Barry Manilow Pays Heartfelt Tribute to the Man Who Changed His Life

Music mogul Clive Davis spent 50 years working with iconic singer Barry Manilow. On June 22, hours after the announcement of Davis’ death at 94, Manilow took to social media to pay tribute to his longtime friend and mentor.

The “Mandy” singer wrote, “My heart is heavy with the loss of my friend Clive Davis. For fifty years we worked together, created together, argued together, and celebrated together.”

Manilow continued, “Yes, some would say it was business. But to Clive, it never was. It was family. And I was honored to be a part of his.”

He thanked Davis and added, “I wish we could do it all again.”

Davis was instrumental in Manilow’s worldwide success. The “Copacabana” singer had already released one album early in his career before he met Davis. However, that first album flopped, selling only 10,000 copies according to Davis’ website.

Despite the disappointing performance of that first album, Davis listened to Manilow open in June 1974 for Dionne Warwick. He liked what he saw and heard.

At that point, Manilow had no hits to sing. What he did instead was create a medley of all the commercial jingles he had done professionally. Although Davis thought it was a “very strange medley,” he saw beyond it and believed that with his help, Manilow could succeed. He was right.

In October 2025, Manilow and Davis appeared together at an event held by the Palm Springs Plaza Theatre Foundation. In highlights shared by the venue on YouTube, it was obvious how close Davis and Manilow had become in their years of working together.

At one point, Manilow started telling the story of how he and Davis first started working together. He noted that Davis needed to find “a young, talented, debonnaire, handsome male artist to kick it off” as Davis built Arista Records.

As Davis and the audience realized Manilow was teasingly describing himself, everybody laughed. When Manilow asked Davis to continue the story, Davis said, “Well, let me put it this way. It was the start of a 50-year relationship that we have had.”

Davis then said that at that initial meeting, Manilow told him, “You’ve got to understand this. I write. I arrange. That’s what I do. I never thought of myself as a male vocalist doing pop songs that I didn’t write.”

The way that Davis told the story, it was during that conversation that Davis came up with Manilow’s iconic song “Mandy.”

At that point, Manilow interrupted and said, “Let me take over. This is not exactly true.” That statement brought more laughter from the audience. Davis retorted, “I’ll be the judge of that.”

Manilow did credit Davis for bringing “Mandy” to him. However, the singer shared, when he first heard it, he thought it was “awful.”

He sang it once anyway, and explained that as he did, “I found the love song inside this rock and roll song.”

From there, Manilow recalled, he “changed the chords around and I gave it a big ending.”

When Manilow played his reimagined version of the song for Davis, the music executive knew he’d nailed it.

In the decades since that commercial medley and rearrangement of what became “Mandy,” Manilow and Davis developed a close friendship and valuable business partnership. Manilow’s final message to Davis seemed a fitting tribute to the 50 years of memories the pair created together.