Clive Davis Makes Deal for Memoir

Clive Davis, the legendary producer and music industry executive, will publish his autobiography in Feb. 2013, publisher Simon & Schuster announced today.

S&S described the auction conducted by Davis’ rep Eric Simonoff of WME as “spirited” and expressed excitement at the project.

“There was a unanimous opinion within Simon & Schuster that we had to publish this author,” said Simon & Schuster PublisherJonathan Karp in a statement.

“No one has had a life, or a career, quite like the one described by Clive Davis in these remarkable and fascinating pages.”

S&S is already positioning it as the must read book of early 2013, teasing readers with several stories that will appear in the book, including his relationship with such stars as Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon and Janis Joplin.

Among the revelations are his advice to Simon & Garfunkel to participate on the soundtrack album for The Graduate, convincing Bob Dylan to release “Lay, Lady Lay” as a single on the Nashville Skyline label, getting Springsteen to add more singles to his debut album (which produced the classic “Spirits in the Night”) and turning down Janis Joplin’s invitation to sleep with him to celebrate her record contract.

Davis was born in Brooklyn in 1932 and orphaned as a teenager. He managed to win a full scholarship to New York University and then went on to Harvard Law School.

He joined Columbia records soon after graduating law school in 1956, rising to president by 1967.

In 1975, he founded Arista Records, where he stayed as president until 2000. From 2002 to 2008, he was the chairman of the RCA Music Group.

He is currently the Chief Creative Officer at Sony Music Entertainment.

Davis has been working on the book with music journalist and Rolling Stone contributor Anthony DeCurtis (And A Voice To Sing With, Rocking My Life Away for more than two years.

His previous book Clive: Inside The Record Business, was a New York Times best seller.