Clive Davis Says He’s Bisexual; Usher Shows Support

The man who helped launch the careers of some of the biggest names in music history has shocked the world by revealing that he’s bisexual. In his new memoir, The Soundtrack of My Life, 80-year-old record executive Clive Davis discusses his “bisexual life” for the first time. Davis, who has been married and divorced twice, writes that when he first had a sexual encounter with a man it provided a “welcome relief.”

After a period of “soul searching and self-analysis,” Davis separated from his second wife in 1985, and says that he went on to have simultaneous relationships with two women and a man. In 1990, he entered into a “monogamous relationship” with a male doctor, who is not named in the book. Although that relationship ended in 2004, Davis says he has been in a relationship with another man ever since.

But Clive doesn’t believe in the “gay” label many may apply to him after this revelation. “I’m still attracted to women,” he said. “You don’t have to be one thing or another. For me, it’s the person.”

And in a new interview with ABC’s Nightline, Davis calls the concept of bisexuality “maligned and misunderstood,” while assuring Cynthia McFadden that it does in fact exist. “For over 50 years, I never had sex with males … it was repressed; I had very good sexual relationships with women.”

His good friend Usher stopped by the Katie set and had nothing but amazing things to say about Clive, stating, “Without that artist development of Arista and LaFace Records, I wouldn’t be the mentor that I am today.”

The Soundtrack of My Life (co-written with Rolling Stone contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis) covers Davis’ post-1975 career as founder of Arista and J Records in great detail, which includes his early collaborations with Whitney Houston and the problems that led to her death.

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