Did you have any doubt that you could go on and start a new company and make it?

I had no doubt that I would stay in music.

I approach life not expecting anything in the sense that very much within my arsenal of approach to life is the idea of knowing that you got to work hard for anything.

So that for me, my parents died when I was in my teens.

I had no money, went through school on scholarships.

So just getting into Harvard Law School, by scholarship, just getting into the record business by luck and good fortune.

It's all taken hard work so that when I started a company from scratch, I didn't assume that I could do it.

But Arista was your baby.

What has changed it over the years?

Well, clearly, the idea of Spotify and...

The music has changed over the years.

It is very different now, and it's leading to a domination of hip-hop over all other genres of music.

Social media plays a much stronger part, changing the business.

So if you don't have a good social media resume, you're not likely to get signed.

To me, too much reliance on social media, but the business has changed meaningfully.

How? How? I don't understand.

Okay, so

I'm sitting with Rob Lowe's Mount Rushmore, Addie Lane's.

It was just that group.

And I'm the only non-artist.

And they get to talking.

Did everyone audition for me? And, of course, Bruce did through John Hammond, and I signed him.

Don Henley was a friend.

The phrase payola, or was that also in the 50s as well? No, no, it

Oh, no, I know, yeah

... question about the, you know, do I remember or do we have every...

And there were, it turns out, 120 artists.

I said, "Well, you can go up to a minute.

You can, I'd prefer an hour audio visual 'cause it's gonna go on fairly late." Uh, but he put together, beginning with The Birds, Hey, Mr.

Tambourine Man, Donovan, Mellow Yellow, and Sunshine Superman, and going through the years with Whitney and Aretha and Janis and Blood, Sweat & Simon & Garfunkel.

Uh, this wonderful audio visual brand-new mix, uh, that kept people there.

Mm.

What is it about a Janis Joplin and a Bruce Springsteen and a Billy Joel that stands out? What part does the artist have and what part does the producer have that you're talking about the right songs, the right arrangements, the right promotion, and so on?

You certainly have to have the right songs.

You do have to have the right arrangements and production.

But when you audition an artist, you don't think of who's going to produce them.

You think of who the artist is.

You're looking... for a headliner, whatever the talent, whether it's vocal like Joplin and Aretha, whether it's musical virtuosity like Carlos Santana.

And you're looking for headliners.

Clive, were there artists that slipped through your fingers that you wish you could have gotten your hands on?

But I definitely wanted to bring that up because that's something that doesn't get talked about a lot.

You know something? I'm proud of the fact of how many executives I work with who really became heads of various companies through our industry.

I look with pride at that.

No one exists in a vacuum.

And so as recently as last week, in coming across the song that Whitney wrote, a number of years ago, title of You'll Never Stand Alone.

And we're listening to remixed, you know, Higher Love was just released this past year.

So as I get ready to co-produce the biopic on Whitney's life with Anthony McCartan, Anthony McCartan, wrote Bohemian Rhapsody.

How did you know that these songwriters and producers could also be great label heads and help define culture with their signings and releases? Pete, that's