Making and breaking records Record exec Clive Davis.  Don’t know him, then you’ve been under a fossil 600 years. So I asked him to explain what a record executive does. Clive: “It begins with signing or appraising the audition of an artist.” Cindy: Tell us of your early days with Whitney Houston. “1983. Sweetwater’s Club in New York. Her first song was one I’d commissioned for a Muhammad Ali film but she found meaning that perhaps the composers never knew. I signed her to the key man clause I