Long term friend Stephen Budd copied me in on your recent email relating to the sad departure of Seymour Stein. I felt compelled to respond…so here goes!
Your observations and stories about Seymour have had me reminiscing since I woke up this morning. We go back a long, long way that's for sure…mid to late 1960s when I was primarily working for The Decca Record Company Ltd. My plans to launch my own record Blues label were already underway by 1964…some three and a half years later Peter Green left John Mayall's Bluesbreakers to form Fleetwood Mac and then I had to leave the staff at Decca to become an Independent Producer. I guess that was around the time I first met Seymour…the Windsor Blues Festival that he alluded to amongst those emails that you listed. Anyway, I truly do not have the time right now to delve back into my memory 'bank' but I would like to say how much I enjoyed reading about those priceless memories. He was very kind to me in those early days…flew me to New York and put me up at his apartment. Showed me Chinatown…introduced me to Henry Glover and Bobby Robinson…and endless stories, mainly about Syd Nathan! He could tell a story too with impersonations and sound effects…hilarious. They were great times…never to be forgotten and never to be beaten either.
I will check my Inbox so see what I have from the man himself…we were corresponding about this and that but not sure about the content. That was at the time when the Blue Horizon label was being resurrected…maybe three years ago? I was in touch with both Seymour and his daughter Mandy.
Anyway, thank you again for brightening up what would have been a very sad day. We will all be celebrating his life as he surely gave so much to us. One of a kind…gone but never to be forgotten. R.I.P. Seymour Steinbigle
Best to you…
MIKE VERNON MBE
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I first met Seymour in the seventies when I was in the international division at EMI. I had managed to get the USA as one of my "markets" and started licensing records that Capitol would not, or had not released in the USA. He had Sire, an indie then, and a series of compilation albums called The roots of British rock I believe. He came to see me at EMI but before he came I checked his deals to find that he had not possibly been accounting "regularly". So I arranged with the lawyer at EMI that he would come in halfway through the meeting and threaten him for non payment as a sort of spoof. Well Seymour gave me the best line ever. He said "I have live artists. I have to pay them before I pay your dead artists." I ended up licensing him some more records and licensed his partner at Jem an early Floyd solo record that had been out for ten years in the UK. Rupert Perry threatened to get me fired for that but Bob Mercer stood by me. When I went in to A and R at EMI we stayed in touch and later on at Polygram I managed to give him as many records as I could including Tainted love, the deal for which we did on a napkin in some dive. He was one of the greats and enjoyed all sorts of music. I even licensed him the great David Rudder from Trinidad who we signed to London with him taking the US. He was a regular at Carnival in Trinidad and went to the tents there where he knew all the calypsonians performing.What a great record guy.
Roger Ames
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Great piece on Seymour.
He was a wonderful character.
I would often bump into him in London, not going to shows but buying antiques and paintings.
He loved going to the auctions.
This was his great hobby.
Seymour was from the great era of finding fabulous artists and selling them to anyone who would listen.
He had amazing foresight in choosing his music.
He will be greatly missed.
Harvey Goldsmith
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BEST POSTING EVER, A COLLECTION OF SEYMOUR COMMENTS, THANKS BOB
I KNEW SEYMOUR AND LINDA IN THE 70'S WHEN THEY SIGNED MY FIRST BAND ( I WAS THE ROAD MANAGER) STANKY BROWN GROUP TO SIRE.
EVERYTHING I HAVE READ DESCRIBING SEYMOUR IS TRUE AND THEN SOME, I'LL LEAVE MY STORIES FOR ANOTHER DAY AND TO THOSE WHO KNEW HIM BETTER
BERT HOLMAN
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Wow!
Those emails are incredible!
He was always completely charming when I met him.
One of the all time greats.
They don't make them like him anymore.
Richard Griffiths
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Thanks for sharing your Seymour Stein stories and letters. I was fortunate to have spent some time with him when he attended a Gountty Radio.Seninar convention at the Opryland Hotel sometime in the 90s. I had met him before through our mutual friend Richard Gottehrer, at a Madonna party at the Red Parrot and several times before that in the 70s at CBGBs, but we had never had the chances to talk. He was a record man who really loved the music, and I had learned not to take that for granted. Folks who worked with him at King had told me that he could identify any record in their catalog by number He was full of great stories as expected. Truly one of the all time greats.
