Yes Sire

If you were into punk and new wave in the late 70s and early 80s, Sire was your label.  So many great bands, and tunes, came from that company, founded by Seymour Stein.  He was just a name to me, though, until I recently read his memoir Siren Song: My Life In Music.

He was born Seymour Steinbigle (in an age when people changed their names to keep things simple) in Brooklyn in 1942.  He loved music, and knew he had to work in the industry one way or another.  He couldn't sing, couldn't play an instrument, but he had ears, and figured he'd make his mark on the business end.  But he wasn't a number-cruncher or bean-counter, it was always about the music.  In fact, he believed in the music so much he generally wouldn't tell his acts what to do--he figured he signed them for a reason, so let them make their art as they saw fit.

He started at the bottom in the late 50s, working at whatever job he could get.  As was said about him, he had shellac in his veins.  By the late 60s he formed his own label, Sire.  He was always trying to keep up with the latest trends, but it might have seemed strange that he would become the one in the vanguard--before he got into punk, his biggest acts were groups such as the Climax Blues Band and Renaissance.

One of his most important signings came in 1975 when he caught the Ramones at CBGB and knew he had to work with them.  It's hard to overstate how much the music industry back then hated the band.  This was a time when Elton John, Fleetwood Mac and Pink Floyd ruled the airwaves.  To most music moguls, the Ramones, with their buzzsaw rock and roll, were some kind of sick joke.  But they would go on to be perhaps the quintessential punk band, highly influential and (reasonably) popular.

Other major acts he signed in the 70s were new wave mainstays such as Talking Heads (probably Stein's favorite band, from the way he writes about them) and the Pretenders.  Numerous major songs from that era were put out by Sire--"One Step Beyond," "Mirror In The Bathroom," "I Melt With You," "Ca Plane Pour Moi" and so many others.

During this period, Stein was looking for a new distributor and signed with Warner's.  In fact, they became a joint venture, with Warner's essentially buying him out.  He made decent money, but later considered it a mistake--he was now a glorified executive, and if he wanted to sign someone, he had to get permission from a bunch of suits in Burbank.  And the music division at Warner's (which grew to dominate the industry) was at the time run by Mo Ostin, a smooth-talking killer, who's the villain of the book, if the book has one.

Still, Stein was about to sign his most successful artist--even though Ostin and others at Warner resisted.  Madonna, as we all know, went on to become as big an act as there was, selling countless records and making millions for the company that didn't want her at first.

Stein kept busy during the 80s and early 90s, getting involved with acts such as Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, the Cure, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Smiths and even performers you might not expect, such as Seal and Ice-T.

During that time, there were internecine battles at Warner's which Stein goes into in great detail.  He also spends a fair amount of time in the book discussing his personal life--his parents, his marriage, his homosexuality, his drug use.  I'm not saying this stuff is boring, but like Stein, I'm about the music.  And there's enough of it here to make the book well worth reading.