Siren Song, Seymour Stein
Siren Song, Seymour Stein
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Siren Song
My Life in Music

Author: Seymour Stein, Gareth Murphy

Narrator: Peter Berkrot

Unabridged: 10 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/12/2019


Synopsis

Seymour Stein is America's greatest living record man. Not only has he signed and nurtured more important artists than anyone alive, now sixty years in the game, he's still the hippest label head, traveling the globe in search of the next big thing.

Since the late fifties, he's been wherever it's happening: Billboard, Tin Pan Alley, The British Invasion, CBGB, Studio 54, Danceteria, the Rock and 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 is a legend. Sung from the heart, Siren Song will etch his story in stone.

About Seymour Stein

Seymour Stein is cofounder and chairman of Sire Records, as well as a vice president of Warner Bros. Records. Sire Records, which he founded in 1966, was the pioneer of New Wave music. Stein was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005 under the lifetime-achievement category. He lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Dimitrije on October 01, 2020

PESMA SIRENE Simora Stajna, osnivača diskografske kuće Sire i čoveka koji je praktično bio vodeći popularizator britanske indie muzike u Americi krajem sedamdesetih i tokom osamdesetih, čineći je globalnom, zatim čoveka koji je uveo pank u ozbiljna i dostupna izdanja, pokrenuvši izadavanje umetnika......more

Goodreads review by John on June 20, 2018

"Siren Song" by Sire Records head honcho Seymour Stein is the 1975-1985 analog to Joe Boyd's excellent autobiography "White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960's" or maybe Jac Holzman's "Follow the Music". If you enjoy books about the "business of music" or are simply a huge fan of punk/new wave/indi......more

Goodreads review by Spencer on September 20, 2018

Easily the best record exec book. Nobody did more to bring punk, new wave, and weird UK indie bands into the homes of mainstream Americans as Stein. His tales of his early years at Billboard and King records is also of great historical value. A must for any serious music geek.......more

Goodreads review by Debra on June 27, 2018

Readable and for the most part entertaining (how interested you might be in the childhood of a relatively unknown person depends on your taste...). I suspect that, like me, most people will be reading this because of Stein's role in "discovering" bands like Talking Heads, Ramones and other NYC great......more

Goodreads review by Steve on July 28, 2018

A worthwhile read, but pretty self-serving and shallow. Some of the most interesting passages deal with Stein's youth at the indie King label, which is best known for releasing James Brown's early music but put out a lot of pioneering early rock'n'roll. The long run Sire had before punk gets short s......more