Ed Salamon
Nashville TN
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Very sad news to wake up to this morning, I can't count on the number of Sire Records in my collection, from a reissue of the Nuggets garage rock compilation (originally on another groundbreaking Warner acquisition, Elektra) through the Ramones and Talking Heads to the English Beat and Echo & the Bunnymen, and of course Madonna (I have nearly all of her 12" singles, right up to her dismantling of American Pie). One of the best hours of my life was spent in Seymour's company, when he came to Halifax for the East Coast Music Awards & Conference (and also for the seafood, I'm sure), and he invited me to lunch after we'd had a particularly robust phone interview (we even talked about the Strangeloves, and Manny's Music Store) before he came to town.
It was a fun, freewheeling chat about music and some of his other passions. Mostly I remember asking him why the Monkees weren't in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ("Because some people in charge say it'll happen over their dead bodies") and asking him if he grew up listening to the Yiddish comedy records of Mickey Katz, whereupon he told me a story about recently being at a birthday party for Jennifer Grey, daughter of Broadway legend Joel Grey, whose father was Mickey Katz, the original "Weird Al" Yankovic of parody songs. I gather they sang a few bars of The Barber of Schlemiel and Duvid Crockett, King of Delancey Street together. He asked me what some of my favourite Sire artists were, and Echo & the Bunnymen came to mind, which apparently was a signing he was very proud of, even if they didn't get a North American hit until their fourth album with The Killing Moon, a song that's become an indie-goth classic, and is frequently licensed for film and TV shows. I loved that Seymour played the long game, and let artists develop their talent, and believed in the power of a strong catalogue. My life would have been very different without Sire Records as its soundtrack.
~Stephen Cooke
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He wasn't the average record exec indeed. He was one of a kind and I too was privileged to know him. If you had one conversation with him about music, you would immediately understand the depth of his knowledge on music: he would reference songs and artists I had never heard of, ad infinitum. It was like taking a Master Class on pre-Beatles rock and roll and music business. One time we were at a Thai restaurant and he stopped eating and paused when a random song came on the restaurant's stereo system, he looked perplexed and confused while he was trying to place the song and then eventually he smiled that cheshire cat smile and said in that Brooklyn accent of his, 'it's Leiber and Stoller of course…they were just the absolute best!'.
I didn't know him in his 80's heyday, but through his daughter Mandy, I got to know him and spend time with him in the last 15 years of his life. He really liked a Joseph Arthur tribute record to Lou Reed I was involved with (he pointed out he and Lou were born a month apart and that he had released his 'New York' record) and wanted to sign it but couldn't get his team on board. Regardless he wanted the other label interested (Vanguard) to know he was interested with hopes that it would get the advance and their enthusiasm up. I thought that was a classy move. He also once tried to put me in touch with Morrisey, who I had expressed interest in managing but forewarned 'you do know what you're getting yourself into, right?!".
In 2011 he came to Montreal for the Pop Montreal Festival and I met him at the airport, brought him into the city and later at night, when I figured he would probably prefer sleeping, we met up and went around to some clubs, checking out acts. He would hobble his way up and down flights of stairs with his cane but once he was in the room and there was music being played, you could tell he was in his element. He would soak it all in and afterwards would bounce around introducing himself to these young acts saying he was 'Seymour Stein from Sire Records,' and I would wonder if these young acts had any idea of who he was and what greatest they were standing in front of.
The last time I saw him was at the 2018 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. I walked in and saw him sitting down so I went to say hi to him. He immediately pulled out his phone and called Mandy and handed me his phone so I could say hi to her. What an amazingly soulful man he was, and true visionary.
Peter Wark
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My best Seymour story : Apologies for brevity , am on the move...
We managed Ian McCulloch in the 90s signed to Sire/Warners.
I drove Seymour from London to Liverpool. He fell asleep so I ragged his car and did 156 mph down the M1. He then woke up and was laughing encouraging me!!! He said it was the fastest he'd ever been and it woke him up. It was 1995 and you could do it then. Not now with cameras etc. We were going up to see Electrafixion play at the lomax. Mac and Will (Echo and the Bunnymen) had just got back together and were speaking again for the first time since the Bunnymen split years earlier at their peak. I took him to the Jung Wah - best chinese rezzo ever in Liverpool, sadly no longer there. My great grandparents lived there originally (before Chinatown) when they got off the boat from Russia in the early 1900s thinking they were in NY! I explained the history and he laughed his head off again. He absolutely loved the food - traditional Cantonese. We actually saw one of his bands there - the long forgotten Singing Ringing Tree. We then all went to the lomax for the gig. And then I drove him back to London - at a more conservative 130 mph - after hanging out with Mac backstage. He said it was one of the best nights ever!!!
Darren Michaelson
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Thank u for this stunning 'from-the-horses-mouth' view of Seymour Stein.
