His Sire label gave careers to Madonna, Talking Heads and the Ramones, while he was stuck in the closet and a tumultuous marriage. ‘Who’s to say what’s normal?’ he wonders
Seymour Stein loves the music business. And so he should, given he is one of the last old record guys – the kind who came up when rock’n’roll was the thing, who worked in the Brill Building, who talks about songs and records rather than streams and monetisation. The kind of guy who signed the Ramones and Madonna.
His conversation is littered with the names of old labels and the men who ran them, the stanzas of a romance that is now dusty and forgotten. King, Chess, Imperial; Don Robey, Art Rupe, Lew Chudd. “Lew had, in my opinion, the greatest man in rhythm and blues at the time, Fats Domino,” he says. “He had one of the greatest country artists: Slim Whitman. And he had one of the first rock’n’roll teen idols: Ricky Nelson. What a spread!”
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