Seymour Stein (born 1942 in
Brooklyn, New York) is an entrepreneur in the music industry who has been a part of the business since getting his first job as a clerk for
Billboard Magazine in 1958. Stein is a
vice president of
Warner Bros. Records and a co-founder of
Sire Records.
Music career
In 1966 Stein and record producer
Richard Gottehrer founded Sire Productions which led to the formation of
Sire Records the label under which he signed pioneer artists such as
The Ramones and
Talking Heads in 1975,
The Pretenders in 1980,
Madonna in 1982,
Depeche Mode and
The Smiths. Such was his influence in signing and promoting the
"New Wave" genre of music that he is sometimes credited with coming up with the name as an alternative to the term
"punk", which he found derogative. The term had previously been used to refer to the
French New Wave film movement of the 1960s.
He remains the President of Sire Records and is also Vice President of Warner Bros. Records with whom he has had a marketing and distribution deal from 1976-1994 and again since April 2003. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 14, 2005 under the lifetime achievement category.
He was formerly married to the late music promoter and real estate executive
Linda S. Stein, who was murdered in 2007; they had two daughters. They divorced in the late 1970s, but remained on friendly terms. He never remarried.
References in popular culture
- Seymour Stein is the subject of an eponymous song by the Scottish musical group Belle and Sebastian.
- He was also referenced by the Canadian band The Rheostatics' song "I Dig Music", from the CD 2067.
- In the 1996 Canadian mockumentary Hard Core Logo, the members of the band recall a show where Stein was sitting in the front row, possibly to give the band a deal with Sire Records, and Joe Dick (the vocalist) intentionally blows it by getting onto Stein's table, pulling his pants down, and urinating into his gin and tonic.
See also
