56 | APRIL 20 • 2023
S
eymour Stein, one of the
most influential music
executives of the 20th
century, who frequently throughout
his career referred to his Jewish
Brooklynite roots, died at 80 on
April 2, 2023, at his home in Los
Angeles.
The cause was an unspecified
form of cancer, according to
reports.
Stein, born Seymour Steinbigle
in 1942 and raised near
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, signed
artists to his Sire record label ranging
from pop superstars like Madonna to
punk rockers like The Ramones to New
Wave pioneers like the Talking Heads.
He also helped found the Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame in the early 1980s and was
inducted with a lifetime achievement
award in 2005.
As he details in his 2018
autobiography, Stein’s father became
closer to Orthodox Judaism in his 30s
and 40s, regularly bringing his family
to a nearby synagogue, where he was
a vice president. Stein wrote that his
father stopped by the synagogue at 6
a.m. before working in Manhattan’s
Garment District and then again after
work on his way home every day.
He described the Jews of 1940s
Brooklyn in detail in Siren Song: My Life
in Music:
“We had every flavor of Ashkenazim
— Russian, Polish, Baltic, Romanian,
Austrian, Hungarian, German and
Czech Jews, including about 50,000
survivors from the concentration
camps. We had lost tribes you didn’t
even know existed — Syrian, Iraqi,
Persian, Yemeni, Ethiopian, even some
Sephardic Jews whose family trees had
curled through Spain, North Africa,
the Middle East and South America….
[E]ach Jewish community was distinct,
often with its own native food and
language.”
In 1966, Stein — who shortened
his last name on advice from an early
mentor, the Jewish executive Syd
Nathan — co-founded Sire Records,
which would go on to sign and promote
artists from a range of burgeoning
genres in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s:
British indie rockers like The Smiths
and The Cure, electronic innovator
Aphex Twin, the rapper Ice-T.
“He knows all the lyrics to every song
you’ve ever heard,” said Chrissie Hynde,
the famed leader of The Pretenders,
another Sire band.
Along the way, Stein wrote and
mentioned in interviews how he
found camaraderie with other Jewish
executives and stars, after having grown
up in an era when Jews were implicitly
banned from some professions in
the United States but found a haven
in the entertainment industry. In his
autobiography, for instance, he calls
Lou Reed and New Wave electro-rocker
Alan Vega fellow Brooklyn Jews.
“It’s amazing now that so many
doctors and lawyers are Jewish,” he
said in a 2013 interview with Tablet
magazine. “Jews in America weren’t
allowed in those professions 120
years ago. Music is something Jews
were good at and they could do. All
immigrants into America tried their
hand at show-business.”
Stein signed Madonna from
his hospital bed, where he was
recovering from an open-heart
surgery in 1982. She would release
three top-of-the-charts albums with
Sire before creating her own imprint
in 1992.
In 1975, his wife, Linda,
encouraged him to look into The
Ramones, a group of scrappy punks
in ripped jeans from Queens (two
of whom were Jewish). She would
co-manage the band for a time before
becoming a real estate agent.
Stein, who later came out as gay,
wrote that “the roles were a little
confused” in his marriage and that he
felt pressured to hide his attraction to
men in part because of his traditional
Jewish upbringing. “Just because I may
have been gay didn’t mean I wasn’t
Jewish,” he wrote. He and Linda had
two children but eventually divorced.
In the Tablet interview, Stein
mentioned that he stayed observant,
though not Orthodox, throughout his
life. He visited Israel several times and
worked with Israeli pop star Ofra Haza
on multiple albums. In the 1990s, he
visited the grave of Rabbi Nachman of
Breslov in Uman, Ukraine, a small town
where thousands of Orthodox Jews
gather each year on Rosh Hashanah.
“I feel a strong attachment to
Nachman’s teachings,” he said.
Linda Stein was murdered by her
assistant in 2007, and their daughter
Samantha died in 2013 from brain
cancer. Stein is survived by their other
daughter Mandy, a sister and three
grandchildren.
Music Mogul Seymour Stein
Signed the Top Rock Stars
GABE FRIEDMAN JTA
OBITUARIES
OF BLESSED MEMORY
KMAZUR/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES
Seymour Stein with David Byrne and Madonna in 1996.