Seymour Stein, the legendary American record manager who with his label, Sire, launched Madonna’s career and hired bands like the Ramones, Pretenders or Talking Heads, He died on Sunday, April 2 in Los Angeles at the age of 80. after battling a long battle with cancer, she confirmed to the magazine Variety family sources.
From Sire, the record label he co-founded in 1966, Stein was one of the promoters of punk rock and new wave since the late 70s with signature bands such as Echo and the Bunnymen AND Soft celland recording some of the most significant records of The cure, Depeche Mode, ice-t, The spare parts OR Everything but the girl.
Born with an independent spirit, since its beginnings Sire he took risks introducing underground British bands and progressive in the US market, and during his career he achieved success with productions by artists such as Flamin Groovies, Renaissance, Duane Eddy or Small Faces, and later The Smiths, Seal, The Undertones and even the Spanish Duncan Dhu.
Also to Lou Reed
In the eighties he signed Brian Wilsonthe frontman of the Beach Boys, who has already released his first solo album with Sire Lou Reedwho since the late 1990s has released his albums on Stein’s record label New York, Songs for Drella AND Magis and Perdita.
As he himself once said, what he was always looking for in any signing band or artist was “their songs,” and so a well-curated playlist of Sire releases from the 80s and 90s make up the band.
His eclectic taste in music has always been admired by the record industry, and as the late Talking Heads manager Gary Kurfirst has stated, Seymour has always been “a couple of years ahead of the rest”.
For his purposes, he formed business alliances with a number of European independent labels and signed some of the best artists of the post-punk and new wave scene in New York, the UK and Australia.
The Ramones and Madonna
The discovery of the Ramones is due to Linda, then wife of Stein, who he saw them at a New York Village club called CBGB and told her husband about it. Stein auditioned them which led to the 1976 release of the group’s debut album, named after them. Linda became manager of the Ramones, who subsequently recorded eleven more albums with Sire.
But his most profitable discovery was Madonnathat when Stein hired her in 1983, she was still an unknown singer performing in Manhattan clubs, and that with her first three albums, all with Sire (Madonna, Like a virgin AND True Blue), reached number one on the sales charts and stardom.
Sire had been distributed by Warner Bros. Records since 1977 and acquired by that company in 1978, and Seymour Stein became that entertainment giant’s vice president of label.
Born Seymour Steinbigle on April 18, 1942, the record manager got his first taste of the music industry as a teenager with the magazine boardwhich he eventually worked on, then moving to a small record label in the early 1960s, before teaming up with producer/songwriter Richard Gottehrer to create Sire.
The Hall of Honor
In 1983 it was one of the initiators of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundationwhich he entered in 2005.
Stein’s last years were marked by tragedy: he went to live with his ex-wife Linda, suffering from brain cancersigned by his personal assistant from a blow to the head in 2007, and his daughter Samantha Jacobs also contracted brain cancer from which she died in 2013.
In a statement released Sunday evening, her daughter Mandy said as much Stein gave it “best soundtrack” that he might have and that he liked her “wicked sense of humour”. “I am beyond grateful for every minute our family spent with him and that the music he brought into the world has positively impacted the lives of so many.”
Source: Clarin
