Seymour Stein is the cofounder and chairman of Sire Records, one of the music industry’s most influential record labels and home to some of the most iconic names in modern music. Through its focus on discovering and nurturing distinctive artists and groups, Sire has been a goldmine for cutting-edge music, from popular trailblazers like Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, The Smiths, the Cure, Echo and The Bunnymen, Erasure, The Cult, The Undertones, Madness, The Replacements, Ice T, k.d. lang, Seal, Everything But The Girl, Aztec Camera.

Sire put Punk and New Wave on the map in the 1970s and 1980s, and Stein has been the label’s driving creative force since its origins as an independent label and through its tenure as one of the most important imprints within the Warner Bros. Records label family. Stein’s unique ability to anticipate musical trends, and to discover and sign the greatest artists within those movements, has left an indelible mark on pop culture and helped to launch and nurture the careers of some of music’s most memorable artists.

One of those groups was the Ramones, the New York City band that fueled the punk movement. Stein first saw the band in 1975, and was immediately drawn to black leather ethos, angry chords and one-of-a kind loud and fast melodies that are their hallmark. “It was like sticking my hand in a live electric light socket,” Stein recalled of his first exposure to the band. “The jolt went right through me.”

The Ramones’ eponymous first album was recorded for less than $10,000 and released on Sire in 1976, and to this day remains one of the seminal albums in rock and roll history.

“Seymour’s taste in music is always a couple years ahead of everybody else’s,” observed Gary Kurfirst, who managed Talking Heads, one of the bands Stein first saw – and signed – at New York’s legendary CBGB’s.

Undaunted by the nervous, yelping vocals and offbeat art-pop songs of Talking Heads frontman, David Byrne, Stein saw in the band an essential piece of music’s future. “I was riveted the whole time,” he recalled of his first glimpse of Talking Heads at CBGB’s. “It was amazing and, of course, I signed them.” Other punk/ New Wave bands from CBGBs signed to Sire included Richard Hell and The Voidoids and The Deadboys.

Stein also saw merit in the Pretenders, who recorded on Sire for nearly two decades. “Without Seymour, I’d still be a cocktail waitress in Akron,” frontwoman Chrissie Hynde once said.

Stein even went further afield to sign Australian punk-rockers like the Saints and Radio Birdman, both of whom have been inducted into the Australian Music Hall of Fame. Along the way, Sire helped revive the notion of Sixties-style pop singles with synth-pop classics like M’s “Pop Muzik,” Plastic Bertrand’s “Ca Plane Pour Moi,” Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” and Modern English’s “I Melt With You.”

By the early 1980s, Sire had hit its stride as an independent label and was one of the industry’s most influential creative homes. A major non-New Wave discovery during that fertile period was a rising young dance-music artist named Madonna. Sire released her first single (“Everybody”/”Burning Up”) in the fall of 1982, but at a meeting several months earlier sensing her long term staying power, famously held at a Lenox Hill hospital room where he was recuperating from a heart infection, Stein signed Madonna to a multi-album deal. Madonna remained with Sire and Warner Bros., until joining Live Nation in 2007.

“[Seymour is] more interested in the music than whether he’s going to get platinum records out of it,” Madonna said. “Every time he signs somebody, he’s taking a chance. And there aren’t many people in the entertainment industry who do that anymore.”

The ripples from Stein’s enthusiastic, music-first approach had a positive influence on the music business in general. For instance, the late Greg Shaw - the California-based founder of Bomp! magazine and Bomp! records - cited Stein as his primary role model: “I thought I’d be like Seymour Stein, who had built Sire Records and had distribution through Warners. He got to sign anybody he liked and, as a result, was always on the cutting edge.”

