Legendary American record manager Seymour Stonethe one with his seal Sire, launched Madonna’s career and signed groups like Ramones, Pretenders or Talking Headsdied Sunday in Los Angeles at the age of 80 after a long battle with cancer, family sources confirmed to Variety magazine.
From Sire, the record company he co-founded in 1966, Stein had been one of the promoters of punk rock and new wave since the late 1970s. with the signing of bands like Echo and the Bunnymen and Soft Cell and recording some of the most significant albums by The Cure, Depeche Mode, Ice-T, The Replacements or Everything But the Gir.
Born with an independent spirit, Sire took risks from the start by introducing it British underground and progressive bands to the US market and has achieved success over the course of his career with productions by artists such as Flamin Groovies, Renaissance, Duane Eddy or Small Faces and then The Smiths, Seal, The Undertones and even the Spanish Duncan Dhu.
In the eighties he signed Brian Wilson, leader of the Beach Boyswho released his first solo album Sire, you Lou Reedwho started the record label at the end of the 90s Stein his albums New York, Songs for Rella and Magis and Loss.
As he himself once said, with every band or artist he hired he would look for “their songs”, and thus a well-curated playlist of Sire releases from the 80’s and 90’s is the soundtrack of an era.
His eclectic taste in music has always been admired in the record industry and as the late manager of Talking Heads, Gary Kurfirst, and Seymour he was always “a few years ahead of everyone else”.
For his own ends he forged business alliances with a variety of European independent labels and signed some of the best artists on the music scene. Post-Punk and New Wave from New York, UK and Australia.
The discovery of the Ramones is credited to Linda, who was the wife of at the time Stein, who saw her at a club in the Village of New York called CBGB and told her husband about it. Stein auditioned them, which led to the release of the group’s eponymous debut album in 1976. Linda became the manager of the Ramones, who went on to record eleven more albums with Sire.
But her most lucrative discovery was Madonna, who was still an unknown singer performing in Manhattan’s clubs when Stein signed her in 1983, and who, with her first three albums, all featuring Sire (Madonna, Like a Virgin and True Blue), reached number one in the sales charts and fame.
Sire was distributed by Warner Bros. Records from 1977 and acquired by Warner Bros. Records in 1978, and Seymour Stein became vice president of the entertainment giant’s recording division.
Born Seymour Steinbigle on April 18, 1942, the record executive had his first exposure to the music industry as a teenager at Billboard Magazine, where he eventually worked, before working at a small record label in the early 1960s before teaming up with a producer/songwriter Richard Gottehrer to found Sire.
In 1983 he was one of the patrons of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, which he joined in 2005.
Stein’s final years were marked by tragedy: his ex-wife, Linda, who was suffering from brain cancer, was hit in the head by her personal assistant in 2007, and his daughter, Samantha Jacobs, was also diagnosed with brain cancer in 2013.
In a statement released Sunday night, his daughter Mandy said Stein gave her “the best soundtrack” she could have and that she enjoyed his “wicked sense of humor.” “I am eternally grateful for every minute our family spent with him and that the music he brought to the world positively impacted the lives of so many people.”