Half a century after he threw a small music-industry soirée to toast Barry Manilow’s first Grammy nomination for document of the yr, 92-year-old Clive Davis on Saturday evening celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of what shortly turned his well-known annual pre-Grammy gala.
There have been drinks. There have been speeches. And there was Manilow, nonetheless trim and impeccably coiffed at 81, performing his basic “Mandy” as video screens lower between at present and clips from an look he and Davis made on “The Midnight Special” in 1975.
“Can you believe Clive looked like that?” Manilow requested the gang of the debonair document government who helped shepherd him to stardom. “Can you believe I looked like that?”
Clive Davis addresses the gang.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Instances)
Held on the Beverly Hilton forward of Sunday’s 67th Grammys ceremony, Davis’ invite-only occasion drew a characteristically high-wattage crowd — visitors included Jennifer Lopez, Gladys Knight, Alicia Keys, Berry Gordy, Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, Jack Antonoff and Davis’ previous pal Nancy Pelosi — for a night of music and tactical hobnobbing that Jimmy Kimmel likened to “Clive Davis’ bar mitzvah.”
Among the many acts who carried out at that inaugural get-together, Kimmel joked as he launched Davis: “Moses with the Bay City Rollers backing him up.”
Doechii performs.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Instances)
But within the wake of final month’s devastating Los Angeles wildfires, Davis mentioned he’d remade Saturday’s gala as a fundraiser for MusiCares, the Recording Academy’s philanthropic arm; he himself had made a “six-figure donation,” he mentioned, urging the deep-pocketed in the home to contribute what they may to supply aid to music professionals in want.
The evening’s leisure opened with a rock ’n’ roll supergroup — brothers Chris and Wealthy Robinson of the Black Crowes, Metallica’s Robert Trujillo, producer Andrew Watt and Chad Smith of the Crimson Sizzling Chili Peppers — cranking by means of a medley of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath covers earlier than Michael Bublé took over to pay tribute to the late Quincy Jones with a swinging rendition of “Fly Me to the Moon.”
Shaboozey performs.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Instances)
4 of the Grammys’ eight finest new artist nominees carried out: Doechii, theater-kid exuberant in “Denial Is a River”; Teddy Swims, who growled his “Lose Control” sporting a bedazzled white swimsuit; Shaboozey, starting to tire a bit, maybe, of his inescapable “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”; and mustachioed Benson Boone, new-rock-god resplendent in a leathery jumpsuit as he laid into the excessive notes of “Beautiful Things.”
Jazz singer Samara Pleasure, who gained finest new artist on the Grammys in 2023, did Betty Carter’s “Tight,” whereas gospel star Yolanda Adams channeled Whitney Houston in a solemn however flowery tackle “I Will Always Love You.” (Davis, who signed Houston to his Arista label, virtually at all times takes a second at his occasion to recollect the singer, who died on the Beverly Hilton in 2012 simply hours earlier than the occasion was set to start.) Publish Malone was there, too: He sang the wistful “Sunflower” — “my only good song,” per his description — in recognition of Common Music Publishing Group Chief Government Jody Gerson, who was introduced with the Recording Academy’s Trade Icon award.
The excessive level, because it usually is nowadays, was Joni Mitchell, a longtime Davis confidant, who sat onstage in a glittering throne — blond hair tucked beneath a beret, mischievous eyes hidden behind a pair of shades — and sang “Both Sides Now” and George Gershwin’s “Summertime” with a richness of tone that introduced a room stuffed with chatter and gossip to one thing fairly near silence.
Joni Mitchell performs.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Instances)
