Madonna, ramones, The CureDepeche Mode, Lou Reed, The Smiths or even Duncan Dhu They counted among their team at some point with seymour stein. The legendary American record manager responsible for some of the greatest hits in the history of contemporary music died on Sunday in Los Angeles at the age of 80, a victim of cancer, his family sources confirmed to Variety magazine.

From sirethe record label he co-founded in 1966, Stein was a driving force behind punk rock and new wave beginning in the late 1970s. Born with an independent spirit, from the start Sire took risks by introducing British underground and progressive bands to the American market, and during his career he achieved success with productions by artists such as the Flamin Groovies, Renaissance, Duane Eddy or Small Faces, and later The Smiths, Seal, The Undertones and even the Spanish Duncan Dhu.

In the eighties he signed brian wilsonthe Beach Boys frontman, who released his first solo album with Sire, already Lou Reed, who since the late 1990s released his albums New York, Songs for rella and Magis and Loss on Stein’s record label. As he once said himself, what he always looked for in any band or artist he signed was “their songs”, and thus a well-curated playlist of Sire releases from the ’80s and ’90s makes up the band. sound of an era

ramones and madonna

The discovery of ramones It’s because of Linda stein’s wife, who saw them in a New York club and told her husband about them. Stein auditioned them which resulted in the 1976 release of the group’s debut album, named after them. Linda became her manager and they recorded eleven more albums with Sire.

But his most lucrative find was Madonnathat when Stein hired her, in 1983, she was still an unknown singer performing in Manhattan clubs, and that with her first three albums, all of them with Sire (Madonna, Like a Virgin and True Blue), reached number one on the sales charts and stardom. Sire was distributed by Warner Bros. Records from 1977 and acquired by that company in 1978, and Seymour Stein became vice president of that entertainment giant’s label.

Professional and personal life

Born Seymour Steinbigle on April 18, 1942, the record manager got his first taste of the music industry as a teenager with Billboard magazine, where he ended up working for a small record label in the early 1960s, before teaming up with producer/songwriter Richard Gottehrer to create Sire . In 1983 he was one of the promoters of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, which he inducted in 2005.

His eclectic musical taste was always admired within the recording industry. Stein forged business alliances with a host of European independent labels and signed some of the best artists on the post-punk and new wave scene in New York, the UK and Australia.

Stein’s last years were marked by tragedy: his ex-wife Linda, who suffered from brain cancer, was killed by a blow to the head by her personal assistant in 2007, and his daughter Samantha Jacobs also contracted brain cancer as a result of which passed away in 2013.