Remembering Seymour Stein
• We lost a giant this weekend — Seymour Stein, founder of the legendary Sire Records, whose phenomenal A&R skills helped launch the careers of Madonna, The Ramones and Talking Heads, died Sunday morning, April 2 in Los Angeles after a long battle with cancer, his daughter Mandy confirms to Variety. He was 80.
As Chris Morris‘ comprehensive story in Variety notes, Stein shrewdly plunged into the punk scene in the late ’70s, signing many of the genre’s top acts from New York, the U.K. and Australia. Sire enjoyed similar success with post-punk and new wave acts like The Pretenders, the Cure and Depeche Mode, among many others. At one time or another, Sire’s roster included The Replacements (and later their front man Paul Westerberg), Echo & the Bunnymen, Madness, The Undertones, The Smiths (and lead singer Morrissey), Everything But the Girl, Aztec Camera, Erasure, The Flamin’ Groovies, My Bloody Valentine and Ride.
Stein’s most lucrative discovery was Madonna, who was still a relatively unknown Manhattan club act when Stein signed her in 1983. The singer vaulted to superstardom on Sire, producing three No. 1 albums, 10 No. 1 singles and a total of 23 top-10 hits before launching her own Maverick imprint in 1992.
Born Seymour Steinbigle in Brooklyn in 1942, Stein got his start in the music business at the age of 13, when he gained an entrée at Billboard magazine, obsessively copying the publication’s old charts by hand. Mentored by Chart Director Tom Noonan and Editor Paul Ackerman, he was soon contributing reviews.
Sire was distributed by Warner Bros. from 1977 and acquired by the company in 1978. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, Sire presciently signed or distributed music by a variety of top-flight punk and post-punk groups from the U.S. and abroad. As Talking Heads’ late manager Gary Kurfirst told the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the occasion of Stein’s 2005 induction, “Seymour’s taste in music is always a couple of years ahead of everyone else’s.”
Stein is survived by his daughter, film director and producer Mandy Stein, three grandchildren and his sister, Ann Wiederkehr. Donations can be made in Seymour Stein’s name to MusiCares. [Photo credit: Michael Halsband]
