Loose Ends: Seymour Stein — R.I.P.

Sire Records co-founder was a champion of music and influencer on multitudes

If someone were to ask who shaped my musical tastes, I’d have to point to four people: My grandmother and father, former Houston Chronicle critic Marty Racine, and Seymour Stein.

Thanks to family, I have a grounding in the birth of rock and roll and a lifelong appreciation for music’s place and influence in our history. Thanks to Marty, with whom I worked briefly as a 20-something in the late 1980s, I became immersed in the world of live shows and the roots/rock/blues/Americana amalgam that was flourishing in the bars and clubs of Houston.

Music, Faith, Death, and Texas

Stein, the Sire Records co-founder who died Sunday at age 80, and the artists he signed broadened my tastes and opened up my world.

All you have to do is take a look at Sire’s eclectic roster and it all makes sense: The Ramones, the Talking Heads, The Pretenders, Madonna, Depeche Mode, k.d. lang, The Cult, The Smiths, Echo & The Bunnymen. He signed Lou Reed and helped shepherd what was perhaps Reed’s greatest solo album — 1989’s “New York.” During the same period, Stein’s label also released the first solo album from Brian Wilson, helping the former Beach Boys genius renew his career after a decade of mental illness.

“Without the backing of a large record company, he had to find artists in the earliest moments of their careers,” Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads wrote in a Facebook tribute. “For decades his taste was spot on.”

Harrison wrote that Stein “had the good sense and confidence to let artists make their own decisions,” noting the Talking Heads “determined the direction of each album, designed all of our early covers, and directed our own videos.”

And, of course, he also signed The Replacements, perhaps my all-time favorite band. Even though the group’s notorious self-destructive streak prevented them from breaking through like Stein’s most famous signings, their music has endured.

Loose Ends: The Replacements

Stein, in a piece written to mark Sire Records’ 50th anniversary, said his friend and lawyer Owen Epstein saw him out one night “about to get into trouble” at a Christmas party. Epstein “pulled me out and took me with him to see his clients The Replacements. I was so blown away that I ran backstage after the show, and we stayed up all night with the band. One of the all-time great rock ’n’ roll bands—they should have had greater commercial success.”

Like many of the label heads of what now seems like a bygone era, Stein could be “startlingly impolitic,” according to an obituary published in today’s New York Times. But in his 2018 memoir, Siren Song: My Life in Music, Stein admitted as much.

“Being liked was not my goal in life,” he wrote. “My business was turning great music into hit records.”

And that he did.

Music Notes

It’s been some time since I’ve written a “Loose Ends” music column, but Stein’s death and the fact that today is the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ “Red” and “Blue” albums were too much to pass up. So here are some random thoughts and quotes I’ve collected recently.

• Sifting through my father’s records when I was a child, I was somewhat surprised to find an original (though battered) copy of “A Hard Day’s Night.” With random forays into a hard rock lick that he liked, most of dad’s tastes were stuck in the 1950s. But he was a contemporary of The Beatles, and enjoyed much of what they did even if he didn’t buy many of their records.

Which is why, as my musical tastes started to broaden during my teen years, finding “1962-1966” and “1967-1970” were so revelatory to me. The wildly influential double album compilations “became the foundation of the Beatles legend for the next few decades,” as Rob Sheffield writes online in today’s Rolling Stone.

“Arguably the most influential greatest-hits albums in history. The gateway drug into the Beatles songbook for generations of fans. Their most crucial post-break-up albums, even if the Fab Four wanted nothing to do with them,” Sheffield writes.

While I didn’t know that last part, Sheffield is dead on about the impact of those albums, a dazzling primer into a band that somehow is more popular in 2023 than it was when the compilations were first released. The entire story is worth a read.

• If you get the chance, check out On Repeat, Kevin Alexander’s Substack page. Each Monday, he has a “What are you listening to?” discussion thread that is a lot of fun. I reliably pick up new music and go back to listen again to songs I haven’t heard in some time. Another enjoyable read is Front Row and Backstage, Brad Kyle’s memories of working in Houston radio and the record business in the 1970s and ‘80s. Brad also posts stories about the Houston Astros.

• Two unrelated quotes from artists I admire: John Mellencamp and recent Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis.

Mellencamp: “When you’re an artist and you’re really an artist, you have to do it. I have to do it. … I’m a total hypochondriac, and Stephen King is the same way. I said, ‘Steve, why are we such hypochondriacs? You know I don’t get it.’ He was very matter of fact: ‘John, we make shit up. You know we make stuff up. If we’re not putting it on a page or in a song or on canvas or on a screen, we turn it on ourselves. And it becomes a total enemy.”

Curtis, who has been extremely candid about the joys and challenges of aging: "U2, do a matinee. Coldplay, do a matinee. What about a 12-noon concert, Coldplay? What about it? Bruce Springsteen, do a matinee!”

Amen to both.

• Finally, if you haven’t seen it yet, check out my recent “Visual Stories” piece on shooting live music and dance. Let me know what you think of the images!

Shooting Live Music