Clive Davis is opening up about Whitney Houston’s last days. The infamous music exec recently revealed that he was shocked by Whitney’s 2012 death. Davis says Houston made a “valiant attempt” to give up drugs before she died.
“I was with her 48 hours before her death,” Davis told Page Six. “It never occurred to me [that she would die two days later].” The record producer signed Houston in 1983 when she was just 20 years old. He continued, “She was showing me what she had done in rehab. How she had given up smoking. She had cleared her throat of nicotine. And she was wanting to start going in the studio. I never would have thought 48 hours before her death, that she would pass, that there would be that horrendous, premature end to her life.”
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The 90-year old legend added that Whitney was looking forward to the next chapter of her life. “She was making a valiant attempt during that period to give up drugs and rehabilitate herself.” Whitney was found unconscious in a Beverly Hilton suite, submerged in the bathtub on Feb. 11, 2012.
The Los Angeles Coroner’s Office claimed that her death was caused by effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.” Additional drugs were also found in the late singer’s system at the time of her death, including Benadryl, Xanax, and cannabis. Davis says he knew from the first time he met Whitney that she was a star. “That voice that was the finest of her generation, and is up there with the two or three best of all time. That is what the film does.”
His interview comes amid the premiere of the Whitney Houston biopic, I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” which he co-produced. Catch the Kasi Clemmons directed film in theaters now.
