A Conversation with Seymour Stein – HuffPost 10.4.13

Mike Ragogna: Seymour, hi. You’re going to receive the first CBGB Icon Award. This is pretty significant, isn’t it?

Seymour Stein: Well, it is to me. I’ll tell you why. It’s not just because I found The Ramones, Talking Heads, Dead Boys, Richard Hell, and a lot of other artists out of there, but CGBG’s was the catalyst behind the most significant run of success for Sire as a label. Sire was started back in 1966 by myself and Richard Gottehrer, but he had left by this time, and was also influenced by CBGB’s, he found Blondie, who he recorded and produced, and then Deb as a solo artist recorded for Sire. We had some success with the seminal British blues label, Blue Horizon, who’s artists included Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack, and Christine McVie. We even had a million selling album in 1973, “Moving Waves” by Dutch band Focus. It was the success at CB’s that gave Sire a real kick. Momentum! So grateful to CBGB’s

MR: Seymour, go into that, your memories of the music business in New York.

SS: Back in my teens, New York WAS the music business. Yes, there was Capitol Records out on the West Coast and a few great indie labels like Liberty Records and several great R&B labels like Specialty, Imperial, and Modern and Aladdin, King in Cincinnati, Duke in Houston, Cameo-Parkway in Philadelphia, in Chicago Chess and Vee-Jay were repositories of the blues, and also had some great doo-wop groups. Mercury was often hotter than some of the majors and would’ve most probably grown into one had it not been bought by Dutch giant Phillips in the late 1950’s.

But New York had the other three of the four majors: RCA, Decca and Columbia, and they had my favorite indie, Atlantic Records, and some other great independent labels like Cadence, Kapp, Old Town, Herald & Ember, Rama & Gee, Roulette. I’m talking 1955/56.

I was still in school, so most of all it was that New York was the home of Alan Freed, who I listened to every night after school. A great influence, and so were the great rhythm and blues radio stations. Jocko Henderson on WWRL at 1600, both AM. Every Christmas and every Easter, I would go to Fox and The Brooklyn Paramount for Alan Freed’s live reviews of doo-wop, pop, R&B, everything. I’d even sneak into clubs like Town Hill on Eastern Parkway and see artists like Hank Ballard & The Midnighters and James Brown and the Famous Flames, Jackie Wilson, Lloyd Price, Laverne Baker, The Moonglows, The Flamingos, and others.

I’d go up to Harlem to buy my records. It was a straight line on the D train from King’s Highway to 125th street, and they had great record stores up there–The Record Shack, Bobby’s Records, which was owned by the guy who owned Fire & Fury Records, Bobby Robinson, and also Rainbow. I mean, I just couldn’t think of a better place to be.

Then slowly, L.A. became more of a factor, and Nashville, Memphis, and Detroit. I knew Berry Gordy in the very beginning. I was even present, along with super radio promo man Pete Bennet at their studios on West Grand Boulevard when they recorded The Marvelettes’ “Please Mister Postman.” And then 1964. The UK came on board with The Beatles, the British Invasion, and everything that followed.

MR: And there was, of course, The Brill Building.

SS: Yes, it was the center of New York’s music business. The Brill Building is where I met Richard Gottehrer, who became my partner in Sire Records, riding up and down the elevator. In 1964 I worked with George Goldner and songwriting legends Leiber & Stoller at Red Bird Records on the ninth floor; Richard’s company, FGG Productions, were on the tenth floor. With his partners Jerry Goldstein and Bob Feldman, they produced “Hang On Sloopy” by The McCoys, wrote and produced “My Boyfriend’s Back” by The Angels, and wrote and produced their own group Strangeloves, with songs like “I Want Candy” and “Sorrow.”

But by 1966, when Richard and I started Sire, New York was somewhat on the wain. CBGB’s in the early and mid 70’s was like a bolt of lighting. It effected not only me, but my whole family. It affected not only me but my whole family. My ex-wife Linda was a schoolteacher up in Riverdale and gave it all up to become manager with Danny Fields of The Ramones. My daughter, Mandy, did a documentary “Burning Down The House” on the last days of CBGB’s, working very closely with Hilly. They became very close during those last eighteen months of his life.

In 2005, I was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Fame. I had room at my table for two people. I invited two people aside from my family as my guests, and Hilly was one of them. My other was Tom Noonan, the chart editor at Billboard, the man who jumpstarted my career in the music business by letting me in the office when I was thirteen years old so I could research the business. Here I was, reading up about charts and events from the 1940’s and early 50’s, and this is back in 1956, when the explosion was happening out there in the streets right near the Billboard offices and the Palace Theater Building, a stone’s throw from The Brill Building. Rock and Roll exploded. That was the year Elvis Presley moved from Sun to RCA, and exploded with “Heartbreak Hotel” and “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” and “Hound Dog.”

