Seymour Stein Dies: Sire Records Co-Founder Who Launched Madonna, Talking Heads & The Ramones Was 80
deadline.comSeymour Stein, the founder of Sire Records who launched the recording careers of Madonna, the Ramones, Talking Heads and the Pretenders, died Sunday of cancer in Los Angeles.
He was 80. His death was announced by his daughter Mandy Stein. A hugely influential force on the American pop and rock music scene since the 1970s, Stein and his Sire Records, founded in 1966, made their first chart impact in 1973 with the oddball million-seller “Hocus Pocus,” a song by Dutch band Focus that featured the unlikely combination of hard rock and yodeling.
But it was New York’s downtown punk scene, centered on bars and clubs such as CBGB and the Mudd Club, that propelled Stein, along with then wife Linda Stein, into the forefront of rock’s new wave of music makers.
After Linda Stein attended a 1975 performances of the Ramones at the Lower East Side dive CBGB, Seymour Stein signed the band to Sire, initiating the label’s connection to the downtown scene.
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