YEAR
2005
INDUCTED BY
Ice T
CATEGORY
Performers
Seymour Stein can hear the future.
He unerringly predicted the next musical trend, then signed the musical act that inevitably became the epitome of that movement. Stein has signed such icons as the Ramones, the Talking Heads and Madonna. Seymour Stein is the co-founder and chairman of Sire Records, the label that put punk and New Wave—not to mention the maverick likes of Madonna—on the map.
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Tony Fletcher
The question to be asked about Seymour Stein is not “How has he influenced your taste in music,” but “How often, or how profoundly, has he influenced your taste in music?”
Through thirty-eight years at the helm of Sire Records, acquiring so much genuine talent we could fill these pages just by listing the artists he signed, he has proved time and again that the words music and business can coexist in harmony — even if, as those who have enjoyed his mealtime renditions of bygone hit records can testify, such harmony is hot always perfectly pitched.
