On Sunday, record business legend and personal mentor, Seymour Stein, passed away after a long battle with cancer. He figures prominently in my memoir so I’m going to run a couple of posts about him by other people who knew him. First is by acclaimed British novelist Kevin Sampson, who managed a band, The Farm, while Seymour and I were working together at Warner Bros Records.
SEYMOUR
-by Kevin Sampson
“Hello. Is that Kevin? It’s Seymour Stein.”
I laughed into the phone.
“Good one, Macca. See you.”
I thought it was Paul McKenna or Crofty from the label, having a laugh during a spliff-fuelled Produce Records marketing meeting. The phone went again.
“Hi, we got cut off…”
That call was the starting pistol for 4 years of inspired madness, orchestrated by the extrovert puppet master, Seymour Stein of Sire Records. It was August 1990. Seymour was on one of his regular trips to London. He’d heard Groovy Train on John Peel and, just like that, made up his mind he was signing the band. There followed a courtship of many months where Seymour would materialise at gigs, seemingly fast asleep while still standing up, then he’d snap back to life the moment the show was over, pinpointing the tracks he loved and telling us we’d never get a better deal than the one he was offering.
The trouble was, we had many better offers. Epic, Elektra, Atlantic, SBK were all dangling much bigger carrots. But Peter loved Talking Heads, Carl and Steve loved The Ramones-- we all just wanted to be on Sire, no matter who else was interested: we just had to get his sums up to the level the others were offering. Keith became a little spooked by Seymour’s persistence. We were on a flight to Paris for a Christmas gig at Le Locomotiv, and there was Seymour, on the same plane. He took us out to a Moroccan restaurant in Montmartre and convinced Ben to snort icing sugar. Keith said we need to see less of Seymour, but Roy leaned in and said-- okay; it’s got to be Sire.
All Together Now was enjoying a 7th consecutive week in the Top 10 when I went to New York and Los Angeles in January 1991 to meet the interested parties. Seymour knew by then that his original offer wasn’t going to butter many parsnips, and he knew that his rivals were out to snatch the band from under him. Looking back, these were some of my most cherished times, pretending to be a manager. I didn’t have a clue, but somehow the offers were coming in left, right and centre. Merchandise companies would slip notes under my bedroom door saying they were in the hotel bar, there was a bottle of champagne open, just come down and sign the contract and we’ll party all night. Eek! I just wanted a cup of tea that wasn’t lukewarm and weak.
Anyway, Seymour pulled out all the stops. He was there in New York to introduce his East Coast team and, having found out I loved Andy Williams, stood up and delivered a lamentable version of Solitaire in a Lower East Side dive. Then he was there again in LA, corralling all the Warner Brothers top brass-- Mo Ostin who signed Sinatra to Reprise, Steve Baker and, maybe the greatest of them all, Howie Klein, an understated, effortlessly cool music nut who knew everyone-- to convene at his neighbourhood Italian, Peppone, and make us an offer we couldn’t refuse. Seymour crowned the night by singing Sex Pistols B-sides and telling me to stop fucking about and sign the contract. I said okay.
The day after the Elland Road gig with Happy Mondays, we flew off for the first mini-tour of the States. The afternoon of the New York gig, Seymour beckoned us all into his office, holding up a finger to say “one minute” while he finished a phone call.
“I’m telling you-- best band I’ve had in years. The Farm. FARM. Yes! I was telling you about them… TONIGHT! That’s what I’m saying. You do? That’s awesome. I’ll put you down plus 3.”
He ended the call and looked up, grinning like a kid.
“Madonna’s coming,” he beamed.
That first tour was fantastic-- every show sold out, brilliant ‘event’ atmosphere, a tangible sense that the band was on the verge of something huge. We came back a few months later and did a much bigger, coast-to-coast tour with BAD. Seymour would show up, fall asleep standing up then burst into some Broadway musical number. At the aftershow party. He had a pretty awful singing voice, but belting out High Hopes with him in the bar of the fabled Chelsea Hotel was an all-time night to remember.
We came close-- very close… Groovy Train got to Number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100 so was, technically, a USA smash hit. But it didn’t quite happen in the way we’d all hoped for and, back in the UK, our groovy train had run into a siding. Seymour was in Manchester for In The City. All anyone was talking about was Suede. I was expecting him to drop The Farm-- it was pretty much over everywhere else-- but I drove him up to an architectural salvage place in Lancashire to look for Arts & Crafts ceramics (his major passion, besides music.) He was overjoyed to find some original Clarice Cliff tiles-- genuinely like the cat who got the cream. On the way back I played him a few demos the band had been working on-- Golden Vision, Comfort, The Man Who Cried. He didn’t say much-- I think he fell asleep-- but when I dropped him off back in Manchester he said:
“Okay. We’ll do another two records. I can’t pay as much as last time but I want to keep working with you guys.”
Just like that, we were back in business. Hullabaloo came out in the summer of 1994 and we set off on what turned out to be a make or break tour of the States. We played everywhere-- St. Louis, Missouri; Lincoln, Nebraska; Lawrence, Kansas; Long Island; Louisville, Kentucky: 50-odd dates, all over America. By the last week of the tour, Comfort had started getting airplay on Adult Contemporary radio-- there was still a pulse, still a chance of keeping this mad adventure going. I got on the phone to Seymour to persuade him to spring the money for a promo video when we got to New York (the last date of the tour.) He told me to come and see him in his office in The Rockefeller Centre. He was on the phone but he waved me into his office.
“No, The Farm. FARM. From Liverpool. Yes! I was telling you about them… TONIGHT! That’s what I’m saying. You do? That’s awesome. I’ll put you down plus 1.”
He put the phone down, his face lit up in a big smile.
“Madonna’s coming.”
She didn’t. Either time. I love Seymour more for the fact that he was never even on the phone to her, and I suspect we both knew that we both knew that. The last few years, I’ve been trying to persuade Seymour that the world needs his story in the form of a definitive documentary film, with contributions from all the hundreds and thousands of people he inspired. That’s not going to happen, now-- I’m sad that his legend won’t be enshrined in the way that others have been.
So, farewell then Seymour Stein, you mad old icing sugar snorting, static sleeping, Madonna fibbing, tile stroking, show song warbling, brilliant, large headed, maverick genius. You gave us great music and you made our lives better than they were, and we’ll always love you for that.
Brilliant!
The one time I met Seymour was when I accompanied Howie to the Sire office in New York. When Howie casually introduced me as his friend Helen, Seymour immediately dragged me over to the window, saying, “I want to see your Adams apple.“ it turned out Howie had told him I had had a sex change operation! I was completely bewildered. So typical of Howie, always tormenting me for fun. Howie laughed uproariously.