Seymour Stein, Record Exec Who Signed Up Madonna, Dead At 80

Seymour Stein, the bold, foresighted, and highly successful founder of Sire Records who helped start the careers of Madonna, Talking Heads, and many others, died on Sunday at the age of 80.

Stein, who helped establish the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation and was inducted into the Rock Hall in 2005, died of cancer in Los Angeles, his relatives said.

Stein was a New York City native who worked vacations as a teenager at Cincinnati-based King Records, James Brown’s label, and by his mid-20s had co-founded Sire Productions, which later became Sire Records.

He was known for his profound knowledge and appreciation of music and would prove an astute judge of talent during the 1970s period of New Wave, a term he helped popularize, securing record deals with Talking Heads, the Ramones, and the Pretenders.

Around Stein’s induction, Talking Heads publicist Gary Kurfirst told the Rock Hall, “Seymour’s taste in music is always a couple of years ahead of everyone else.”

His most profitable discovery came in the early 1980s when he heard a demo recording of Madonna, a little-known singer-dancer from the downtown New York club scene.

Stein was a New York City native who worked vacations as a teenager.

“I liked Madonna’s voice, the atmosphere, and the name Madonna.” “I liked it all and played it again,” he wrote in his memoir “Siren Song,” published the same year he retired, in 2018. When Stein first heard of Madonna, he was in the hospital with a heart infection, but he was so eager to meet her that he brought her to his room.

He described her as “all dolled up in cheap punky gear, the kind of club kid who looked absurdly out of place in a cardiac ward.” “She wasn’t even interested in hearing how much I enjoyed her demo.” ‘The thing to do now is to contact me to a record deal,’ she said.

Ice T, the Smiths, Depeche Mode, the Replacements, and Echo and the Bunnymen were among the Sire acts, as were the more established Lou Reed and Brian Wilson, who recorded with Sire later in their careers.

Stein was married to record promoter and real estate executive Linda Adler for a short time and had two daughters with her: filmmaker Mandy Stein and Samantha Lee Jacobs, who died of brain cancer in 2013. Seymour Stein and his wife divorced in the 1970s, and he came out as homosexual years later.

“I am beyond grateful for every minute our family spent with him and that the music he brought to the world had such a positive impact on so many people’s lives,” Mandy Stein said in a statement Sunday.

SOURCE – (AP)