John Lennon was murdered.  Tupac and Biggie too.  But their music lives on.  Played every day on the radio, spun in homes around the world.  Clive Davis still walks the planet, but we haven’t heard a peep out of him in months, the press has moved on.  David Cook is making his album without his supervision, Kelly Clarkson has no one to rail against, the old man seems to have vanished.  Along with his productions.  When was the last time you heard Milli Vanilli?  Even Whitney Houston?

1964 heralded a revolution.  The Beatles broke every mold.  Not only did their music sound unique, they wrote and played it.  Seemingly every kid in America picked up a guitar.  The Beatles were bigger than Jesus.  But that was before the explosion of Evangelical Christianity.  Before MTV and CDs.  Before there was so much money in music that big corporations swallowed up the labels and demanded they deliver profits.  Incessantly.  Which they did.  Time Warner’s cable system was built by Warner Music.  But eight years ago, the music business hit a speed bump.

Sales have declined.  No superstars have been born.  Executives have railed, but no solution has been proffered.  Shaking their fists at the consumer, the public has just shrugged, and moved on to video games, an art form containing passion.  Yes, that’s what Clive Davis and his cohorts surgically removed.  The essence, the spark contained in all those British Invasion hits.  The personality.  The excitement.  And with a heavy hand, employing song doctors and hack producers, they constructed music they believed they could sell.  That was Clive Davis’ expertise.  He was not the man with the golden ears, but a diva with a Rolodex containing the name of every media man in existence.  But this was back when the country was ruled by newspapers and television. When radio could generate ten million album sales.  Now the target audience gets its news on the Web.  There are 500 television channels.  And radio is a joke with declining listenership.  The old pros’ success was based on control.  And control has been evaporating since the turn of the decade.  And if it’s ever coming back, it’s not going to look the same, it’s not going to be the same game.

Clive Davis introduced his proteges at his Grammy party.  Featured them on the "Today Show".  Spent millions to barely make any profits.  And the core, the essence?  Nougat at best.  That’s what Clive Davis was making, candy.  Something the Beatles never were, not from their very first hit.

The success of the British Invasion, of the following San Francisco scene, resulted in the acts usurping power. They could record what they wanted in studios of their own choice.  Not only could they design their own album covers, their label could no longer sell competing product on the inner sleeve.  By the seventies, the act was king.  There was a sideshow over on AM, but all the money was in FM.  The career acts.  The ones making album-long opuses, frequently without singles, who could fill arenas, who can still fill arenas today.

Clive Davis would have told Ian Anderson that "Thick As A Brick" was an aberration, not to be released, the public wouldn’t stand for it.  But Jethro Tull sold out arenas in its wake.  Everything new and different, everything creative, everything out there, that’s what Clive Davis stood against.  He wanted control, when he himself was not an artist.  He wanted to squeeze out inspiration.  And without inspiration, you’ve got no art.  And without art, all you’ve got is business.  And kids don’t care about business.  And people don’t care about you when you’re no longer atop the corporation, your phone stops ringing, the "Wall Street Journal" writes about someone else, it’s like a genie has rubbed his magic lamp and you’ve disappeared.

Reminding us the future of this business is the acts.  And not commercial concoctions like the Pussycat Dolls. That’s commerce.  Commerce comes after art, not first.  Art is triumphant once again.  It’s just that the traditional media can’t see it, and the old label heads aren’t interested in it, because it’s not instantly salable.  The media wants a train-wreck.  The label wants something that can go double platinum on the first release.  But now superstars barely go double platinum.  The game has changed.

The new executives, today’s entrepreneurs, realize without the acts you’ve got nothing.  They will respect the act. They will be in service of the act.  They will encourage the act to experiment, to go for greatness.  Because they know that what makes Google so valuable isn’t a marketing campaign, but its sheer usability and its uncanny ability to generate the right result.  That’s what makes a great act.  The music.  Not its looks.  Jimmy Page is a soft-spoken man, who lived a dark life on the road and oftentimes wouldn’t speak to the press.  But Led Zeppelin’s manager protected him.  Peter Grant might have been a wrestler, but he knew that without the act he had nothing.  That he needed to remain in the background.  That he needed to let the act explore, even make mistakes, in order to achieve and maintain success.  Both artistic and commercial.  Unlike Clive Davis, Peter Grant was not currying personal favor with the press, he kept reporters at arm’s length.  And today, Led Zeppelin still burns up the airwaves and all those Arista wonders, with their Top Forty singles, have been forgotten.

But whereas Peter Grant oftentimes employed a blunt instrument, today’s executive uses a computer, knows how to reach his target audience.  Is less interested with the media filter than his act’s mailing list.  He wants to go directly to fans.  For newspaper writers and radio deejays don’t buy music, they get it for free.  You’ve got to stoke hearts and minds.  You’ve got to get people hooked.  And the only way to do this in today’s permission marketing world is to deliver the goods, great music.

All the trappings, the window dressing, if not completely superfluous already, soon will be.  All the tools employed by Tommy Mottola, Charles Koppelman and Clive Davis are becoming useless.  They don’t deliver the hits, they don’t deliver the money, one can ask if they ever delivered quality music.  The old game is archaic. Akin to the blunt tools of the Stone Age.  Today it’s about precision.  And music that touches people.  Makes them feel alive.  Makes them ask, "How the hell did they come up with this?"

Like "Strawberry Fields Forever".  On paper, a disaster.  In reality, a game-changing stretch the public warmed up to and embraced wholeheartedly.  It was not created on Clive Davis’ watch, and that’s why he and his music have been forgotten.  It lacks art.  And that is the essence of an artist.

And sooner or later
Everybody’s kingdom must end
And I’m so afraid your courtiers
Cannot be called best friends

Charles Goldstuck couldn’t save Clive Davis, he lost his job too.  As soon as you go to work for the company, the clock is ticking.  It’s just a matter of when you lose your job.

No man’s a jester playing Shakespeare
Round your throne room floor
While the juggler’s act is danced upon
The crown that you once wore

The king is dead, the king is dead
The king is dead, the king is dead
Long live the king

"The King Must Die"
Elton John

The business has not evaporated.  More people than ever are making music.  More music than ever is being acquired.  People are listening to music on their iPods and going to see it live.  They don’t care about the label, the old institutions, only the music.  We’re in a wrenching transition period.  Wherein power is wrested from old men who believe incorrectly that they’re the talent and is being redistributed to those who are truly responsible and those who protect and shepherd the careers of these titans.

Yes, the giants are the acts.  The performers.  The artists.  They’re the kings.  Never forget it.