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Home , George Goldner, Sire Records

LIFETIME AC HIE V E M ENT AWA R D IN THE NON PERFORMER CATEGORY Seym our Stein By Tony Fletcher

he question to be asked about Sey­ stinctively drawn to doo-wop - a music he often heard mour Stein is not “How has he in­ performed on the streets and in the city’s echo- fluenced your taste in music,” but chambered subway stations. By the time he hit his teens, "H ow often, or h o w profoundly, has Stein was spending every penny he could beg, borrow, he influenced your taste in music?” or haggle on records. Through thirty-eight years at the “Round my neighborhood, die record store was ac­ helm of Sire Records, acquiring so much tually a sporting-goods store,” he recalls, with the attention to detail that all great histori­ Tgenuine talent we could fill these pages ans have, “where round the back with all just by listing the artists he signed, he the basketballs and catching mitts - has proved time and again that the which were alien to me - was a record w ords music and business can coexist department. W hen I wanted real in harmony — even if, as those who R&?B, I had to go to downtown Brook­ have enjoyed his mealtime renditions lyn, or take the subway train all the w ay of bygone hit records can testify, such to Harlem.” There, on 125th Street, he harmony is hot always perfectly pitched. stood outside Rainbow Records and the Stein is of that breed - and we are many - who did not choose his life in music as much as it Record Shack and listened in wonderment. chose him. An account of his early days reads like a Stein also traversed for live music. history lesson in postwar American popular music. A t the predominantly black club Town Hill on Brook­ Growing up in the Italian/Jewish neighborhood of lyn’s Eastern Parkway, the underage Stein saw Hank Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in the early 1950s, he realized Ballard and the Midnighters. A t the Apollo in Harlem, instinctively that he was “not in any way athletic” but he witnessed the Paragons and the Jesters. And once that he was a bom collector. Initially, this meant buy­ Alan Freed started promoting his rock 6s? roll jubilees ing and swapping (nonsports) trading cards, bottle at the Brooklyn Fox and Paramount theaters over the caps, and postage stamps. The switch to records came Christmas and Easter holidays, Stein’s mother would via his older sister, Ann, who played the hit songs of pack her son off with salami sandwiches - knowing the day, loudly, in a small apartment. that lunch money would only be spent on more O f course, this was all before rock 6? roll, but unlike records - and he would sit through the day’s perfor­ those who feign disdain for Tin Pan Alley pop, Stein mances by Ray Charles, the Everly Brothers, Fats maintains only fond memories of Guy Mitchell, Patti Domino, Ghuck Berry, and Buddy Holly. Page, Perry Como, and Kay Starr. W e’re talking, after A t thirteen, having found his calling in life but un­ all, o f a man for whom “the song is everything.” Still, as sure how to follow it, Stein ventured to the BiJJboard with so many of his generation, he freely admits that offices in midtown Manhattan, where he asked for — when he discovered rhythm 62? blues - through Lloyd and was granted — access to the archives. He spent Price’s “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” the Dominoes’ “Sixty every day after school copying the charts the way Minute Man,” Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene,” and Fats some sports fans note batting averages. Billboard’s ed­ Domino’s “Going to the River” - “it was like a home itor Paul Ackerman quickly took Stein under his wing, mn to me.” A t the same time, the young Stein was in­ bringing him onto the magazine’s influential reviews

► Seymour Stein, record collector and cofounder of Sire Records, while being interviewed by ‘Rolling Stone,’ circa 1977

A Top: Stein never signed Mae West, but at least he got to dine with her, 1975. Bottom: Stein and former wife, Linda, with Elton John and the , backstage in London, 1977. ▼ Stein with Warner Bros. Records’ Michael Hill and the Replacements’ Paul Westerberg (with cigarette) and Tommy Stinson (in hat).

team and hooking him up with King Records’ founder, Syd start a production company, naming it Sire from a convo' Nathan. In turn, Nathan invited fifteen-'yearold Stein to spend luted combination of their first names. Syd Nathan gave a summer in Cincinnati with his family, and Ackerman bro' them his midtown office on the cheap, and ever the en' kered a meeting with Stein’s father to discuss the opportunity. trepreneur, Stein quickly rented half of it out again. Seymour remembers the occasion well. Nervously accept' Success for Sire came in fits and starts. They brought in a ing a Cuban cigar from Nathan, his father asked what the young Steven Tyler and his band Chain Reaction; they part' nered with the U.KL’s Blue Horizon entrepreneur saw in the teenager. M M M M Records and shared in Fleetwood Nathan’s reply? “He’s got shellac in his H H I H H I Mac’s and Chicken Shack’s-success. veins.” But Nathan also knew there Flying between London and New wasn’t much else Seymour could do. King Records founder York, snapping up European artists^ “If he doesn’t come w ith me and learn before the American majors could fig' the music business,” Syd told Stein se' Syd Nathan once said o f ure them out, Sire built a roster that nior, “I hope you’ve got the money to Seym our Stein, “H e’s included the Climax Blues Band, Re' buy him a newspaper route.” Seymour naissance, and Barclay James Harvest spent the summer in Cincinnati. got shellac in his veins” and landed its first platinum record in After bigb school came three years H H H H H the early 1970s-with the instrumental at Billboard, setting up and compiling Dutch band Focus. the H ot io o w ith Tom Noonan, and a little more than a year in Cincinnati with King. There in the But running an indie in that era was a difficult business at the Midwest, Stein learned the machinations of an independent best of times. Sometimes it was a choice between paying royal' and, when drawn back to New York by home' ties and paying the rent. “I’m not proud o f it,” says Stein, ‘but at sickness, rapidly applied that knowledge at a new label least I survived.” Come 1974, an exhausted Gottehrer went back launched by industry veteran George Goldner in partnership to production. (He reappeared with a band called Blondie.) with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Operating out of the Brill Stein was alone at Sire. An d his story was about to begin. Building, 1619 Broadway, debuted in 1964 How profoundly has Seymour Stein influenced your taste with “” by the Dixie Cups. The song went to in music? Let me give you my story. I was only twelve in 197b, Number One. Several months later, that song’s authors, Ellie but I’d been adopted as a harmless mascot by older boys on the Greenwich and Jeff Barry, hooked up with Greenwich’s old south London soccer terraces. W e all claimed to love the hard' schoolmate Roger “Shadow” Morton and his girl group from rock music of the era. But with the occasional exception, we Queens, the Shangri'Las. Their “” also went were just faking our enthusiasm, hoping and waiting for some' to Number One. A t only twenty-two, Stein was helping to thing more meaningful to enter our urban English lives, which helm the most successful independent label in the nation. were marked by strikes, terrorist bombs, racial conflict, hooli' Ultimately, there were too many strong characters at Red ganism, and the prospect o f instant unemployment at the end Bird for one independent label to contain, and in 1966, “as in' of our tedious school days. stantly as it exploded,” says Stein, “it imploded.” But in the cor' W e didn’t anticipate that something to arrive from New York, ridors and elevators of the Brill Building, Stein had befriended but those older kids I hung with latched onto the Ramones’ the producer ; together they decided to fourteen'song, twenty'eight'minute first album - released on ▲ Stein with k.d. lang, whom he signed to Sire Records, circa 1999 ▲ The Steins in London for the Ramones/Flamin’ Groovies show, 1976