He traversed the world continually seeking the very best in music - so we were lucky to meet him even here in South Africa. He had success with Johnny Clegg and Juluka from Johannesburg - and continued to scour our musical landscape.
In Cape Town and Joburg we had lunches and dinners of epic proportions - with all the stories in your article - and many more.
The best was when Seymour would fearlessly sing all these songs of yesteryears with great love and joy - in his shaky but beautiful voice - lyric perfect. He would do this in the middle of restaurants. He would astound us by ordering double main courses!
I loved him. The only disagreement we ever had was whether Chubby Checker should be in the Rock Hall of Fame. His opinion was an emphatic 'no' - whilst I thought he should be. Not sure who ultimately prevailed ...
He was a mensch. He made our music business a place of true magic.
Salutations, Seymour
Patric van Blerk
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This really hit me hard.
I was always amazed that you would see Seymour at all the showcase events around the world. Checking the bands out. Cane in hand. I saw him everywhere. We spoke about China and India often. He always had time to say hello.
The conferences then started having him do the "this is your life" keynotes/panels - and then the book tour - but it was always the shows that blew my mind. This guy - out in the clubs - doing what I was doing and doing what none of his peers were. Hell - you didn't even see the A+R's out, but there he was. My youth was shaped by Sire.
I hate to see a true music man go. Really one of the last label heads that you can name and that you care about - that was out there.
I was trying to think of Sire releases that were not good. There were not many! When I worked in retail as a kid - there were not a lot of Sire releases in the cut out bin. Lot's of MCA and Atlantic!
I did get to have dinner with Seymour. Chinese of course. You are so right about his eating. What a production!
I will really miss seeing him out there.
Adam Lewis
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Excellent salute to Seymour Stein, Bob. His encyclopedic knowledge of music never ceased to astonish, and extended to Chinese pop hits of the 40's and 50's. I was up in his office once and mentioned I had an album out of Chinese pop classics from that era—and he proceeded to sing a famous Chinese song, "Megui, Megui", a/k/a "Rose, Rose, I Love You", in the original Mandarin. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-vv-tgoab0 Not only that, but he informed me that the song's singer Yao Lee was still alive and in her 90's living in Hong Kong—and that her song had been re-recorded with totally different lyrics in English by Frankie Laine, where it made #3 on the Billboard pop charts in 1953. Another time I ran into him at Pop Montreal and over tea lobbied him for inclusion of Captain Beefheart in the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame, telling him that most of the artists he'd signed during the Punk era would agree with me. He looked at me and with a straight face said, "Gary, my friend Neil Sedaka's not in there! How do you think I feel about that??" Total legend!
Gary Lucas
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My old group Morcheeba was signed by Seymour to Sire after Jac Holzman had our first couple of albums on Discovery.
Seymour loved us. We couldn't believe our luck we had no ambitions to break the States, we were doing great Worldwide but to be signed by two of the greatest golden eared moguls of all time was all I needed. Talk about a pat on the back.
Whenever we were in the same city Seymour would take us to the best restaurants and tell us great stories. We were sitting at a swanky eatery in Manhattan and Michael Caine walked in. Life was never dull when Seymour was in town. Our song "Rome wasn't built in a day" was one of his all time favourites and he used to croak the melody to us. We were so happy hanging. They said he used to collect British bands and Antiques from West London, and he had great taste for both. He lasted much longer than I imagined given his lifestyle but he always had that great smile and those sparkling blue eyes so I guess he had other plans. Rest in Peace Seymour! You gave a young British man validation beyond his imagination. Thank you.
Paul Godfrey
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I was incredibly fortunate to work for two absolute legends in my record label days - and Seymour was one of them. Sire Records was a bit of a mess by the time I got there in the late 90's, but working in the West Coast A&R Dept with Bud Scoppa and Andy Paley was definitely a career highlight. If you were courting a band and you were able to get Seymour to a dinner with them - he was magic. He had an incredible ear and was responsible for so many of my favorite bands and records; it was both and honor and a thrill to work for and get to know him.
-Gregg Bell
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Seymour called me out of the blue about ten years ago because he wanted to get his memoirs out before it was too late. My friend Ivo Watts-Russell referred him to me. He didn't have a literary agent but had heard through grapevine I could help him get a writer and a book deal with an editor at a major house with no agent fees. He was right, and I got him superb music writer Gareth Murphy, plus SMP editor extraordinaire, Elizabeth Beier. Even though extracting the right stories from Seymour was painful, Siren Song was a damn good book. Some stories pissed people which attested to the accuracy. Mo Ostin was not pleased.
