Siren Song
My Life in Music
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4.4 • 14 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The autobiography of America’s greatest record man: the founder of Sire Records and spotter of rock talent from the Ramones to Madonna.
Seymour Stein was America's greatest record man. Not only did he sign and nurture more important artists than anyone alive, after over sixty years in the game, he was still the hippest label head, travelling the globe in search of the next big thing.
Since the late fifties, he had been wherever was happening: Billboard, Tin Pan Alley, The British Invasion, CBGB, Studio 54, Danceteria, the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, the CD crash. Along that winding path, he discovered and broke out a skyline full of stars: Madonna, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, Madonna, The Smiths, The Cure, Ice-T, Lou Reed, Seal, and many others.
Brimming with hilarious scenes and character portraits, Siren Song’s wider narrative is about modernity in motion, and the slow acceptance of diversity in America – thanks largely to daring pop music. Including both the high and low points in his life, Siren Song touches on everything from his discovery of Madonna to his wife Linda Stein's violent death.
Ask anyone in the music business, Seymour Stein was a legend. Sung from the heart, Siren Song will etch his story in stone.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Stein's anecdote-packed memoir tells of his life as a music executive, in what is an entertaining ride though music history. Born into a blue-collar Brooklyn Jewish family in 1942, Stein showed an early passion for record hunting and an obsessive interest in Billboard chart-watching. With a hustler's determination while still a teenager, he wangled his interests into a job with Syd Nathan, whose King label was one of the great indie record labels in the pre-conglomerate era. After proving himself as a crack A&R manager with good ears, Stein cofounded his own independent label, Sire, which launched a long list of prominent acts of the 1970s and '80s, including Aztec Camera, the Cult, the Cure, Lou Reed, and the Smiths. Stein's insider accounts of byzantine record deals and corporate knife-fighting can bog down the narrative, but his true passion burns brightly when discussing his music discoveries and recounting tales of being blown away by the Ramones, having a "blinding obsession" with signing the Talking Heads, getting on the Concorde to check out a group called Depeche Mode, and being pressured for a deal by a pushy club kid named Madonna. Stein wonderfully captures his obsessive love for the bruising music business and introducing music-lovers to new bands and not going deaf or broke in the process.