try songs and a day at the rodeo together) and the Barenaked Sire, o f course - like their lives depended onto it. They were also Ladies; Australians the Saints; and copious British bands, sev­ savvy enough to catch the Ramones’ first London show at the Roundhouse (opening for the Flamin’ Groovies) that summer— eral of whom - , , Echo and the July 4,1976, by no coincidence America’s two hundredth birth­ Bunnymen, the Smiths, , , and Soft Cell, among day - after which they traded in their flared jeans for straight- them - enjoyed both critical and commercial success. legged ones. Out went songs about topographical oceans; in Stein moved fast to sign them all. “I had no money. So if I ramp, songs about sniffin’ glue. W ithin weeks, my older friends didn’t get to them fast and interest grew, I couldn’t even talk to were tailring about the Sex Pistols and the Clash, whose mem­ them,” he says. Then again, as he readily admits, “I’m compul­ sive.” He would jump on a plane whenever a British indie-label bers had also attended that Ramones show. Music was chang­ boss assured bim o f a new signing" s merit—or even if he didn t. ing, irrevocably. I couldn’t see any of these bands because I was too young, but thanks to the late, great John Peel on late-night W hen Stein read in NM E that Depeche Mode was about to play its first real show - in England, that night - he booked a Radio 1, 1 couldhear them. Peel received hate mail for playing the Ramones. That makes sense: Seymour Stein got hate mail for flight on the Concorde and came home with a contract. signing them. Sometimes you have to go with your instincts and In an industry that counts success in seven-figure sales, Stein’s biggest claim to fame is signing . He credits wait for the world to catch up. “He stood by us through thick and thin,” says the,Ramones’ M ark Kamins, who brought demos he’d produced for his new original drummer, Tommy Erdelyi, “and believe me, there was girlfriend straight to Stein, who then invited Madonna in to a lot of thin. Seymour Stein was very important to the whole negotiate a deal - in his hospital room, where he was recovering seventies N ew York scene, and Sire Records set the pace that from a heart ailment. The same urgency that had seen him run­ influenced the musical culture o f the past quarter century.” ning down the street the moment he heard “Don’t, Be Cruel” - That’s no overstatement. Stein also fell for and courted the because he had to have the record now — led him to secure one Ramones’ artsy opposites Talking Heads, ensuring that by o f the biggest acts in music history. 1977, Sire had New York’s two most important acts on its ros­ The 1990 s found Stein bouncing around the Warner Music ter. (It also had a new distribution deal with Warner Bros.) Be­ Group’s many corporate shuffles, for awhile taking on the pres­ cause of Stein’s ties with the British music industry, he was idency o f Elektra/Sire. The new century finds him back doing able to break these bands in the U X long before they were ac­ what he loves most - finding and signing the finest in new cepted in America; similarly, he was able - indeed, determined - music. Sire’s current roster includes England’s Subways and to sign British new-wave acts. I recall seeing and Futureheads, Detroit’s Von Bondies and Fags, Canada s Hot at London’s Marquee Club in October 1978. Hot Heat, Finland’s HIM, and the Veronicas, from Australia. Both groups - one Scottish, the other Irish - had been N o w in his sixties, Stein will still jump on a plane to see an act launched on regional independent labels and championed by on a friend’s recommendation. He’ll still break from a meeting John Peel. Both were now on Sire Records and having hits. to ™a1rt> the all-important introduction to a manager. A n d he’ll Aided b y its cachet as the label artists aspired to sign with, still break into a doo-wop chorus at the drop of a wineglass. Sire built a roster that was consistently America’s strongest - A n d that’s w h y we love him. Because while Seymour Stein and always hippest - of the eighties and nineties. It included the long ago ceased having to sing for his supper, the fact that he Replacements, ’Wilco, Ministry, and Ice-T; Canadians k.d. lang will sing for yours is the mark o f a man who still, all these years (whom Stein signed after the two spent an evening singing coun­ later, has shellac - the very stuff of hit records - in his veins. •