pushed the blame on the other guys. “[Jimmy] Page and John Paul Jones are Capricorns,” he says. “They don’t say a word. They’re quite contained in their own worlds and they leave it to me. I’m not the bad guy . . . You need to see the Capricorns – I’ve got nothing to do in 2014.
In 2012, Page had been touring countrywide promoting his latest trip through Americana and folk with Sensational Space Shifters and is still riding high off of 2010’s critically acclaimed Band of Joy.
DAILY DIGEST is a roundup recap of current events and headlines that involves the music industry. Although HiFi Magazine reports news throughout the week, the stories compiled for the Daily Digest column are usually deemed as events “bubbling under the radar.”
