Seymour Stone
Music mogul and Madonna discoverer dies at 80
Music mogul Seymour Stein discovered and promoted numerous international stars with his label “Sire Records”. Now he died in Los Angeles.
© imago Debby Wong
He discovered Madonna, brought Depeche Mode and The Cure to the United States. Music mogul Seymour Stein has died of cancer at the age of 80.
He was one of the most influential and powerful music managers in the world, his nickname: “King of 80s Pop”. Seymour Stein is now 80 years old died in Los Angeles. A family spokesman said Stein had “succumbed to a long history of cancer.”
Born in New York, he entered the music business at the age of 13. Initially writing reviews for Billboard magazine, he later worked for various music labels. In 1966 he founded his label “Sire Records” and discovered the Ramones and the Talking Heads in the 70s.
Stein nurtured the careers of numerous international music stars, including The Smiths, Seal, Ice-T and Lou Reed. When he was in the hospital after heart surgery, he heard the demo tape of Madonna’s “Everybody” – and ordered the young singer to his bedside.
“She came dressed up in a cheap punk outfit looking absurdly inappropriate on a cardiac ward,” Seymour Stein wrote in his 2018 memoir. Madonna wasn’t interested if he liked her demo, the music manager continued: “She said: ‘Just tell me what I have to do to get a frigging record deal in this town.’ She had bigger balls than all four men in the room combined.”
Stein gave her a $45,000 contract for three singles. Madonna sold over 64 million albums in the US alone before founding her own label in 1992.
“Music was the most important thing in my life”
In 2017, Seymour Stein (divorced, two children) publicly came out as gay. He has known this since he was a teenager but felt compelled to date women because of his family.
in one Interview with The Times A few years ago, Stein said, “I could have been a better father, I could have been a better husband. But I had no choice. The most important thing in my life was music. It always came first.”