Clive Davis Once Held At Gunpoint Over Royalties

Clive Davis is a legend in the recording industry. While at CBS, he signed Donovan, Janis Joplin, Santana, Bruce Springsteen, Chicago, Billy Joel, Aerosmith and many more. With Arista, he was instrumental in the careers of Barry Manilow, Whitney Houston, Patti Smith and Sean "Puffy/P-Diddy" Combs.

Davis used his musical knowledge and business savvy to guide some of the great careers in popular music, but it was not all a charmed life. Over the years he was fired from Columbia, demoted at Arista and had run-ins with some of his stars like the recent Kelly Clarkson controversy. Nothing probably compares, though, to the day three of his stars held him at gunpoint.

In an interview on a talk show hosted by Mo'Nique, Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins of the group TLC talked about the time the she, Rozonda "Chili" Thomas and the late Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes broke into Davis' office during a meeting with Sean Combs to try to settle a dispute over the royalties from their album CrazySexyCool.

"We held the record company, Clive Davis, hostage with guns. Guns with bullets. Because TLC had generated on CrazySexyCool $75 million and they gave us $50,000 a piece and I was like, 'What the hell!' So, of course Lisa was the ring leader. We had a limo driver, and he was the get-away car.

"We got up there and held everybody hostage and Puffy was the one that snitched us out. He caught us because we kicked him out of the meeting. We interrupted Puffy's meeting. We were like, 'Sorry we really gotta handle this.' We were getting sick and sweating, really working hard for this money and wanted to know who the hell had our cheque. [Record executive L.A. Reid] said Clive did, so that's where we went."

The assault ended with nobody getting hurt and no resolution to the royalty issue. Davis didn't press charges. "They did give us some money, but they still took it back and recouped it. You live and learn in the business. It worked out well, we didn't go to jail, thank God."