MR: Hustling around the music business at thirteen. You truly are a New Yorker!

SS: I am a New Yorker, though I travel the world. I just got back from Rio, I’m leaving in a few weeks to go to Korea for the second time this year. I’ll be in China later this year and in India. I was in India earlier this year because I believe they have great prospects in the future for music.

MR: Seymour, it seems that CBGB’s not only was that lightning bolt for New York’s music scene, but it had the early appearances of many acts that broke internationally.

SS: Yes, CBGB’s put the spotlight back on New York for all the world to notice. A lot of my later success in the business came from the independent record companies in the UK, labels like Rough Trade, Beggar’s Banquet, 4AD, Mute–that’s where I signed Depeche Mode from, and Creation Records. I had gotten cred by signing bands out of CBGB’s, which sadly, were bigger internationally. Some of them gave me lots of credibility and traction in the UK, where I signed so many big artists over the years; The Pretenders, Madness, The Smiths, The Cure, The Cult, Depeche Mode, Echo and The Bunnymen, Soft Cell, The Undertones, The Rezillos, Mighty Lemon Drops, My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream, Ride, Modern English, Aphex Twins, Spacehog, The Beat, Everything But The Girl, Yazoo, Morcheeba, and so many others. CBGB’s was very, very, very important, and that’s why this award means so much to me.

MR: Going back, your label was a pioneer of new wave, euro-dance-pop, etc., never really focusing on one “genre.”

SS: Yes, we had some really good early dance acts like Bomb The Base, S’Express, Betty Boo, and before that, trend setters like “Pop Muzik” by M, and “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell. We also had Telex from Belgium. But before we get carried away let me say something: I don’t believe in genres. When I was a kid, it was all right. There were three genres that I paid attention to and there were five genres altogether. There was pop, country, and rhythm & blues, and that was what I was into. I love Hank Williams and Carl Smith and Johnny Cash and Kitty Wells and Ray Price Jimmie Rodgers as much as I love Fats Domino and Chuck Berry and Sam Cooke and James Brown. I actually worked with James Brown and went on the road with him when I was a teenager. I was also influenced by pure pop artists. When I was just 9 years old and heard “Tennessee Waltz” by Patti Page, it had a great effect because it stayed 13 weeks in a row at #1 on the Billboard pop charts. It was a country song written by PeeWee King and Red Stewart. Although people deride artists like Pat Boone, one of my favorite records in the midst of all this rock ‘n’ roll in 1956 was his version of “I Almost Lost My Mind,” written by one of rhythm and blues’ greatest writers, Ivory Joe Hunter.

There are two categories–good and bad. You get into the good and you see what the best of the good is, that’s all. To me, Youssou N’Dour and people like that aren’t “world” artists, they’re great artists! Miriam Makeba, same thing. People act like it all happened here, but there was a music business two hundred years ago. Okay, it wasn’t recorded music, but it wasn’t here. It wasn’t even in England. It was in St Petersburg and Vienna and Milan and Paris and places like that. I always say this… Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky were the pop stars of their day. They’re called “classical” because they’ve endured. People will be talking about Elvis and, hopefully, people like Fats Domino and Chuck Berry and James Brown as well as The Ramones and Talking Heads and Madonna and The Pretenders for years and years and years to come.

MR: Beautiful. What’s interesting though is–and maybe this is because you don’t categorize–with Sire and beyond, you were one of the front runners of dance and new wave and punk and all that. I think you were able to achieve this because you just liked and appreciated the merits of the music, period.

SS: Yes, and also I would like to say that I was wrong a lot. I was wrong more than I was right, but you have to take chances. It’s like baseball. If you bat 300, that’s pretty damn good. I always took chances. Part of it was forced on me. I never had, in the beginning especially, a great deal of money, so I had to look for brand new artists, cutting-edge artists, artists that no one else wanted. I signed The Ramones the night that I saw them. I was going to see them the night before, but I was too ill, I had the flu. I bundled up the next day and went to the studio, where they played for about fifteen minutes and that was enough for me. We spent the rest of that hour going over the deal. I signed The Smiths and Depeche Mode and Echo & The Bunnymen the nights that I saw them. You’ve got to be decisive, you know?

MR: Absolutely. And you also go by your gut, don’t you.

SS: Yes.

MR: Just as CBGB’s is appreciating your role in their history, do you understand what Sire meant in the whole scheme of musical things?

SS: If you want to know the absolute truth, I didn’t realize it at the time, but I realize it now in retrospect because you have no idea what labels like King and Chess and Atlantic and Imperial and Sun meant to me. Of course, I understand it, but it’s hard for me to get used to it because I was just doing what I loved. But so too were Syd Nathan at King and so were Ahmet [Ertegun] and Jerry Wexler at Atlantic, and The Chess brothers. We were just doing what we do.