But it was just fun hanging out with Seymour, him stopping mid sentence in a story to call Andy Paley to make the details were right.
And there was always food, messy but delicious. And too much wine.
He lived big, a true character.
Jeff Capshew
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Beautiful tribute Bob.
Seymour Stein was cut from a different cloth. Nobody knew music like he did.
I just went back to listen to your interview from 2018.
I loved this interview too from 4 years ago in Please Kill Me.
pleasekillme.com/interview-seymour-stein-legs-gillian/
I had the pleasure of hanging with him a couple times.
It was in foreign countries as you said, where he actually spent time chatting with me. The times we bonded the most was Tel Aviv. A music conference called Tune-In Tel Aviv. I remember he came out to all the shows and stayed almost to the end. Walking up stairs with his cane probably in pain but you would never have known. He was a trooper and a music fan through and through!
I don't think I ever heard him laugh but he definitely smiled the few times I saw him.
I saw him many times at MIDEM too but that was earlier on in my career and he never seemed to remember me.
The first great convo I had with Seymour was about the British Invasion.
I was able to tell him The Zombies had a record deal and he was ecstatic to hear about that and very keen to hear the new album. He loved The Zombies. He said they'll get inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame one day! That was in 2015. Then I saw him in NYC at the Polar Music Prize Polar Talks which I helped produce. That was up in Harlem.
The last convo we had was right after the 2019 Inductees were announced! I had told him about a new artist I was repping called AJ Smith and had asked if he had received his material. He wrote this below.
"Glad about the Zombies. Big representation from UK this year, including Sire band the Cure.
FYI, I'm not working at present time. Hopefully, soon.
OK to resend A.J. Material.
Best,
Seymour
I'm forever grateful and honored to have had that time with an industry giant! It really feels like the end of an era!
Fiona Bloom
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This was a wonderful read.
When I was working with Ted Templeman on his autobiography he told me many times that Seymour had an encyclopedic knowledge of 20th c. music of all genres. Exact quote from a few years back from Ted: "Seymour worked for King Records. That label was one of my first inspirations. He's a historian. He knows everything. Early rock and roll? Ruth Brown. Wynonie Harris. Seymour knows that stuff cold. James Brown -- Seymour told me that Tammi Terrell was James Brown's girlfriend. Seymour told me Elvis was blonde! A blonde guy. He said he naturally had hair like mine. I didn't know any of that! He's the most fascinating, greatest guy in the world."
I loved reading Seymour's emails and your tribute to him. Thank you.
Greg Renoff
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Best meeting I ever had with a record executive was with Seymour. Danny Fields was managing a new, young artist that Seymour wanted to sign, so Danny arranged for me to go up to meet with Seymour. We met in his office and after some niceties, he took a business card and wrote the deal points for my client's contract on the back of the card ... then sent me down to business affairs to give it to them and tell them to do that deal with me for the artist.
Wallace Collins
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Seymour called my band mate and I in 2018 regarding one of our singles. We knew nobody would believe us so we actually recorded the conversation. He loved the song and wanted to hear more. Unfortunately nothing ever happened but it was a pretty cool moment to have a legend in the biz call you. RIP.
Danny Jay
Shytown
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Don't forget he signed Ice T. The first "rapper" signed to a major record company on the west coast- and maybe in the United States
Eric Greenspan
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Bob: Seymour moment: Although acquired by WB in 1978, Sire/WB released "Reel To Reel '' by Climax Blues Band in 1979 (and "Shine On" in 1978). First band to record at AIR Studios in Montserrat, West Indies (now abandoned after epic island volcano eruption). Major artistic departure for the band to go "mainstream" with major rotation on AOR and formatted radio in the States at the time. I played the elpee non-stop and thus spread the word throughout various U.S. industry channels. Soon thereafter, Seymour called my office to express his appreciation. We never met prior. We spoke for over half an hour. From Frank and Nancy Sinatra (see producer Lee Hazlewood) to artists of the day.
Very sad day indeed.
Scott Hazlewood
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The Great Seymour.
You're so right about his music from the 30s and 40s.
One time we were driving up PCH in Malibu. I asked him what his favorite song was. (An impossible question…I know, I know.)
He said, "Little Yellow Bird." (The song performed by a 20-year-young Angela Lansbury in the 1945 film "The Picture Of Dorian Gray.")
Then, he sang the whole song from memory. I thought he was going to cry. Maybe he did.
Goodbye, Little Yellow Bird
I'd rather brave the cold
On a leafless tree
Than a prisoner be
In a cage of gold
Seymour. He sure LOVED his music.
Bobby Woods
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