Sire’s origins date back to 1966, when Stein cofounded Sire Productions with producer Richard Gottehrer. Sire released albums by British progressive-rock acts like Climax Blues Band, Renaissance and Barclay James Harvest as well as Focus from Holland, whose album, Moving Waves was Sire’s first platinum album back in 1973. A believer in the English rock scene since the late 1950’s – long before the British invasion – his passion for music took root during his early days as a Billboard editorial staffer while still in High School.

Stein’s mentors at the magazine, Chart editor Tom Noonan and legendary music editor Paul Ackerman, introduced him to many indie music men who also mentored him, including the late industry legends, Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records, as well as George Goldner at Redbird Records and, most notably, Syd Nathan at King Records. Four of his six mentors have thus far been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and Stein himself was inducted in 2005. After Billboard, Stein went on to work for King in their Cincinnati headquarters, and later at Redbird in New York’s Brill Building.

In London in the late 1960’s, Stein also met Mike Vernon, who worked for British Decca, where he produced Eric Clapton, John Mayal’s Blues Breakers, Ten Years After, and Savoy Brown Blues Band. Stein and Richard Gottehrer helped Mike Vernon start Blue Horizon, the company that launched the careers of the original Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac and also Chicken Shack, featuring Christine McVie. Several months later Sire purchased a 50% interest in the label.

In 1976, realizing what a mother lode he had discovered in the Ramones – as well other bands that were bubbling up from the rock underground – Warner Bros. struck a distribution deal with Sire. The partnership lasted until 1995 when Stein was asked by Doug Morris, then Chairman of Warner Music U.S., to move over to Elektra Records as President, where he worked with Chairman Sylvia Rhone for three years. In 1998 Stein left Elektra to reform Sire Records Group as a free-standing company and, after Roger Ames took over as Chairman of Warner Music Group, created London-Sire.

In 2002 Tom Whalley invited Stein back to the Warner Bros. label group and re-launched Sire with the release of Danish band The Hives’ first album. Today Sire remains one of Warner ’s most important brands with a roster that includes Regina Spector, HIM, The Veronicas, Tegan & Sara and the more recent addition of Avenged Sevenfold, My Chemical Romance, Never Shout Never, Foxy Shazaam, Ximena, The Ready Set, artists brought to the label by Craig Aaronson and Ryan Whalley. Stein has been associated with Warner Bros. for nearly 35 years, and in 2011, the label will celebrate its 45th Anniversary.

Said Stein: “From my earliest days growing up in Brooklyn, my life has literally revolved around music, first at 78, 45, and 33 and 1/3rd rpm, and at every configuration since. Music has brought me so much joy, and beyond that, a great life and a wonderful career. I am proud and thankful for these wonderful years, but the decline in recorded music sales over the past ten years troubles me greatly.

“I think of young people who are now at the age I was back in the early 1950’s when I first heard the music of Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Hank Williams, James Brown, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, female artists as diverse as Laverne Baker and Kitty Wells, and great doo-wop groups like the Moonglows, Platters, and Flamingos, and I wonder if today’s teenagers will ever have that same opportunity to be part of the recorded music industry.

“I believe much of that future depends on bringing music of the emerging world countries like China and India (with a combined population in excess of 2.5 billion people) and other markets such as Russia, Indonesia, and Turkey, for example, and integrating their music into the mainstream and extending the reach of our western music into their markets.

“I also believe it is important that we encourage labels to be like Sire was back in the late 1970’s and 80’s, to sign new and emerging artists, and to help them most by giving them the time necessary to develop their careers. People look back on those days and the Ramones, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, The Cure, The Smiths, Everything But The Girl; but failed to remember or realize that it very often took three, four, or more album releases before these artists developed any major degree of success.

“Toward that end, together with Richard Gottehrer and with the blessing of Warner Bros. Records, I have reformed Blue Horizon Records. Our first signing, the Austin based psychedelic band, Black Angels was released this past Autumn and is off to a great start, having entered at number 50 on the Billboard Charts. Other releases are planned the first quarter of 2011.

“These are the things: developing new markets and taking chances early on with new artists are what I feel are most important and actively supporting these two causes is how I would most like to spend the remainder of my days in the music business, however long that may be.”


Some of the many acts Stein has worked with in his career include: Flamin’ Groovies, The English Beat, Tom Tom Club, Erasure, Yazoo, Little Jimmy Scott, The Rezillos, Morcheeba, Primal Scream (enjoying strong UK comeback), My Bloody Valentine (enjoying strong UK comeback), Mighty Lemon Drops, Laidback, Ofra Haza, Ocean Blue, Tommy Page, Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, Dinosaur Jr., Ministry, Barenaked Ladies, Aphex Twin, Throwing Muses, Belly, Space Hog, Book of Love, Deborah Harry and Lou Reed.



Industry Praise for Seymour Stein:

Bill Paxton, Actor/Director
“I think I speak for all the artists who have been represented by and associated with Seymour over the years, in so much as when he believes in someone’s talent, he believes all the way. He will not be swayed by pressure or popular opinion. I believe that this positive, unflagging support is what has driven many of us to succeed when we might have lost faith. His great talent comes from a deep, deep love of what he does – finding and nurturing talent.”

Clive Davis, J Records
“Seymour Stein has always been at the cutting edge. The artists he has discovered, nurtured and developed have helped define what contemporary music is all about. His passion for the classics of rock and roll is second to none. I am among his many friends who cherish that smile that envelops his face whenever a great song is being played. It’s Seymour who knows the artist, the producer, the year that it came out, and the lyrics—oh those lyrics have a sound of their own when Seymour sings them. Seymour is one of a kind and long may he flourish.”

Ahmet Ertegun, Atlantic Records
“I first heard about, and eventually met, Seymour Stein when he was a teenage apprentice working at Billboard as an assistant to Paul Ackerman, who was then the editor. He had already embarked upon what would be one of the greatest rock and roll careers of all time, coming up to his present success as the guiding genius of Sire Records.”

Geoff Travis, Rough Trade Records
Seymour is a music aficionado in a world increasingly at odds with the spirit that drove the pioneers of the great records companies of the 50s and 60s. He retains that spirit of doing something simply because it inspires him and he recognizes its artistic merit. He doesn’t need a marketing blueprint or a SoundScan printout to tell him whether he loves a band. It isn’t as easy as you think to retain that fanlike innocence when it comes to responding to music. For me, it is the primary virtue of a great A&R man and a brilliant label boss. Seymour is both, and proved it time and time again. Long may he continue.”

Martin Mills, Beggars Banquet
When Beggars Banquet first started releasing punk records in 1977, Seymour’s was the only American label in sight. He got English new wave in a way that no one else really did, collected it devotedly, and understood and supported the ethos of British independents of that era and later like no other. One of the things I have always valued about Seymour was that he was always out there, at gigs, on convention floors…he may have had ivory towers, but he didn’t stay in them!”

Alan McGee, Creation Records
“Seymour almost single-handedly helped infect American youth with the thing that we call punk rock. We all know the bands he introduced the world to, from Madonna to my Creation bands. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Seymour is my role model in the music business. He just truly loves music.”

Brett Ratner, Director/Producer
“Seymour Stein opened the eyes of a 17-year-old pisher to a world I knew nothing about and me feel like a star! His confidence in me, without him realizing it, gave me the confidence I needed to succeed in my future.”

Adam Clayton, U2
Seymour Stein had the good sense to sign the Ramones. Their unique sound had an enormous influence on us as a young band – it still does. Sire has brought a lot of great music to a lot of people, and we should all be grateful for that.”

Chris Blackwell, Island Records
Seymour Stein was the boy genius of the modern music business, even before he started his own independent record label. Initially, I was one of the first people to recognize the English rock phenomenon, which was rooted in the love and admiration of American blues. Later, with Sire, he was the first to recognize and sign artists whose music influenced a whole generation of musicians and music lovers.”