MR: It was like a brotherhood, wasn’t it. You all knew each other, appreciating music on the same level.

SS: Yes. Syd Nathan was my greatest mentor. I met most of these people at Billboardthanks to Paul Ackerman, the music editor. I met most of my mentors there. I met Syd Nathan, I met Jerry Wexler who was a reporter for Billboard before he became part of Atlantic records. I met George Goldner there who was a big influence and I worked for him at Red Bird Records. That’s how I got into The Brill Building to work. I’d been in there many, many times before, but to have an office there… I met Andrew Loog Oldham when I was working up at Red Bird Records. I met him and Keith Richards when nobody knew who The Rolling Stones were. If you surrender your life to rock ‘n’ roll, which I kind of did, anything can happen.

MR: That’s a beautiful line. Seymour, what’s your advice for new artists?

SS: I’m going up to see an artist that has been around for quite some time without having any real success. But I’ve seen something in him that I like and I’m going to see him again tomorrow. Never give up. It’s a very, very rough business. If it’s any consolation to the artists, it’s rough for us on the other side of the desk too. But there are many more pressures on an artist time-wise because it’s almost like they’re looking in their mind at an hourglass with the salt running through it, a lot of them. But never give up, never stop believing in yourself. I don’t know what else I can say about that. It’s not an easy business then or now. People may think it’s a lot easier today with the internet, but it’s a smaller market on the recorded side of things, and the internet has opened it up to that many more people, so the competition is much greater now. It’s not easy but it’s very rewarding. I’m so glad that it’s been a part of my life since my teens. I’m seventy-one, I’m still working every day and I couldn’t think of anything that would make me as happy as being in the music business.

MR: Nice. Things recently have changed for you at Warner Brothers, haven’t they?

SS: I’ve been given expanded duties and they mean a lot to me because although I sold my company to Warner Brothers many years ago, I still consider myself an indie. I think once an indie, always an indie. I know Jerry Wexler was like that after he sold Atlantic and I know Ahmet was the same way. I’m trying to help ADA bring on board more labels from overseas, from the UK, and also in the United States as well. I’m working closely with these labels because look… I’m one of the founders of The Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame along with Ahmet Ertegun, who, really, it never would’ve gotten off the ground without him. Also Jann Wenner, and Allen Grubman as well, the music lawyer who helped bring all the other labels on board because he represented most of them in one capacity or another.

But on the first ballot, there were forty-one nominees. Thirty-nine of them started their career on indie labels, and indies didn’t control a big slice of the music business back then. Thirty-nine of them. And you could actually say it was forty because although Buddy Holly’s records came out on Corral, a Decca subsidiary, he was discovered and produced by an indie guy, Normal Petty, who recorded him and the Crickets in his little studio in Clovis, NM. Back in those days, it was near impossible to run a record company from the middle of nowhere, which is what that was in those days. He knew he had something great, so he brought it to Milt Gabler at Decca. The only real artist on a major was Gene Vincent, who started on Capitol. But it was the indie labels that launched Elvis Presley was on Sun. Fats Domino was on Imperial. James Brown was on King. Jerry Lee Lewis was on Sun as well. Sam Cooke started on Keen, the Everly Brothers on Cadence, and oh so many more.

The indies are the ones out in the street. They have to be. It was true then, it was true in England when Island, Chrysalis, and Virgin started, it was true when Richard and I started Sire Records, and it’s still true today. That’s why I’m so proud to be part of ADA.

MR: Nice. We’ll close this down but I wanted to say congratulations on the thirtieth anniversary of the Madonna album debut.

SS: Oh yes, I’m very proud of Madonna, I always have been, and I love her very much. I love all of my artists and I try to keep in touch as much as possible, some more than others, and sadly some not at all. What breaks my heart most of all is that three of the four original members of The Ramones have passed away. Every year, they keep getting bigger and bigger and people realize how important they were, certainly to Sire, certainly to other musicians that followed, and certainly to the world of music.

MR: What new artists are you currently working with at Sire?

SS: Of all the bands, Delta Rae from Durham, NC are probably the best know. We’ve been working their first album for over 18 months and they’re finally breaking. Ben Fields is a really great singer/songwriter who’s just completed his first Sire album. Kill It Kid is a blues band from the UK who are quite amazing, also with a new album on the way. Sire’s A&R man, Eric McLellan has signed a really great band from Estonia, Ewert And The Two Dragons. They’re already big there, and were named “Best New Band Of The Year” by Eurosonic. Newer signing The Cold Fronts, an exciting band from Philadelphia. We’ve also signed Kyary Pamyu Pamyu from Japan, and looking hard at two Asian bands, one from China and one from Korea. In addition, there’s a lovely three-piece American girl band under strong consideration.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne